TIHE SLAVE POWER:
rrt
CHARACTER, CAREER, AND PROBABLE DESIGNS:
AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE REAL ISSUES INVOLVED
IN THE AMERICAN CONTEST.
BY
J. E. CAIRNES, M.A.,
PFOFEE80F OF IURISPRUDENCO AND POLITICAL ECONOMY IN QUEEN'S COLLEGE, GALWAY; AND
LATE WH&TELY PROFPNBOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNItERSITY OF DUBLIN.
THIRD EDITION.
NEW YORK:
Follett Foster 4 Co., Publishers.
NO. 49 WALKER-ST.
M DCCC LXIII.




"1  could easily prove that almost all the di-erenlces, which
may   be remarked    between the characters of      the Americans,n
the Southern and Northern States, have oriinated in Slavery,"
— DE TOCQUEVILLE.
Entered according to Act of Congrems, in the year 1862, by
GEO. W. CARLETON,
In the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the IUnited Stsates, for the Southern D1strlct of
New York.




PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
LITTLE by way of introduction is needed for an American edition of the present volume. The object of the work is stated
clearly and concisely in the author's preface. Considering Slavery as the true origin of the civil war now existing, he treats
of its economic basis, of the organization, tendencies, development, and external policy of slave societies, and of the career
and designs of the slave power, with the calmness of an impartial and philosophic observer, and in a popular and practical
manner. Democratic institutions, territorial extension, tariff
questions, state rights, secession, and all other subjects, which
either at home or abroad have been made use of to complicate
the quarrel, are here put aside as irrelevant; and the philosophic observer concentrates the attention of his readers on the
simple issue at stake-" whether the Power which derives its
strength from slavery shall be set up with enlarged resources
and increased prestige, or be now once for all effectually broken."
Similar views and arguments relating to this all-absorbing
topic may no doubt be found scattered through the current literature of the day, expressed with all the warmth natural to those
whose feelings and interests are immediately affected. Earnest
and thoughtful books have also been written here by men whose
testimony may be relied upon, and which have had more or
less influence upon public opinion. But the present volume
has an advantage over any work written on this side of the
Atlantic, that it is free from any imputation of party or sectional
bias; that it has something of the tone of a historic analysis of
a grand social drama which has been acted, rather than of one
of which the curtain of the fifth act has just risen; and it wVil
on that account be acceptable to men of all shades of political
opinion, while its clear style and systematic arrangement of
subject will be grateful to all, young as well as old. The
chapter relating to the career of the Slave Power is particu



viii     PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
larly distinguished for the compact and clear summary of its
operations in important political crises, from the date of the
Missouri Compromise Act to that of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.
In the concluding pages the author ventures to foretell how the
drama will end. As prophecy nowadays is not an irreversible
fiat, but simply an impressive form of admonition, those who
do not like its intimations can easily take precautions against
their fulfilment, but it must be by the argument of acts, not by
that of words.
From the present date to the first of January next, the project
of Emancipation proposed in the recent Proclamation by the
President will engross the minds of all.  This proclamation,
which has been added to the American edition, will be found
on the next page. It marks an important crisis in the war. The
whole question of Slavery will for the next three months be
canvassed with renewed energy: and the American publisher
conceives that in issuing this work he will furnish a hand-book
which contains a well digested survey of the political and
social problems involved. Though the position of affairs has
changed since these pages were originally written, they will
be none the less a timely aid and gul e to thought.
OCT. 1862.




BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
A PROCLAMATION.
I, ABRAHAM   LINCOLN, President of the United States, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim
and declare, that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for
the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the
United States and the people thereof, in which States that relation is or
may be suspended or disturbed.
That it is my purpose at the next meeting of Congress to again
recommend the adoption of a practical measure, tendering pecuniary aid
to the free acceptance or rejection of all the Slave States, so called, the
people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States,
and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may
voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within
their respective limits, and that the effort to colonize persons of African
descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the
previously obtained consent of the governments existing there, will be
continued.
That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any
State, or any designated part of a State, the people whereof shall be in
rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and for
ever, free; and the Executive Government of the United States, include
ing the military and naval authority thereof, will recognise and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress
such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their
actual freedom.
That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by
proclamation, designate the States, or parts of States, if any, in which,
the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the
United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall
on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United
States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the
qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the
absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not in rebellion against
the United States.
That attention is hereby called to an Act of Congress, entitled, " An
Act to make an additional article of war," approved March 13, 1862,
and which Act is in the words and figures following:



X           PRESIDENT LINCOLNS PRO LAMATLTIONY
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States
of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter the following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war for the government of the army of the United
States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such:ARTICLE -. All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United
States are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may have
escaped fiom any person to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due, and
any officer who shall be found guilty by court-martial of violating this article shall
be dismissed from the service.
SECTION 2. And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect from and
after its passage.
Also to the 9th and 10th sections of an Act entitled "An Act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion, to seize and confiscate
property of rebels, and for other purposes," approved July 17, 1862, and
which sections are in the words and figures following:SECTION 9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the Government of the United States, or who
shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons, and taking
refuge within the lines of the army, and all slaves captured from such persons, oi
deserted by them, and coming under the control of the government of the United
States, and all slaves of such persons found on or being within any place occupied
by rebel forces, and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be
deemed captures of war, and shall be for ever free of their servitude, and not again
held as slaves.
SECTION 10. And be it further enacted, That no slave, escaping into any State,
Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any of the States, shall be delivered up,
or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime, or some offence
against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that
the person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be due is his
lawful owner, and has not been in arms against the United States in the present
rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto; and no person engaged in
the military or naval service of the United States shall, under any pretence whatever, assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the service or
labor of any other person, or surrender up any such person to the claimant, on pain
of being dismissed from the service.
And I do hereby enjoin and order all persons engaged in the military
and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce
within their respective spheres of service, the acts and sections above
recited; and the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens
of the United States who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout
the rebellion, shall, upon the restoration of the constitutional relations
between the United States and their respective States and people, if the
relations shall have been suspended or disturbed, be compensated for all
losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this 22d day of September, in the
year of our Lord 1862, and of the Independence of the United States
the eighty-seventh.
By the President,                            ABRAHAM     LINCOLN.
WM. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




PREFACE.
IT is proper that I should state the circumstances under which the present volume-is offered to the public. The substance of it formed the
matter of a course of lectures delivered about a year since in the University of Dublin. In selecting the subject of North American slavery
I was influenced in the first instance by considerations of a purely speculative kind-my object being to show that the course of history is
largely determined by the action of economic causes. To causes of
this description, it seemed to me, the fortunes of slavery in North America-its establishment in one half of the Union and its disappearance
from the other-were directly to be ascribed; while to that institution,
in turn, the leading differences in the character of the Northern and
Southern people, as well as that antagonism of interests between the
two sections which has issued in a series of political conflicts extending
over half a century, were no less distinctly traceable. The course of
events, however, since I first took up the subject, has given to it an
interest far other than speculative, and has rendered conclusions, of
which the value (if they possessed any) was little more than scientific,
directly applicable to problems of immediate and momentous interest.
Under these circumstances I have been induced to extend considerably
the original plan of my investigations, and to give the whole subject a
popular and practical treatment, in the hope of contributing something
to the elucidation of a question of vast importance, not only to America, but to the whole civilized world.
The rapid movement of events, accompanied by no less rapid fluctuations in public opinion, during the progress of the work, will explain,
and, it is hoped, will procure indulgence for, some obvious imperfections.
Some topics, it is probable, will be found to be treated with greater fulness, and some arguments to be urged with greater vehemence, than the
present position of affairs or the present state of public feeling may
appear to require. For example, I have been at some pains to show
that the question at issue between North and South is not one of tariffsa thesis prescribed to me by the state of the discussion six months ago,
when the affirmative of this view was pertinaciously put forward by
writers in the interest of the South, but which, at the present time, when
this explanation of the war appears to have been tacitly abandoned, cannot but appear a rather gratuitous task.




xii                        PREFA CE.
In a certain degree, indeed, the same remark applies to the main
argument of the work; for, in spite of elaborate attempts at mystification, the real cause of the war and the real issue at stake are every day
forcing themselves into prominence with a distinctness which cannot be
much longer evaded. Whatever we may think of the tendencies of
democratic institutions, or of the influence of territorial magnitude on
the American character, no theory framed upon these or upon any other
incidents of the contending parties, however ingeniously constructed,
will suffice to conceal the fact, that it is slavery which is at the bottom
of this quarrel, and that on its determination it depends whether the
Power which derives its strength from slavery shall be set up with
enlarged resources and increased prestige, or be now once for all effectually broken. This is the one view of the case which every fresh occurrence in the progress of events tends to strengthen; and it is this which
it is the object of the present work to enforce.
But, although the development of the movement may have deprived
the following speculations of some of that novelty which they might
have possessed when they were first delivered, still it is hoped that they
will not be without their use-that, while they will assist honest inquirers to form a sound judgment upon a question which is still the subject
of much designed and much unconscious misrepresentation, they may
possess a more permanent interest, as illustrating by a striking example
the value of a fruitful but little understood instrument of historical
inquiry-that which investigates the influence of material interests on
the destinies of mankind.




CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY-THE CASE STATED.
Causes of the War.-The popular view.-Its superficiality.-Slavery the
central problem of American history.-The commercial theory. —The
claim of independence: how to be estimated.-Real cause of secession.True origin of the war obscured by its proximate occasion.-War the only
arbitrament.-Views of the North: The Unionist sentiment; The AntiSlavery sentiment.-Rapid growth of the Anti-Slavery sentiment.-Present
aspect of the question....                              17
CHAPTER II.
THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF SLAVERY.
Different fortunes of slavery in the North and South.-Various explanations
of the phenomenon: Theory of diversity of character in the original
founders; Theory of climate and race; The explanation of climate inadequate; Alleged indolence of the negro groundless.-True solution of the
problem-Economic.-Merits and defects of slave labour.-Merits and
defects of free labour.-Comparative efficiency of slave and free labour.Agricultural capabilities of North and South.-Slave and free products.Further conditions essential to the success of slave labour: Fertility of the
soil; Extent of territory.-Exhausting effects of slave culture.-General
conclusion...              3.
CHAPTER III.
INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF SLAVE SOCIETIES.
Economic success of slavery, in what sense conceded.-Structure of a slave
society moulded by its economic conditions.4Agriculture-the sole career
for slavery.-.-Exigencies of slave agricultnre.-Results: Magnitude of
plantations; Indebtedness of planters; Unequal distribution of wealth.Waste lands in slave countries.-Social consequences.-The'mean-.
whites.'-Industrial development of Slave States prematurely arrested.Net results of slave industry.-Constitution of slave societies essentially
oligarchical.-Baneful influence of the slave oligarchy falsely charged on
democracy.-Each principle to be tested by its proper fruits.-Character
of the Slave Power.........     46
CHAPTER IV.
TENDENCIES OF SLAVE SOCIETIES.
In what direction are slave societies moving?-Importance of the question.Presumption in favour of modern slavery derived from the experience of
ancient.-Three circumstances connected with modern slavery destroy the




xiv                         CONTENTS.
force of the analogy: I. Difference of race and colour; Its effects.
[I. Growth of modern commerce; Its effects: In enhancing the value of,rude labour, and thus augmenting the resources of slavery; In supersedng the necessity of education, and thus perpetuating servitude; Modern
slavery extends its despotism to the mind. III. The slave trade: Its two-!old functions in the modern system: In relation to the consuming countries; In relation to the breeding countries. jDivision of labour between
the old and new states;&jhe slave trade securely founded in the principles
of population; The analogy of cattle breeding...     64
CHAPTER V.
INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT OF SLAVE SOCIETIES.
Outline of the economy of slavS societies.-They include no element of progress.-The mean whites: (Growth of regular industry among them a
moral impossibility; Consequences of the absence of regular industry;
Extreme sparseness of population; Incompatibility of this with civilized
progress.-The slaves and their masters.-Prospects of emancipation in
the natural course of internal development: Inherent difficulty of the
problem; Modern precedents inapplicable; Economic causes not to be
relied on; Political and social motives the real strength of American
slavery; Further support to slavery in the ethics and theology of the
South.-Growth of the pro-slavery sentiment.-Its absorbing strength. —
Its universality.-Hopelessness of the slave's position.-Social cost of the
system.-Terrorism.....    7
CHAPTER     VI.
EXTERNAL POLICY OF SLAVE SOCIETIES.
Its. aggressive character.-Twofold source of the aggressive spirit: The
industrial; The moral.-Tendency of slave society to foster ambition. —
Narrow  scope for its indulgence.-The extension of slavery-its only
resource.-Concentration of aim promoted by antagonism.-Position of
*he South in the Union, naturally inferior to that of the North.-Compenating forces: The three fifths vote; Superior capacity in the South for:ombined action.-Democratic alliance: its basis.-Terms of the bargain.fwofold motive of southern aggression.-The political motive mainly ope-.ative.-True source of this motive.-Relation of the political motive to;he federal position of the South.                             93
CHAPTER VII.
THE CAREER OF THE SLAVE POWER.
Position of slavery at the Revolution.-Rise of the cotton trade.-Early progress of the planters.-Acquisition of the Louisiana Territory.-Missouri
claimed as a slave state.-Motives to territorial aggrandisement.-Importance of Missouri.-Opposition of the North.-The Missouri Compromise.
The Seminole War.-Designs upon Texas.-The tactics of aggression;Views of the annexationists.-Texas annexed.-Mexican war: division
of the spoil.-State of parties in 1850.-Designs upon Kansas.-Obstacle
presented by the Missouri Compromise.-The Kansas and Nebraska bill:
squatter sovereignty.-Kansas thrown open for settlement.-Preparations
of the Slave Power.-Invasion of the territory.-The Leavenworth Constitution.-Atrocities of the Border Ruffians.-Reaction: defeat of the
Slave Power.-Alarm in the North.-Formation of the Republican party.




CONTENTS.                           xv
First trial of strength of the new party.-Hopeful prospects.-Southern
policy of u Thorough": I. Revival of the African slave trade; Agitation
for reopening the African slave trade; Importation of slaves actually conmenced. II. Perversion of the Constitution; Claim of protection to slave
property throughout the Union; A judicial decision necessary; Reconstruction of the Supreme Court; Dred Scott Case; Effect of the decision;
Further requirement-a reliable government.-Breach with the Democratic party-Secession.-Apology for Southern aggression.-Aggression of
the Slave Power, in what sense defensive.-The apology admits the charge.
Attempt of John Brown.-Its place in current history...  106
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DESIGNS OF THE SLAVE POWER.
Essential character of Slave society unchanged by independence.-Inherent
vices of the Slave Power intensified by its new position.-Possible conditions of independence: I. Limitation of slavery to its present area; Results of this plan. II. Territories opened alike to free and slave colonization; Probable effects. III. Equal partition of the Territories; Argument
by which this scheme is defended; Paradox involved in this view;eographical conditions ignored; Northern jealousy not a sufficient safeguard; European interventionistill less to be relied on   -Modification of
slavery involved in the success of the South.b-Probability of a revival of
the African Slave Trade.-Irresistible inducements.-The only countermotive.-Presumption from the past.-Public spirit among the Southern
party.-Sacrifice of particular to general interests.-Sectional resistance
powerless before the exigencies of public poliey.-Results..  132
CHAPTER IX.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.
Duty of Europe, neutrality.-Impolicy of intervention.-Obligation to
render moral support.-Two modes of settlement equally to be deprecated.
Practical issues at the present time: I. Reconstruction of the Union;
Subjugation of the South, how far justifiable; Subjugation of the South,
how far practicable; Reconstruction of the Union, how far expedient;
Necessity of a recourse to despotic expedients; Plan for dispensing with
despotism by reforming Southern society; The condition of time ignored;
Disturbing effects of immigration. II. Secession under conditions: Two
cardinal ends to be kept in view; Peculiar position of the Border States;
Mr. Lincoln's proposal, its opportuneness; Free cultivators in the Border
States; Facilities for incorporation; The line of the Mississippi; The
negro question, three conditions to be satisfied. —. Immediate and wholesale emancipation; main difficulty of the problem; The West Indian
experiment; its lesson; Natural difficulties enhanced in the South; Impossibility of protecting the negro; The'mean whites'; their corrupting
influence. IL. Progressive emancipation: Advantage of dealing with the
evil in detail; Facilities offered by society in the Border States; Operation of natural causes in the more southern states; Prospects of the ultimate extinction of slavery.....                      147








THE SLAVE POWER,
ITS
CHARACTER, CAREER, AND DESIGNS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
THE CASE STATED.
THOSE who have followed the discussions in this country onl
the American contest are aware that the view taken of that
event by the most influential organs of the English press has,
during the period which has elapsed since its commencement,
undergone considerable modification. The first announcement
by South Carolina of its intention to secede from the Union
was received in this country with simple incredulity. There
were no reasons, it was said, for secession. What the constitution and laws of the United States had been on the eve of Mr.
Lincoln's election, that they were on its morrow.  It was
absurd to suppose that one half of a nation should separate,
from the other because a first magistrate had been elected in
the ordinary constitutional course.  The agitation for secession
was therefore pronounced to be a political feint intended to
cover a real movement in some other direction. But when the
contest had passed beyond its first stages, when the example
set by South Carolina was followed by the principal States of
the extreme South with a rapidity and decision shewing evident
concert, when the treacherous seizure of Fort Moultrie in
Charleston harbour gave further significance to the votes of the
conventions, when lastly the attack on Fort Sumpter awoke the
North, as one man, to arms, belief in the reality of the movement could no longer be withheld, and speculation was directed
to the causes of the catastrophe.  The theory at first propounded was nearly to this effect.  Commercial and fiscalL
differences were said to be at the bottom of the movement.
2




CA USES OF THE WAPR.
The North fancied she had an interest in protection; the South
had an obvious interest in free trade. On this and other questions of less moment North and South came into collision, and
the antagonism thus engendered had been strengthened and
exacerbated by a selfish struggle for place and power-a
struggle which the constitution and political usages of the
Americans rendered more rancorous and violent than elsewhere.  But in the interests of the two sections, considered
calmly and apart from selfish ends, there was nothing, it was
said, which did not admit of easy adjustment, nothing which
negotiation was not far more competent to deal with than the
sword.  As for slavery, it was little more than a pretext on
both sides, employed by the leaders of the South to arouse the
fears and hopes of the slaveholders, and by the North in the
hope of attracting the sympathies of Europe and hallowing a
cause which was essentially destitute of noble aims. The civil
war was thus described as having sprung from narrow and
selfish views of sectional interests (in which, however, the
claims of the South were coincident with justice and sound
policy), and sustained by passions which itself had kindled;
and the combatants were advised to compose their differences,
and either return to their political partnership, or agree to
separate and learn to live in harmony as independent
allies.
With the progress of events these views have undergone
some change, principally in excluding more completely than
at first from the supposed causes of the movement the question
of slavery, and in bringing more prominently into view the
right of nations to decide on their own form of political existence as identified with the cause of the South. " The watchword of the South," said the Times,* "is Independence, of
the North Union, and in these two war-cries the real issue is
contained."
That there is much plausibility in this view of the American
crisis for those who have no more knowledge of American
history than is possessed by the bulk of educated men in this
country needs not be denied. Superficial appearances, perhaps
we should say the facts most immediately prominent, give it
some support.  The occasion on which secession was proclaimed was the election of a Republican President, who, far
from being the uncompromising champion of abolition, had
declared himself ready to maintain the existing regime of
slavery with the whole power of the Federal government. On
the retirement of the Southern representatives and senators
* September 19, 1861.




THE POPULAR VIEW.                   19
from Congress, the Republican party became supreme in the
legislature; and in what way did they employ this suddenly
acquired power? In passing a law for the abolition of slavery
in the Union? or even in repealing the odious Fugitive Slave
Law? Nothing of the kind; but in passing the Morrill Tariff
-in enacting a measure by which they designed to aggrandize
the commercial population of the North at the expense of the
South.
Since the breaking out of hostilities, again, some of the most
salient acts of the drama have only tended to confirm the view
which these occurrences would suggest. When slaves have
escaped to the Federal army, instead of being received by the
general with open arms as brothers for whose freedom he is
fighting, they have been placed upon the footing of property,
and declared to be contraband of war.  When a Federalist
general, transcending his legitimate powers, issues a proclamation declaring that slaves shall be free, it is not a proclamation
of freedom to slaves as such, but only to the slaves of "rebels,"
while no sooner is this half-hearted act of manumission known
at head-quarters than it is disavowed and over-ruled.
All this, and more to the same purpose, may be urged, as it
has been urged, in favour of the view of the American crisis
taken by some leading organs of the English press; yet I venture to say that never was an historical theory raised on a more
fragile foundation; never was an explanation of a political
catastrophe propounded in more daring defiance of all the great
and cardinal realities of the case with which it professed to
deal.
One is tempted to ask, whether those who thus expound
American politics suppose the present crisis to be an isolated
phenomenon in American history, disconnected from all the
past; or, to look at the question from another point of view,
whether they imagine that the coincidence of the political
division of parties with the geographical division of slave and
free States is an accident-that, to borrow the expression of
Jefferson, " a geographical line coinciding with a marked principle " has no significance. It seems almost trifling with the
reader to remind him that the present outbreak is but the
crowning result, the inevitable climax of the whole past history of American politics-the catastrophe foreseen with more
or less distinctness by all the leading statesmen of America
from Washington to Webster and Clay, which was the constant
theme of their forebodings, and to escape or defer which was
the great problem of their political lives. And equally superfluous does it seem to mention what was the grand central
question in that history-the question to which all others were




20             SELA VERY THE CENTRAL PROBLEM
subordinate, and around which all political divisions ranged
themselves.*
* In opposition to the views propounded by the most influential organs in England, and in support of what I may venture to call the obvious (though little
recognized) account of the war, I am glad to be able to quote the high authority of
two leading French Reviews, the Revue des Deux Mondes, and the Revue Nationale:
"II faut aimer a discuter contre l'evidence pour se persuader que la question de
l'esclavage n'est point la cause principale de la crise actuelle. Dans ce conflit qui
depuis trente ans va toujours en s'aggravant et qui vient enfin d'aboutir a la guerre
civile, quelle question va toujours en grandissant et finit par dominer toute le reste,
sinon cette redoubtable question d'esclavage? Ils n'ont pas lu les discours de Calhoun, de Webster, de Seward, de Douglas, de Clay, de Sumner, ceux qui croient
que la question de l'esclavage n'a dans la politique americaine qu'une importance
secondaire. Ils oublient que toute la Virginie s'est levee en armes contre John
Brown et ces vingt-cinq compagnons. Voici un fait d'ailleurs: quels sont belligerans? D'un cote les etats sans esclaves, de lautre les etats a esclaves, et ion
pretendrait que la question de l'esclavage est dtrangere a la guerre 1  Entre les
dtats du nord et ceux du sud il y a des dtats frontieres, les border states, qui, sans
etre des etats libres, contiennent moins d'esclaves que les etats cotonniers. Chose
dtrange! la fidelite de ces etats a I'Union est prdcisdment en raison inverse du nombre de possesseurs d'esclaves; la Virginie, qui a des esclaves se rallie au mouvement
s6cessioniste; la partie occidentale de cet 6tat, oasis sans esclaves, s6paree du reste
par une chaine des Alleghanys, reste fidele a l'Union et lui donne des soldats. Le
nord du Delaware, qui n'a plus d'esclaves, renferme a peine un secessioniste; le sud,
qui en a un grand nombre, contient beaucoup d'adversaires de l'Union. Le sud et
lest du Maryland sont remplis d'esclaves, et en consequence de secessionistes;
I'ouest du Maryland, oh l'on voit tres peu de noirs non affranchis, est presque unanime pour l'Union. Les six mille esclaves de Baltimore appartiennent a l'aristocratio
de cette ville, et l'on sailt que cette aristocratie n'est retenue dans la obeissance quo
par des mesures de rigueur.  Le Tennessee occidental, abandonne au travail servild, est un centre de rebellion; le Tennessee oriental, oh le travail libre l'emporto
de beaucoup, est sympathique a l'Union. Le Kentucky ne fait pas exception a cet
regle: dans les comtes du nord et de l'est, oh il y a peu d'esclaves, il y apeu do
secessionistes; dans les autres, oh ils sont nombreux, on se prononce pour la'neutralit,' ce qui n'est qu'une forme do la trahison. Dans le Missouri, la ligne de
demarcation est nettement dtablie entre le travail libre et le travail servile. Les
Allemands ddtestent lesclavage, et forment le noyau le plus fidble de ltat; les
unionistes anglo-saxons sont plutot en faveur de la neutralite, tandis quo les maitres
d'esclaves sont en armes contre l'Union. I y a quelques sympathies pour l'Union
jusque dans le Texas occidental, parce qu'on y voit peu d'esclaves et beaucoup
d'Allemands. Quel est l'itat secessioniste par excellence?  C'est la Caroline du
sud, qui contient relativement plus d'esclaves que tous les autres dtats. Dira-t-on
encore que le defense de i'esclavage n'est pas la cause des secessionistes? S'il resta
des doutes dans quelques esprits, qu'on 6coute donc le propre temoignage des gens
di sud."-Revue des Deux Mondes, Ire Nov. 1861.
In an article by M. Pressens6, in the Revue Nationale, the point is put with equal
perspicuity and force: —" Je sais qu'on s'efforce d'en dissimuler la gravite, et
que d'un certain cbot on essaye de la reduire a un simple conflit constitutionnel, a
une question de droit politique, a l'interpretation du contrat que lie entre eux les
divers Etats de la confederation puissante dont les gigantesques progr6s etonnaient
naguere le monde. Mais cette explication mesquine do la crise actuelle de l'Amerique du Nord n'est qu'un sophisme destine a excuser une lachete. On essaye
de donner ainsi la change a la conscience publique, qui ne comprendrait pas
et ne permettrait pas que lon hesitat en Europe entre le Nord et le Sud, une
fois que la question de l'esclavage serait nettement posee entre eux. Ceux qui
trouvent leur interet a incliner vers le Sud se plaisent a rabaisser le conflit americain




OF AMERICAN HISTOR Y.                 21
Never surely was the unity of a national drama better preserved. From   the year 1819 down to the present timn the
history of the United States has been one record of aggressions
by the Slave Power, feebly, and almost always unsuccessfully,
resisted by the Northern States, and culminating in the present
war. At the time of the revolution, as is well known, slavery
was regarded by all the great founders of the Republic, whe
ther Northern or Southern men, as essentially an immoral
system: it was, indeed, recognized by the Constitution, but
only as an exceptional practice, a local and temporary fact.
In the unsettled territory then belonging to the Union it was
by a special ordinance prohibited. Even in 1819, although in
the interval the Slave Power had pushed its dominion and
pretensions far beyond their original limits, the claim was
scarcely advanced for slavery to rank as an equal with free
institutions in any district where it was not already definitively
established, and certainly no such claim was acknowledged.
Of this the Missouri Compromise affords the clearest proof,
since, regarded as a triumph by the slaveowners, it only secured
the admission of slavery to Missouri on the express condition
that it should be confined for the future to the territory south
of a certain parallel of latitude. But what has been the
career of the Slave Power since that time? It is to be traced
through every questionable transaction in foreign and domestic
politics in which the United States has since taken partthrough the Seminole war, through the annexation of Texas,
through the Mexican war, through filibustering expeditions
under Walker, through attempts upon Cuba, through the
Fugitive Slave Law of 150, through Mr. Clay's compromises,
through the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise so soon as
the full results of that bargain had been reaped, through the
passing of the Nebraska Bill and the legislative establishment
of the principle of " Squatter Sovereignty," through the invasion of Kansas, through the repudiation of "Squatter Sovereignty" when that principle had been found unequal to its
purposes, and lastly, through the Dred-Scott decision and the
demand for protection of slavery in the Territories-pretensions
which, if admitted, would have converted the whole Union, the
Free States no less than the Territories, into one great domain
for slavery. This has been the point at which the Slave
A des proportions miserables qui mettent la conscience hors de cause; mais cela est
moins facile que cela ne semble commode, et ils out beau faire, la vraie situation se
dessine toujours mieux."
The same view is sustained by Le Comte Agenor De Gasparin with remarkable
eloquence in his work,' Un Grand Peuple qui se releve.'




292         H   GTHE COMMERCIAL THEORY.
Power, after a series of successful aggressions, carried on during
forty years, has at length arrived. It was on this last demand
that the Democrats of the North broke off fiomn their Southern
allies-a defection which gave their victory to the Republicans,
and directly produced the civil war. And now we are asked
to believe that slavery has no vital connexion with this quarrel,
but that the catastrophe is due to quite other causes-to
incompatibility of commercial interests, to uncongeniality of
social tastes, to a desire for independence, to anything but
slavery.
But we are told that in this long career of aggression the
extension of slavery has only been employed by the South as a
means to an end, and that it is in this end we are to look for
the key to the present movement. "Slavery," it seems, " is
but a surface question in American politics.""  The seeming
aggressions were in reality defensive movements forced upon
the South by the growing preponderance of the Free States;
and its real object, as well in its former car6er of annexation
and conquest, as in its present efforts to achieve independence,
has been constantly the same-to avoid being made the victim
of Yankee rapacity, to secure for itself the development of its
own resources unhindered by protective laws.t
Let us briefly examine this theory of the secession movement. And, first, if free trade be the object of the South, why,
we may ask, has it not employed its power to accomplish this
object during its long period of predominance in the Union?
It has been powerful enough to pass and repeal the Missouri
Compromise, to annex Texas, to spend 40,000,000 dollars of
Federal money in a war for the recapture of slaves, to pass the
Fugitive Slave Law, to obtain the Dred Scott decsion: if it
has been able to accomplish these results, to lead the North
into foreign complications in which it had no interest, and to
force upon it measures to which it was strongly averse, is it to
be supposed that it could not, had it so desired it, have carried
a free trade tariff? Yet not only has the South not attempted
this during its long reign, it has even co-operated effectively in
the passing of protective measures-nay, these enthusiastic free
traders have not hesitated, when the opportunity offered, to
profit by protective measures. With the exception of the Morrilltariff, Congress never passed a more highly protective law
than the tariff of 1842; and this tariff was supported by a large
number of Southern statesmen; and, not only so, but gave
effective protection to Southern products-to the sugar of
* Saturday Review, Nov. 9, 1861.
f Mr. Yancey's letter to the Daily News, January 25, 1862.




THE    O COMIERCIAL THEORY.                  23
Louisiana, the hemp of Kentucky, and the lead of Missouri, as
well as to the manufactures of New England.
Again, if free trade be the real object of the South, how does
it happen that, having submitted to the tariffs of 1832,* 1842,
and 1846, it should have resorted to the extreme measure of
secession while under the tariff of 1857-a comparatively freetrade law? From 1842 down to 1860 the tendency of Federal
legislation was distinctly in the direction of free trade.   The
most liberal tariff the Union ever enjoyed since 1816 was the
tariff of 1857, and it was while this tariff was in force that the
plot of secession was hatched, matured, and carried into operation.  But there are some who would have us believe that it
was the Morrill Tariff which produced the revolt; and this is the
most incomprehensible portion of the whole case; since there
is nothing more certain than that secession had been resolved
upon, and the plot for its accomplishment traitorously prepared,
before the Morrill tariff was brought forward, and even before
the bargain with Pennsylvania was struck, in fulfilment of
which it was introduced.    It is indeed well known that it was
the absence from Congress of the Southern senators while carrying out the programme of secession, which alone rendered
possible the passing of this measure. If free trade were the
grand object of the South, why did its senators withdraw from
their posts precisely at the time when their presence was most
required to secure their cherished principle? Nay, if this was
their game, why did they not apply to Mr. Buchanan to veto
the Bill —MIr. Buchanan, the creature and humble tool of the
Slave Party?   We are asked by this theory to believe that the
South has had recourse to civil war, has incurred the risk of
political annihilation, to accomplish an object for the effectual
attainment of which its ordinary constitutional opportunities
afforded -ample neans.t
But the difficulties of this theory do not end here.     If the
* I say, " having submitted to the tariff of 1832," because, although it is true
that South Carolina threatened to rise in rebellion against this measure, she stood
alone in her projected revolt.  Far from receiving any general sympathy in the
South, it was through the instrumentality of a Southern State (Virginia), employed
by a Southern President (Jackson), that the threatened movement was suppressed.
+ The writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes from whom I have already quoted,
suggests (pp. 156-157) that the conduct of the Southern senators in permitting the
passing of the Morrill tariff was deliberately contrived with a view to make political
capital out of the sentiments which they calculated on its exciting in England-an
explanation which is countenanced by the fact that Mr. Toombs, representative of
Georgia, who now holds a command in the army of Jefferson Davis, was in the
Senate when the Morrill tariff was submitted to that assembly, and voted for the
new law. If this was their object, never was plot more skilfully contrived or more
successful.




24             REAL CA USE OF SECESSIOX
secession movement be a revolt against protective tariffs, why
is it confined to the Southern States? The interest of the Cotton
States in free exchange with foreign countries is not more
obvious than that of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
No class in these States has anything to gain by protective
measures: nothing is produced in them which is endangered
by the freest competition with the rest of the world: an artificial enhancement of European manufactures is to them as pure
an injury as it is to South Carolina and Alabama: yet all these
States are ranged on the side of the North in this contest, and
resolute for the suppression of the revolt.
It is, however, by the watchword of "independence," still
more than by that of free trade, that the partisans of the South
in this country have sought to enlist our sympathies in favour
of that cause. We are told of the naturalness, the universality,
the strength of the desire for self-government. We are reminded
of the peculiar power of this passion among the Anglo-Saxon
race. The act of the original thirteen States in severing their
connexion with the mother country is dwelt upon; and we are
asked why the South should not also be permitted to determine
for itself the mode of its political existence? "It threatens
none, demands nothing, attacks no one, but wishes to rule itself,
and desires to be' let alone:' why should this favour be denied
it? Now let it at once be conceded that the right to an independent political existence is the most sacred right of nations:
still even this right must justify itself by reference to the ends
for which it is employed. The demand of a robber or murderer for " independence" is not a claim which we are accustomed to respect; and it does not appear how our obligations
are altered if the demand proceed from a robber or murderer
nation-if national independence be sought solely and exclusively as a means of carrying out designs which are nothing
less than robbery and murder on a gigantic scale. I am assuming that these crimes are involved in the extension of slavery,
and that the extension of slavery is the end for which the
Southern Confederacy has engaged in the present war. These
assumptions I hope to make good hereafter; but meanwhile, it
may be asked, if the extension of the domain of slavery be not
the object for which the South seeks independence, what is that
object? Let those who have undertaken the defence of that
body explain to us in what way the legitimate development of
the Southern States, within their proper limits, was hindered
by Federal restraints? If they had grievances to complain of
why did they not let the world know them? Wly did they
resist all the efforts of the Northern States to extract from them
a categorical statement of what they sought? " That," says an




REAL CAUSE OF SECESS10                 25
able writer, " was precisely what it was impossible to ob ain from.
the representatives and senators of the extreme South. They
steadily refused to make known, even under the form of an ultimatum, the conditions on which they would consent to remain in
the Union. Their invariable response was'it was too late; their
constituents would acquiesce in no arrangement.' "  Before
then we allow ourselves to be carried away by the cry of the
South for independence, it is material to ascertain the purpose
for which independence is desired. It is important to distinguish between (to quote tile words of the eminent man whose
name has been prefixed to this volume) " the right to rebel in
defence of the power to tyrannize," and' the right to resist by
arms a tyranny practised over ourselves."
The causes and character of the American contest are not
for Englishmen questions of merely speculative interest. On
the view which we take of this great political crisis will depend,
not alone our present attitude towards the contending parties,
but in no small degree our future relations with a people of our
own race, religion, and tongue, to whom has been committed
the task, under whatever permanent form of polity, to carry
forward in the other hemisphere the torch of knowledge and
of civilization. We may, according as we act from sound knowledge of the real issues which are at stake or in ignorance of
them, do much to promote or to defeat important human interests bound up with the present contest, and to increase or to
diminish the future influence for good of this country. It would
indeed be a grievous misfortune if, in one of the great turning
points of human history, Great Britain were found to act a part
unworthy of the position which she occupies and of the glorious
traditions which she inherits.
The present essay is intended as a contribution towards the
diffusion of sound ideas upon this subject. The real and sufficient cause of the present position of affairs in North America
appears to the writer to lie in the character of the Slave Power
-that system of interests, industrial, social, and political, which
has for the greater part of half a century directed the career
of the American Union, and which now, embodied in the
Southern Confederation, seeks admission as an equal member
into the community of civilized nations. In the following
pages an attempt will be made to resolve this system into its
component elements, to trace the connexion of the several
parts with each other, and of the whole with the foundation oa
which it rests, and to estimate generally the prospects which
it holds out to the people who compose it, as well as the influ* Annuaire des Deux Mondes (1860), p. 618.




26             TRUE ORIGIN OF THE WAR
ence it is likely to exercise on the interests of other nations;
and, if I do not greatly mistake the purport of the considerations which shall be adduced, their effect will be to show that
this Slave Power'constitutes the most formidable antagonist to
civilized progress which has appeared for many centuries,
representing a system of society at once retrograde and aggressive, a system which, containing within it no germs from which
improvement can spring, gravitates inevitably towards barbarism, while it is impelled by exigencies, inherent in its position
and circumstances, to a constant extension of its territorial
domain. The vastness of the interests at stake in the American
contest, regarded under this aspect, appears to me to be very
inadequately conceived in this country; and the purpose of the
present work is to bring forward this view of the case more
prominently than has yet been done.
But it is necessary here to guard against a misapprehension.
The view that the true cause of the American contest is to be
found in the character and aims of the Slave Power, though it
connects the war ultimately with slavery as its radical cause,
by no means involves the supposition that the motive of the
North in taking up arms has been the abolition of slavery.
Such certainly has not been its motive, and, if we keep in view
its position as identified with legal government and constitutional rights in the United States, we shall see that this motive,
even had it existed, could scarcely, at least in the outset, have
been allowed to operate. Let us recall for a moment the mode
in which the crisis developed itself. It must be rememberedwhat seems now almost to be forgotten-that the war was
commenced by the South-commenced for no other reason,
on no other pretext, than because a republican president
was elected in the ordinary constitutional course.  If we
ask why this was made the ground for revolt, I believe the
true answer, as I have just intimated, is to be found in
the aims of the Slave Power, —aims which were inconsistent
with its remaining in the Union while the Government was
carried on upon the principle of restricting the extension
of its domain. So long as it was itself the dominant party,
so long as it could employ the powers of the Government in propagating its peculiar institution and consolidating its strength, so
long it was content to remain in the Union; but from the
moment when, by the constitutional triumph of the Republicans, the government passed into the hands of a party whose
distinctive principle was to impose a limit on the further extension of slavery, from that moment its continuance in the Union
was incompatible with its essential objects, and from that
moment the Slave Power resolved to break loose from Federal




OBSCURED BY ITS PROXIMATE OCCASION.                      27
ties.  The war had thus its origin in slavery: nevertheless the
proximate issue with which the North had to deal was not slavery, but the right of secession. For the constitution having
recognized slavery within the particular states, so long as the
South    confined  its proceedings within its own limits, the
Government which represented the constitution could take no
cognizance of its acts.    The first departure from constitutional
usage by the South was the act of secession," and it was on the
question, therefore, of the right to adopt this course that the
North was compelled to join issue.
The contest thus springing from       slavery, and involving, as
will be shewn, consequences of the most momentous kind in
connexion with the future well-being of the human race in
North America, wore the appearance, to persons regarding it
from the outside, of a struggle upon a point of technical construction-a question of law which it was sought to decide by
an appeal to arms. It was not unnatural, then, that the people
of this country, who had but slight acquaintance with the
antecedents of the contest or with the facts of the case, should
wholly misconceive the true nature of the issues at stake, and,
disconnected as the quarrel seemed to have become from            the
question of slavery, should allow their sympathies, which had
originally gone with the North, to be carried, under the skilful
management of Southern         agency acting through the Press
of this country,t round to the Southern side.         Nevertheless,
had the case of the North, regarded          even from    this point
of view, been fairly put before the English people, it is difficult to believe that it would not have been recognized
* I am aware that this has been denied by some English advocates of the South,
in their zeal for the cause more Southern than the Southerners; no less an authority
than Mr. Buchanan-though not a Southerner, the elect of the South-having
declared that secession was unconstitutional. It would be foreign to my purpose
here to enter into an argument on the constitutional question. I will therefore only
say that after having carefully studied, so far as I know, all that has been written
on both sides by competent persons, I have been quite unable to discover any other
ground on which the claim of secession can be placed than that ultimate one-the
right which in the last resort appertains to all people to determine for themselves
their own form of government. How far the case of the South will stand the test
when tried by this principle, I have intimated my opinion in the text.
f See a very remarkable communication extracted from the Richmond Inquirer of
December 20th, 1861 and published in the Daily News of the 17th February, 1862,
in which the writer, who had just returned to the South from a mission to London,
iu which he was associated with Messrs. Yancey and Mann, describes the state in
which le found English opinion on American subjects on his arrival here in July,
1861, ard the influences brought to bear by himself and his associates upon the
members of the London Press, with a view to advancing the Southern cause with
he English public. The document affords such an insight into the causes which




28               WAR THE ONLY ARBITRAMENT.
as founded, at least in its first phtase, in reason and justice.
When the South forced on a contest by attacking tlie Federal
forts, what was Mr. Lincoln to do?        Before acquiescing in its
have been acting upon public opinion in England during the last year, that it will
be well to quote a few extracts. After stating the general expectation which prevailed in the South when he left it in June last, " that the manufacturing necessities
of England and France would force them to a speedy recognition and interference
with the Federal blockade; and "the equally confident impression that the commercial enterprise of England would spring at once to the enjoyment of the high
prices the blockade established, by sending forward cargoes of arms, ammunition,
medicines, and other stores most needed in the Confederacy;" and after describing
the causes in the public opinion of England which prevented these hopes being real.
ized, the writer proceeds as follows:-" I have thus endeavoured, in this most hurried and imperfect manner, to sketch some of the difficulties which met our commissioners on the very threshold of their mission. That they have addressed themselves to these difficulties with zeal and efficiency will not be doubted by the millions in the South to whom their abilities and character are as familiar as household
words. During my stay in London I was fiequently at the rooms of Colonel M -,
and can thus bear personal testimony to his zeal and efficiency. He seemed to appreciate the necessity of educating the English mind to the proper view of
the various difficulties in the way of his progress; and, with but limited means of
effecting his objects, he worked with untiring industry for their accomplishment;
and, as I have also written, a distinguished member of Congress is, I believe, doing
all that talent, energy, and peculiar fitness for his position can accomplish. Without any other aid than his intimate knowledge of English character, and that careful style of procedure which his thorough training as a diplomatist has given him,
he has managed to make the acquaintance of most of the distinguished representatives of the London Press, whose powerful batteries thus influenced are brought to
bear upon the American question. This of course involves'an immense labour,
which he sands up to unflinchingly. So much for his zeal. His efficiency, with
that of his colleague, is manifested in the recognition of our rights'as a belligerent,
and in the wonderful revolution in the tone of the English Press... The influence of this lever upon public opinion was manifest during my stay in Paris
When I first went there, there was not a single paper to speak out in our' behalf.
In a few days, however, three brochures were issued which seemed to take the
Parisian Press by storm. One of them was the able and important letter of the
Hon. T. Butler King to the Minister; another,' The American Revolution Unveiled,'
by Judge Pequet, formerly of New Orleans-whose charming and accomplished
lady, by the way, is a native of Richmond; and a third,'The American Question,'
by Ernest Bellot des Minieres, the agent of the French purchasers of the Virginia
canals. These works each in turn created a great deal of attention, and their united
effect upon the French mind shows the effective character of this appliance.
Messrs. Bellot and Pequet deserve well of the Confederacy for their powerful and
voluntary advocacy. I can, and with great pleasure do, bear testimony to the valuable and persevering efforts of Mr. King both in Paris and London. Among the
first acquaintances I had the pleasure of making while in London was Mrr. Gregory
M. P., to whom I carried letters of introduction from a Virginian gentleman long
resident in Paris, who very kindly either introduced or pointed out to me the distinguished members of Parliament. He had been, I found, a traveller in Virginia, and
inquired after several persons; among whom was Mr. John B. Rutherford, of Goochland. During an hour's walk upon the promenade between the new parliament
houses and the Thames, he plied me with questions as to the' situation' in the
Confederacy, and seemed greatly encouraged by my replies; more so, he said, than
at any time since the revolution commenced."




THE UNIONIST SENTIMENT.                  29
demand for separation, was he not at least bound to ascertain
that that demand represented the real wish of the Southern
people? But, after war had been proclaimed, or rather commenced, by the South, how was this to be done otherwise than
by accepting the challenge? Was the Government at once to
lower the standard of law before that of revolution, without
even inquiring by whom the revolution was supported? But
in truth the President's case was much stronger than this. The
Government was in possession of evidence which at least rendered it very probable that at this time the separatists were in
a minority in the South, even in those places where they were
believed to be strongest. At the presidential election which
had just been held, the votes for the unionist candidates in the
extreme south exceeded those for the candidate who represented the secession; in the intermediate states, the unionist
votes formed two-thirds of the constituency; in Missouri, threefourths.*  Will it be said that, with such facts before him,
which were surely a safer criterion of Southern feeling than the
votes of conventions obtained under mob-terrorism, Mr. Lincoln
should at once have acquiesced in the demand for secession,
and quietly permitted the consummation of a conspiracy, which
for deliberate treachery, betrayal of sacred trusts, and shameless and gigantic fraud, has seldom been matched? To have
done so, would have been to have written himself down before
the world as incompetent-nay, as a traitor to the cause which
he had just sworn to defend.
The right of secession became thus by force of circumstances
the ostensible ground of the war; and with the bulk of the
Northern people it must be admitted it was not only the ostensible but the real ground; for it is idle to claim for the North
a higher or more generous principle of conduct than that
which itself put forward. The one prevailing and overpowering sentiment in the North, so soon as the designs of the South
were definitively disclosed, was undoubtedly the determination
to uphold the Union, and to crush the traitors who had conspired to dissolve it. In this country we had looked for something higher; we had expected, whether reasonably or not, an
anti-slavery crusade.  We were disappointed; and the result
was, as has been stated, a re-action of sentiment which has prevented us from doing justice to that which was really worthy
* See Annuaire des Deux Morndes, 1860, p. 608; also the extract from the Commonwealth of Frankfort (Kentucky), p. 606, and that from the Charleston Mercury,
p. 609, from which it appears that on the eve of the presidential election, some of
the leading journals of the South regarded the secession movement as the work of a
body of noisy demagogues, whose views found no response amoug the majority of
the people.




30               VIEWS OF THE NORTH:
of admiration in the Northern cause. I say worthy of admira
tion; for the spectacle which the North presented at the opening of the war was such as I think might well have called forth
this feeling. It was the spectacle of a people, which, having
long bent its neck before a band of selfish politicians, and been
dragged by them through the mire of shameless transactions,
had suddenly recovered the consciousness of its power and
responsibilities, and, shaking itself free fiom their spell, stood
erect before the men who had enthralled its conscience and its
will. A community, the most eager in the world in the clhase
after gain, forgot its absorbing pursuit; parties, a moment before arrayed against each other in a great political contest, laid
aside their party differences; a whole nation, merging all private aims in the single passion of patriotism, rose to arms as a
single man; and this for no selfish object, but to maintain the
integrity of their common country and to chastise a band of
conspirators, who, in the wantonness of their audacity, had
dared to attack it. The Northern people, conscious that it had
risen above the level of ordinary motives, looked abroad for
sympathy, and especially looked to England. It was answered
with cold criticism and derision. The response was perhaps
natural under the circumstances, but undoubtedly not more so
than the bitter mortification and resentment which that response evoked.
The prevailing idea that inspired the Northern rising was, I
have said, the- determination to uphold the Union. Still it
would be a great mistake to suppose that this idea represented
the whole significance of the movement, even so far as this
was to be gathered from the views of the North. While loyalty to the Union pervaded and held together all classes, another
sentiment-the sentiment of hostility to slavery-though less
widely diffused, was strongly entertained by a considerable
party, and came more directly into collision than the unionist
feeling with the real aims of the seceders.  "The abolitionists," conventionally so known, formed indeed a small band.
They had hitherto advocated separation as a means of escape
from connexion with slavery, but they now threw themselves
with ardour into the war; not that they swerved from their
original aim, but that they believed they saw in the war the
most effectual means of advancing that aim by breaking with
slavery for ever; because with true instinct they felt that, secession having been undertaken for the purpose of extending
slavery, the most effectual means to defeat that purpose was to
defeat secession. The anti-slavery feeling, however, prevails
far beyond the bounds of the party known as " abolitionists."




THE ANTI-SLA VERY SENTIMENT.                 31
Outside this sect are a large number of able men, including
such names as Horace Greeley, Sumner, Giddings, Hale, Olmsted, Weston, Longfellow, Bryant, Fremont, men who, while
refusing to pronounce the shibboleth of the abolitionists, share
in a large degree their views. The effect of the war has been,
as might have been supposed, to bring this class of politicians
into closer union than before with the extreme sect.  The two
have now begun to act habitually together, and for practical
purposes may be regarded as constituting a single party. Now
it is these men, and not the mere unionists, whose opinions
form the natural antithesis to the aims of the seceders. Between these and the South there can be no compromise; and,
conformably to the law which invariably governs revolutions,
they are the party who are rapidly becoming predominant in
the North. The anti-slavery feeling is already rapidly gaining
on the mere unionist feeling, and bids fair ultimately to supersede it. In the anti-slavery ranks are now to be found men
who but a year ago were staunch supporters of slavery. Antislavery orators are now cheered to the echo by multitudes who
but a year ago hooted and pelted them: they have forced their
way into the stronghold of their enemies, and William  Lloyd
Garrison lectures in New York itself with enthusiastic applause. The anti-slavery principle thus tends constantly, unFder
the influences which are in operation, to become more powerful in the North;* and it is this fact which justifies the view
of those who have predicted that it is only necessary the war
should continue long enough in order that it be converted into
a purely abolition struggle.
These considerations will enable the reader to perceive how,
while the North has arisen to uphold the Union in its integrity,
slavery is yet the true cause of the war, and that the real significance of the war is its relation to slavery. I think, too,
they must be held to afford a complete justification of the
North in its original determination to maintain the Union;
but this is scarcely now the practical question. There was, at
the first, reason to believe that a very considerable element of
population favourable to the Union existed in the South.
While this was the case, it was no less than the duty of the
Federal government to rescue these citizens from the tyranny
* While these sheets are passing through the press, the intelligence has arrived
of Mr. Lincoln's proposal for an accommodation with the Secessionists on the terms
of co-operating with any state, disposed to adopt a policy of gradual emancipation
by means of pecuniary assistance to be provided from the Federal revenues. The
writer could scarcely have anticipated so early and so remarkable a confirmation of
the views expressed in the text.




32        PRESENT ASPECT OF THE QUESTION,
of a rebel oligarchy. But do grounds for that supposition still
exist? Before-the war broke out, it is well known that seinething like a reign of terror prevailed in the South for all wno
fell short of the most extreme standard of pro-slavery opinion.
The rigour of that reign will hardly have been relaxed since
the war commenced, and must no doubt have produced a very
considerable emigration  of loyal citizens.  The infectious
enthusiasm of the war will probably have operated to make
many converts; and, under the influences of both these causes,
the South, or at least that portion of the South which has led
the way in this movement, has probably by this time been
brought to a substantial unanimity of opinion, a conclusion
which is strongly confirmed by the absence of any sign of disaffection to the Confederation among its population.* Under
these circumstances what is the policy to which Europe, in the
interests of civilization, should give its moral support? This
country has long made up its mind as to the impossibility of
forcibly reconstructing the Union; perhaps it has also satisfied
itself of the undesirableness of this result. Of neither of these
opinions is the writer prepared to contest the soundness. But
this being conceded, an all-important question remains for decision. On what conditions is the independence of the South to
be established? For the solution of this question in the interests of civilization, a knowledge of the character and designs
of the power which represents the South is requisite, and it is
this which it is the aim of the present work to furnish. Meanwhile, however, it may be said that the definitive severance of
the Union is perfectly compatible with either the accomplishment of the original design of the seceders-the extension of
slavery, or the utter defeat of that design, according to the
terms on which the separation takes place; and that therefore
the severance of the Union by no means implies the defeat of
the North or the triumph of the South. The Southern leaders
may be assumed to know their own objects, and to be the best
judges of the means which are necessary to their accomplishment; and we may be certain that no arrangement which involves the fiustration of these objects will be acquiesced in
until after a complete prostration of their strength. If this be
so, it is important to ascertain what the objects of the South
are. For if these objects be inconsistent with the interests of
civilization and the happiness of the human race (and I shall
* Since the above passage was written some unionist demonstrations in the
Border states following on the success of the Northern armies, have shewn that the
unanimity is not as complete as the writer imagined: still he does not conceive that
what has occurred is at all calculated to affect the general scope of his reasoning.




THE ACTUAL POSITION OF SLA VTERY.          33
endeavour to show that this is the case), then no settlement of
the American dispute which is not preceded by a thorough
humbling of the slave party should be satisfactory to those who
have human interests at heart. This is the cardinal point of
the whole question. The designs of the seceders are either
legitimate and consistent with human interests, or the contrary.
If they are legitimate, let this be shown, and let us in this case
wish them God speed: if they are not, and if the Southern
leaders may be taken to know what is essential to their own
ends, then we may be sure that nothing short of the effectual
defeat of the South in the present war will secure a settlement
which shall be consistent with what the best interests of mankind require.
CHAPTER II.
THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF SLAVERY.
BEFORE proceeding to an examination of the social and political
system which has been reared upon the basis of slavery in
North America, it will be desirable to devote some consideration to the institution itself in its industrial aspects. The political tendencies of the Slave Power, as will hereafter be seen,.
are determined in a principal degree by the economic necessities under which it is placed by its fundamental institution; and
in order, therefore, to appreciate the nature of those tendencies,
a determination of the conditions requisite for the success ofi
slavery, as an industrial system, becomes indispensable.
The form in which it will be most convenient to discuss this
question will be in connexion with the actual position of slavery
in the American continent. As is well known, the system
formed originally a common feature in all the Anglo-Saxon settlements in that part of the world, existing in the northern no
less than the southern colonies, in New England no less than in
Virginia. But before much time had elapsed from their original foundation, it became evident that it was destined to occupy
very different positions among these rising communities. In
the colonies north of Delaware Bay slavery rapidly fell into a
subordinate place, and gradually died out; while in those south
of that inlet its place in the industrial system became constantly more prominent, until ultimately it has risen to a position of
paramount importance in that region, overpowering every
rival influence, and moulding all the phenomena of the social
3




S4   THEORY OF DIVERSE. ORIGIN OF THE FOUNDERS.
state into conformity with its requirements. The problem, then,
which I propose to consider is the cause of this difference in
the fortunes of slavery in these different portions of American
soil.
Several theories have been advanced in explanation of the
phenomenon. One of these attributes it to diversity of charac
ter in the original founders of the communities in question;* for,
though proceeding from the same country and belonging to the
same race, the Anglo-Saxon emigrations to North,America,
according as they were directed to the north or south of that
continent, were in the main drawn from different classes of the
mother nation.  Massachusetts and the other New England
States were colonized principally from the elite of the middle
and lower classes-by people who, being accustomed to labour
with their own hands, would feel less the need of slaves; and
who, moreover, owing to their political views, having little to
hope for in the way of assistance from the country they had
quitted, would have little choice but to trust to their personal
exertions. On the other, hand, the early emigration to Virginia,
Maryland, and the Carolinas was for the most part composed of
the sons of the gentry, whose ideas and habits but ill fitted
them for a struggle with nature in the wilderness. Such emigrants had little disposition to engage personally in the work
of clearance and production: nor were they under the same
necessity for this as their brethren in the North; for, being
composed in great part of cavaliers and loyalists, they were,
for many years after the first establishment of the settlements,
sustained and petted by the home government; being furnished
not merely with capital in the shape of constant supplies of
provisions and clothing, but with labourers in the shape of convicts, indented servants, and slaves. In this way the colonists
of the Virginian group were relieved from the necessity of personal toil, and in this way, it is said, slavery, which found little
footing in the North, and never took firm root there, became
established in the Southern States.
This explanation, however, carries us but a short way towards
the point we have in view. It explains the more rapid extension of slavery in early times in the colonies which were in
their origin most patronized by the home government, but it
does not explain why slavery, which had, though not extensively, been introduced into the Northern colonies, should not have
subsequently increased; much less does it afford any explana* See Stirling's Letters fron the Slave States, p. 64, where greater importance is
attributed to this circumstance than it appears to me to deserve; and compare
Olmsted's Seaboard State, pp. 181-183, 220, 221.




THEORY OF CLIMATE AND      A CE.          35
tion of its ultimate extinction in the North. It is certain the
New Englanders were not withheld from employing slaves by
moral scruples, and, if the system had been found suitable to
the requirements of the country, it is to be presumed that they
would have gradually extended its basis, and that, like their
neighbours, especially since the treaty of Utrecht had secured
for English enterprise the African slave-trade, they would have
availed themselves of this means of recruiting their labour
market.
Another and more generally accepted solution refers the
phenomenon in question to the influence of climate and the
character of the negro race. The European constitution, we
are told, cannot endure a climate in which the negro can toil,
thrive, and multiply, and the indolence of the negro is such
that he will only work under compulsion.  If it were not,
therefore, for negro slavery, the world must have gone without
those commodities which are the peculiar product of tropical
climes. Mankind, in effect, says this theory, has had to choose
between maintaining slavery and abandoning the use of cotton,
tobacco, and sugar, and the instincts of humanity have succumbed before the more powerful inducements of substantial
gain.
It would, perhaps, be too much to say that this view of the
causes which have maintained slavery in the Southern districts
of North America is absolutely destitute of foundation, but there
can be no hesitation in saying that, as a theory, it utterly fails
to account for the facts which it is sought to explain. The
climate of the oldest of the Slave States-Virginia, Maryland,
Delaware, North and South Carolina-is remarkably genial
and perfectly suited to the industry of Europeans;* and, though
the same is not true in the same degree of the Gulf States, yet
it is a fact that these regions also afford examples of free European communities increasing in numbers under a semi-tropical
climate, and rising to opulence through the labour of their own
hands. In Texas a flourishing colony of free Germans, among
whom no slave is to be found, engage in all the occupations of
the country, and are only prevented by their distance from the
great navigable rivers, and the want of other means of communication, from applying themselves extensively to that very
cultivation-the growing of cotton-which the complacent reasoners whose theory we are considering choose to regard as the
ordained function of the negro race.t
* Olmsted's Slave States, pp. 131, 462-3.
- " The Southern parts of the Union," says De Tocqueville, " are not hotter than
the south of Italy and of Spain; and it may be asked why the European cannot




6       BALLEGED INDOLENCE OF THEt EGRO.
" If we look," says Mr. Weston, " to the origin of the European races which inhabit this country, Georgia and Alabama
and Tennessee are more like their mother countries than New
England is. The Irishman and Englishman and German find
in Missouri and Texas a climate less dissimilar to that at home,
than they do in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The heats of summer
are longer and steadier at the South, but not more excessive
than at the North. Labour in the fields is performed by whites,
and without any ill consequences in the extreme South. Nearly
all the heavy out-door work in the city of New Orleans is performed by whites..... The practical experience of mankind
is a sufficient answer to fanciful rules, which, applied on the
other side of the Atlantic, would surrender to the African,
Spain, France, and Italy, and drive back their present inhabitants to the shores of the Baltic. The three thousand years of
recorded civilization in the regions which environ the Mediterranean on all its sides, prove that no part of the continental borders
of the Gulf of Mexico, and none of the islands which separate
it from the ocean, need be abandoned to the barbarism of negro
slavery. The European stock is found everywhere, from Texas
to Patagonia, and in every part of that whole extent is more
vigorous and prolific than any other race, indigenous or imported. Isothermal lines are not uniform with parallels of latitude; vertical suns are qualified by ocean breezes and mountain
heights; and America, even at the equator, offers to man salubrious abodes."*
But still more fatally does the theory halt upon the other
limb of the argument-the incorrigible indolence of the negro.
Whatever plausibility there may have been in this oft repeated
assertion in times when the negro was only known as a slave
or as a pariah in a land where his existence was scarcely tolerated, it is perfectly futile to advance such statements now in
the face of the facts which recent observations have revealed
to us. " We, in the United States," says Mr. Sewell, " have
heard of abandoned properties in the West Indies, and, without much investigation, have listened to the planters' excusethe indolence of the negro, who refuses to work except under
work as well there as in the two latter countries. If slavery has been abolished in
Italy and in Spain without causing the destruction of the masters, why should not
the same thing take place in the Union? I cannot believe that Nature has prohi
bited the Europeans in Georgia and the Floridas, under pain of death, from raising
the means of subsistence from the soil; but their labour would unquestionably be
more irksome and less productive to them than that of the inhabitants of New England. As the free workman thus loses a portion of his superiority over the slave in
the Southern States, there are fewer inducements to abolish slavery."
* Progress of Slavery, pp. 160, 161.




GREO UNDLESSNESS OF THE CHARGE.             37
compulsion. But I shall be able to show that, in those colonies
where estates have been abandoned, the labouring classes, instead of passing from servitude to indolence and idleness, have
set up for themselves, and that small proprietors since enmancipation have increased a hundred fold."..... "It is a
fact which speaks volumes that, within the last fifteen years, in
spite of the extraordinary price of land and the low rate of
wages, the small proprietors of Barbadoes holding less than
five acres have increased from 1100 to 3537. A great majority
of these proprietors were formerly slaves, subsequently free
labourers, and fncally landholders. This is certainly an evidence of industrious habits, and a remarkable contradiction to
the prevailing idea that the negro will work only under compulsion. That idea was formed and fostered from the habits
of the negro as a slave; his habits as a freeman, developed
under a wholesome stimulus and settled by time, are in striking contrast to his habits as a slave. I am simply stating a
truth in regard to the Barbadian creole, which here, at least,
will not be denied. I have conversed on the subject with all
classes and conditions of people, and none are more ready to
admit than the planters themselves, that the free labourer in
Barbadoes is a better, more cheerful, and more industrious
workman than the slave ever was under a system of compulsion." And, again, of an island very differently circumstanced
from Barbadoes the same author writes:-" I have taken some
pains to trace the creole labourers of Trinidad from the time
of emancipation, after they left the estates and dispersed, to
the present day; and the great majority of them can, I think,
be followed, step by step, not downward in the path of idleness
and poverty, but upward in the scale of civilization to positions
of greater independence.'"  This testimony of a perfectly
unimpassioned witness, coming after ten years' further experience in corroboration of the evidence given by Mr. Bigelow
in 1850, ought to set this question at rest. There is not a tittle
of evidence to show that the aversion of the negro to labour is
naturally stronger than that of any other branch of the human
family. So long as he is compelled to work for the exclusive
benefit of a master, he will be inclined to evade his task by
every means in his power, as the white man would do under
similar circumstances; but emancipate him, and subject him
to the same motives which act upon the free white labourer,
* Sewell's Ordeal of Free Labour in the West Indies, pp. 34-35, 39-40. And for
evidence to the same effect respecting the Jamaican negroes, see post, pp. 198, 202,
&c.




38      TRUE SOLUTION OF JTHE PROBLEkTM-ECONOXIO.
and there is no reason to believe he will not be led to exert
himself with equal energy.*
A circumstance more influential in determining the history
of slavery in America than either origin or climate is pointed
at by De Tocqueville in his remark, that the soil of New      England " was entirely opposed to a territorial aristocracy."     " To
bring that refractory land into cultivation, the constant and
interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary; and,
when the ground was prepared, its produce was found to be
insufficient to enrich a master and a farmer at the same time.
The land was then naturally broken up into small portions which
the proprietor cultivated for himself."       Such a country, for
reasons which will presently be more fully indicated, was
entirely unsuited to cultivation by slave labour; but what I
wish here to remark is, that this fact, important as it is with
reference to our subject, is yet insufficient in itself to afford the
solution which we seek; for, though it would account for the
disappearance of slavery from the New England States, it fails
entirely when applied to the country west and south of the
Hudson, which is for the most part exceedingly fertile, but in
which, nevertheless, slavery, though extensively introduced,
has not been able to maintain itself. To understand, therefore,
the conditions on which the success of a slave regine depends,
we must advert to other considerations than any which have yet
been adduced.
The true causes of the phenomenon will appear if we reflect
on the characteristic advantages and disadvantages which attach
respectively to slavery and free labour, as productive instruments, in connexion with the external conditions under which
these forms of industry      came    into  competition    in  North
America.
The economic advantages of slavery are easily stated: they
are all comprised in the fact that the employer of slaves has
absolute power over his workmen, and enjoys the disposal of
* "Considerons," says M. De Gasparin, " ces jolies chaumieres, ces mobiliers propres
et presque elegants, ces jardins, cet air g6neral de bien-etre et de civilisation; interrogeons ces noirs dont l'aspect physique s'est deja modifie sous l'influence de la
liberte, ces noirs dont le nombre decroissait rapidement a l'epoque de l'esclavage et
commence au contraire a s'accroitre depuis l'affranchissement; ils nous parleront do
leur bonheur. Les uns sont devenus proprietaires et travaillent pour leur propre
comapte (ce n'est pas un crime, j'imagine), les autres s'associent pour affermer de
grandes plantations ou portent peut-etre aux usines des riches planteurs les cannes
recoltees chez eux; ceux-ci sont marchands, beaucoup louent leurs bras comme cultivateurs. Quels que soient les torts d'un certain nombre d'individus, lensemble
des negres libres a merite ce temoignage rendu en 1857 par le governeur de Tabago:'Je nie que nos noirs de la campagne aient des habitudes de paresse. II n'existo
pat dans le monde une classo aussi industrieuse.' "-Un Grand Peuple, p. 312.




MERITS AND DEFECTS OF SLA YE LABO Ui.         39
the whole fruit of their labours. Slave labour, therefore, admits
of the most complete organization, that is to say, it may be
oombined on an extensive scale, and directed by a controlling mind to a single end, and its cost can never rise above that
which is necessary to maintain the slave in health and strength.
On the other hand, the economical defects of slave labour
are very serious. They may be summed up under the three
following heads:-it is given reluctantly; it is unskilful; it is
wanting in versatility.
It is given reluctantly, and consequently the industry of the
slave can only be depended on so long as he is watched. The
moment the master's eye is withdrawn, the slave relaxes his
efforts. The cost of slave labour will therefore, in great measure, depend on the degree in which the work to be performed
admits of the workmen being employed in close proximity
to each other. If the work be such that a large gang can be
employed with efficiency within a small space, and be thus
brought under the eye of a single overseer, the expense of
superintendence will be slight; if, on the other hand, the nature
of the work requires that the workmen should be dispersed
over an extended area, the number of overseers, and therefore,
the cost of the labour which requires this supervision, will be
proportionately increased. The cost of slave-labour thus varies
directly with the degree in which the work to be done requires
dispersion of the labourers, and inversely as it admits of their
concentration. Further, the work being performed reluctantly,
fear is substituted for hope, as the stimulus to exertion; But
fear is ill calculated to draw from a labourer all the industry
of which he is capable. "Fear," says Bentham,'leads the
labourer to hide his powers, rather than to show them; to
remain below, rather than to surpass himself.".... " By
displaying superior capacity, the slave would only raise the
measure of his ordinary duties; by a work of supererogation
he would only prepare punishment for himself." He therefore seeks, by concealing his powers, to reduce to the lowest
the standard of requisition. " His ambition is the reverse of
that of the freeman; he seeks to descend in the scale of industry, rather than to ascend."
Secondly, slave labour is unskilful, and this, not only because
the slave, having no interest in his work, has no inducement to
exert his higher faculties, but because, from the ignorance to
which he is of necessity condemned, he is incapable of doing
so. In the Slave States of North America, the education of
slaves, even in the most rudimentary form, is proscribed by
law, and consequently their intelligence is kept uniformly and




40        MERITS ANYD DEFECTS OF FBREE LA;BO UR.
constantly at the very lowest point.   "Yon can make a nigger
work," said an interlocutor in one of Mr. Olmsted's dialogues,
"but you cannot make him think."        He is therefore unsuited
for all branches of industry which require the slightest care,
forethought, or dexterity.    IHe cannot be made to co-operate
with machinery; he can only be trusted with the coarsest implements; he is incapable of all but the rudest forms of labour.*
But further, slave labour is eminently defective in point of
versatility.  The difficulty of teaching the slave anything is so
great, that the only chance of turning his labour. to profit is,
when he has once learned a lesson, to keep him to that lesson
for life.  Where slaves, therefore, are employed there can be
no variety of production.' If tobacco be cultivated, tobacco
becomes the sole staple, and tobacco is produced whatever be
the state of the market, and whatever be the condition of the
soil.t  This peculiarity of slave-labour, as we shall see, involves
some very important consequences.
Such being the character of slave-labour, as an industrial
instrument, let us now consider the qualities of the agency with
which, in the colonization of North America, it was brought
into competition. This was the labour of peasant proprietors,
a productive instrument, in its merits and defects, the exact reverse of that with which it was called upon to compete. Thus,
the great and almost the sole excellence of slave-labour is, as we
have seen, its capacity for organization; and this is precisely
the circumstance with respect to which the labour of peasant
proprietors is especially defective. In a community of peasant
proprietors, each workman labours on his own account, without
much reference to what his fellow-workmen are doing. There
is no commanding mind to whose guidance the whole labour
force will yield obedience, and under whose control it may be
directed by skilful combinations to the result which is desired.
Nor does this system    afford room for classification and econo* "The reason was, that the negro could never be trained to exercise judgment;
he cannot be made to use his mind; he always depends on machinery doing its
own work, and cannot be made to watch it. He neglects it until something is
broken or there is great waste. We have tried rewards and punishments, but it
makes no difference. It's his nature, and you cannot change it. All men are indolent and have a disinclination to labour, but this is a great deal stronger in the African race than in any other. In working niggers, we must always calculate that
they will not labour at all except to avoid punishment, and they will never do more
than just enough to save themselves from being punished, and no amount of punishment will prevent their working carelessly and indifferently. It always seems on
the plantation as if they took pains to break all the tools and spoil all the cattle that
they possibly can, even when they know they'll be punished for it."-Olmsted's
Seaboard Slave States, pp. 104, 105.
f Olmsted's Seaboard Slceve Siates, pp. 337 to 389.




SLA YE AND FREE LABOUR COMPARED.            41
mical distribution of a labour force in the same degree as the
system of slavery.  Under the latter, for example, occupation
may be found for a whole family of slaves, according to the
capacity of each member, in performing the different operations connected with certain branches of industry-say, the
culture of tobacco, in which the women and children may be
employed in picking the worms off the plants, or gathering
the leaves as they become ripe, while the men are engaged in
the more laborious tasks; but a small proprietor, whose children
are at school, and whose wife finds enough to occupy her in her
domestic duties, can command for all operations, however important or however insignificant, no other labour than his own,
or that of his grown-up sons-labour which would be greatly
misapplied in performing such manual operations as I have
described. His team of horses might be standing idle in the
stable, while he was gathering tobacco leaves or picking worms,
an arrangement which would render his work exceedingly costly. The system of peasant proprietorship, therefore, does not
admit of combination and classification of labour in the same
degree as that of slavery. But if in this respect it lies under a
disadvantage as compared with its rival, in every other respect
it enjoys an immense superiority. The peasant proprietor, ap-,
propriating the whole produce of his toil, needs no other stimulus to exertion. Superintendence is here completely dispensed
with.  The labourer is under the strongest conceivable inducement to put forth, in the furtherance of his task, the full powers of his mind and body; and his mind, instead of being purposely stinted and stupified, is enlightened by education, and
aroused by the prospect of reward.*
Such are the two productive agencies which came into competition on the soil of North America. If we now turn to the
external conditions under which the competition took place, we
shall, I think, have no difficulty in understanding the success
of each respectively in that portion of the Continent in which
it did in fact succeed.
The line dividing the Slave from the Free States marks also
an important division in the agricultural capabilities of North
America. North of this line, the products for which the soil
and climate are best adapted are cereal crops, while south of it
the prevailing crops are tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar; and
these two classes of crops are broadly distinguished in the me2
thods of culture suitable to each. The cultivation of the one
class, of which cotton may be taken as the type, requires for its
efficient conduct that labour should be combined and organized
* See North America, its Agriculture and Climate, by Robert Russell, chap. viii.




42 AGRICULTURAL CAPABILITIES OF NORT HAD SOUTI.
on an extensive scale.* On the other hand, for the raising of
cereal crops this condition is not so essential. Even where
labour is abundant and that labour free, the large capitalist does
not in this mode of farming appear on the whole to have any
preponderating advantage over the small proprietor, who, with
his family, cultivates his own farm, as the example of the best
cultivated states in Europe proves. Whatever superiority he
may have in the power of combining and directing labour seems
to be compensated by the greater energy and spirit which the
sense of property gives to the exertions of the small proprietor.
But there is another essential circumstance in which these two
classes of crops differ. LA single labourer, Mr. Russell tells us,t
can cultivate twenty acres of wheat or Indian corn, while he
cannot manage more than two of tobacco, or three of cotton. It
appears from this that tobacco and cotton fulfil that condition
which we saw was essential to the economical employment of
slaves-the possibility of working large numbers within a limited space; while wheat and Indian corn, in the cultivation
of which the labourers are dispersed       over a wide surface,
fail in this respect.  We thus find that cotton, and the class
of crops of which cotton may be taken as the type, favour
the employment of slaves in       the competition   with peasant
proprietors in two leading ways: first, they need extensive
combination and organization of labour-requirements which
slavery is eminently calculated to supply, but in respect
to which the labour of peasant proprietors is defective; and
secondly, they allow   of labour being concentrated, and thus
minimize the cardinal evil of slave-labour-the reluctance
with which it is yielded. On the other hand, the cultivation
of cereal crops, in which extensive combination of labour is
not important, and in which the operations of industry are
widely diffused, offers none of these advantages for the employment of slaves,4 while it is remarkably fitted to bring out in
* Russeli's North America, p. 141.  f Ibid., pp. 141, 164.
t The same observation had been made by De Tocqueville, who in the following
passage has suggested a further reason for the unsuitableness of slave-labour for
raising cereal crops:-' It has been observed that slave-labour is a very expensive
method of cultivating corn. The farmer of cornland in a country where slavery is
unknown, habitually retains a small number of labourers in his service, and at seedtime and harvest he hires several additional hands, who only live at his cost for a
short period. But the agriculturist in a slave state is obliged to keep a large number of slaves the whole year round, in order to sow his fields and to gather in his
crops, although their services are only required for a few weeks; but slaves are
unable to wait till they are hired, and to subsist by their own labour in the mean
time like free labourers: in order to have their services, they must be bought.
Slavery, independently of its general disadvantages, is therefore still more inapplicable to countries in which corn is cultivated than to those which produce crops of
a different kind."-Democracy in America vol. ii. p. 233.




SLA YE AND FREE PROD UCTS.                      48
the highest degree the especial excellencies of the industry of
free proprietors. Owing to these causes it has happened that
slavery has been maintained in the Southern States, which
favour the growth of tobacco, cotton, and analogous products,
while, in the Northern States, of which cereal crops are the
great staple, it from    an early period declined and has ultimately died out.' And in confirmation of this view it may be
added that wherever in the Southern States the external conditions are especially favourable to cereal crops, as in parts of
Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and along the slopes of the
Alleghanies, there slavery has always failed to maintain itself.
It is owing to this cause that there now exists in some parts of
the South a considerable element of free labouring population.
These considerations appear to explain the permanence of
slavery in one division of North America, and its disappearance from the other; but there are other conditions essential
to the economic success of the institution besides those which
have been brought into view in the above comparison, to which
it is necessary to advert in order to a right understanding of
its true basis.  These are high fertility in the soil, and a practically unlimited extent of it.
The necessity of these conditions to slavery will be apparent
by reflecting on the    nnskilfulness and want of versatility in
slave labour to which we have already referred.
When the soils are not of good quality cultivation needs to
be elaborate; a larger capital is expended; and with the
increase of capital the processes become more varied, and the
agricultural implements of a finer and more delicate construction.  With such implements slaves cannot be trusted, and for
such processes they are unfit.*    It is only, therefore, where the
* " I am here shewn tools," says Mr. Olmsted, " that no man in his senses, with
us, would allow a labourer, to whom he was paying wages, to be encumbered with;
and the excessive weight and clumsiness of which, I would judge, would make
work at least ten per cent. greater than with those ordinarily used with us. And I
am assured that, in the careless and clumsy way they must be used by the slaves,
anything lighter or less rude could not be furnished them with good economy, and
that such tools as we constantly give our labourers, and find our profit in giving
them, would not last out a day in a Virginia cornfield-much lighter and more'free
from stones though it be than ours.'1 So, too, when I ask why mules are so universally substituted for horses on the
farm, the first reason given, and confessedly the most conclusive one, is that horses
cannot bear the treatment that they always must get from negroes; horses are
always soon foundered or crippled by them, while mules will bear cudgelling, and
lose a meal or two now and then, and not be materially injured, and they do not
take cold or get sick, if neglected or overworked. But I do not need to go further
than to the window of the room in which I am writing, to see at almost any time,
treatment of cattle that would insure the immediate discharge of the driver by
almost any farmer owning them in the North." In another State, a Southern farmer




44                    FERTILITY OF THE SOIL.
natural fertility of the soil is so great as to compensate for the
inferiority of the cultivation,* where nature does so much as to
leave little for art, and to supersede the necessity of the more
difficult contrivances of industry, that slave           labour can    be
turned to profitable account.t
Further, slavery, as a permanent system, has need not merely
of a fertile soil, but of a practically       unlimited    extent of it.
This arises fiom the defect of slave labour in point of versatility.
As has been already remarked, the difficulty of teaching the slave
anything is so great-the result of the compulsory ignorance in
which he is kept, combined with want of intelligent interest in
his work-that the only chance of rendering his labour profitable is, when he has once learned a lesson, to keep him to that
lesson for life. Accordingly where agricultural operations are
carried on by slaves the business of each gang is always restricted to the raising of a single product.:        Whatever crop be best
describes to him "as a novelty, a plough'with a sort of wing, like,' on one side,
that pushed off and turned over a slice of the ground; from which it appeared that
he had, until recently, never seen a mould-board; the common ploughs of this
country being constructed on the same principle as those of the Chinese, and only
rooting the ground like a hog or a mole-not cleaving and turning."-Seaboard
Slave States, pp. 46, 47, 402.
* Mr. Russell (pp. 164, 165) states that the soil on which the sea-island cotton is
raised is "poor, consisting for the most part of light sand;" but this is scarcely an
exception to the statement in the text. The peculiar qualities of the soil in question, and the high price which its products are consequently enabled to command,
render it, in an economic sense, "a fertile soil," however it may be designated by
an agriculturist as " poor."
f In a debate in the House of Lords last session on the annexation of St. Domingo
by Spain, it was stated by the Duke of Newcastle, that, in reply to the remonstrances of the British government relative to the apprehended introduction of
slavery into that island, the Spanish government had referred to the great fertility
of the soil of St. Domingo, which renders slavery unnecessary; in which reasoning.
his grace, as well as Lord Brougham, appeared to acquiesce.
"The culture [of tobacco] being once established [in Virginia] there were many
reasons," says Mr. Olmsted, "growing out of the social structure of the colony,
which for more than a century kept the industry of the Virginians confined to this
one staple. These reasons were chiefly the difficulty of breaking the slaves, or
training the] bond-servants to new methods of labour; the want of enterprise or
ingenuity in the proprietors to contrive other profitable occupations for them; and
the difficulty or expense of distributing the guard or oversight, without which it was
impossible to get any work done at all, if the labourers were separated, or worked
in any other way than side by side, in gangs, as in the tobacco fields. Owing to
these causes, the planters kept on raising tobacco with hardly sufficient intermission
to provide themselves with the grossest animal sustenance, though often by reason
of the excessive quantity raised, scarcely anything could be got for it.".. "Tobacco
is not now considered peculiarly and excessively exhaustive: in a judicious rotation,
especially as a preparation for wheat, it is an admirable fallow-crop, and under a
scientific system of agriculture, it is grown with no continued detriment to the soil.
But in Virginia it was grown without interruption or alteration, and the fields rapidly
deteriorated in fertility.-"-Seaboard Slave States, pp. 237, 238.




EXHA USTIING iFFECTS OF SLA YE CULTURE.         45
suited to the character of the soil and the nature of slave industry, whether cotton, tobacco, sugar, or rice, that crop is cultivated, and that crop only. Rotation of crops is thus precluded
by the conditions of the case. The soil is tasked again and
again to yield the same product, and the inevitable result follows. After a short series of years its fertility is completely
exhausted, the planter abandons the ground which he has ren
dered worthless, and passes on to seek in new soils for that fertility under which alone the agencies at his disposal can be
profitably employed. The practical results of the system are
thus described by a native of the South:-" I can show you
with sorrow, in the older portions of Alabama, and in my native
county of Madison, the sad memorials of the artless and exhausting culture of cotton.  Our small planters, after taking the
cream off their lands, unable to restore them by rest, manures,
or otherwise, are going further west and south in search of other
virgin lands, which they may and will despoil and impoverish
in like manner. Our wealthier planters, with greater means
and no more skill, are buying out their poorer neighbours, extending their plantations, and adding to their slave force. The
wealthy few, who are able to live on smaller profits, and to give
their blasted fields some rest, are thus pushing off the many,
who are merely independent... In traversing that county
one will discover numerous farm-houses, once the abode of
industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied by slaves, or
tenantless, deserted, and dilapidated; he will observe fields,
once fertile, now unfenced, abandoned, and covered with those
evil harbingers-fox-tail and broom-sedge; he will see the moss
growing on the mouldering walls of once thrifty villages; and
will find'one only master grasps the whole domain' that once
furnished happy homes for a dozen families. Indeed, a country
in its infancy, where, fifty years ago, scarce a forest tree had
been felled by the axe of the pioneer, is already exhibiting the
painful signs of senility and decay apparent in Virginia and
the Carolinas; the freshness of its agricultural glory is gone,
the vigour of its youth is extinct, and the spirit of desolation
seems brooding over it."* Even in Texas, before it had yet
been ten years under the dominion of this devastating system,
Mr. Olmsted tells us that the spectacle so familiar and so
melancholy in all the older Slave States was already not unfrequently seen by the traveller-" an abandoned plantation of
* Address of the Hon. C. C. Clay, jun., a slaveholder and advocate of slavery,
reported by the author in De Bow's Review, and quoted by Olmsted, Seaboard Slaes
Btans, p. 576.




46            ECONOMIC SUCCESS OF SLA VERY:'worn out' fields with its little village of dwellings, now a home
only for wolves and vultures."
Slave cultivation, therefore, precluding the conditions of rotation of crops or skilful management, tends inevitably to exhaust
the land of a country, and consequently requires for its permanent success not merely a fertile soil but a practically unlimited
extent of it.*
To sum up, then, the conclusions at which we have arrived,
the successful maintenance of slavery, as a system of industry,
requires the following conditions:-1st. Abundance of fertile
soil; and, 2nd. A crop the cultivation of which demands combination and organization of labour on an extensive scale, and
admits of its concentration. It is owing to the presence of these
conditions that slavery has maintained itself in the Southern
States of North America, and to their absence that it has disappeared from the Northern States.
CHAPTER III.
INTERNAL ORGANIZATION         OF SLAVE COMMUNITIES.
THE explanation offered in the last chapter of the success and
failure of slavery in    different portions  of North America
resolved itself into the proposition, that in certain cases the institution was found to be economically profitable while it proved
unprofitable in others.  From this position-the profitableness
of slavery under given external conditions-the inference is
generally made by those who advocate or look with indulgence
on the system, that slavery must be regarded as conducive to
at least the material well-being of countries in which these
conditions exist; and these conditions being admittedly present
in the Slave States of North America, it is concluded that the
abolition of slavery in those states would necessarily be attended
with a diminution of their wealth, and by consequence, owing
* Olmsted's Texas, p. xiv. If there be any fact upon which all competent witnesses to the condition of the Slave States are agreed it is the rapid deterioration of
the soil under slave cultivation. On this point English, French, and America
~writers, the opponents and advocates of slavery, are at one. Yet a writer in the
Saturday Review (Nov. 2, 1861) does not hesitate, on his own unsupported authority,
to characterize this belief as " a popular fallacy." If it be a fallacy, it is certainly not
only a popular but a plausible one, since it has succeeded in deceiving Miss Martineau, Olmsted, Russell, Stirling, and every writer of the least pretension to authority on the subject, no matter what his leanings. It is for the teader to make his
choice between their united testimony and the closet experience of a Saturday
Reviewer.




IN WHAT SENSE CONCEDED.                 47
to the mode in which the interests of all nations are identified
through commerce, with a corresponding injury to the material interests of the rest of the world. In this manner it is
attempted to enlist the selfish feelings of mankind in favour of
the institution; and it is not impossible that many persons, who
would be disposed to condemn it upon moral grounds, are thus
led to connive at its existence. It will therefore be desirable,
before proceeding further with the investigation of our subject,
to ascertain precisely the extent of the admission in favour of
the system which is involved in the foregoing explanation of
its success.
And, in the first place, it must be remarked that the profitableness which has been attributed to slavery is profitableness
estimated exclusively from the point of view of the proprietor
of slaves. Profitableness in this sense is all that is necessary
to account for the introduction and maintenance of the system
(which was the problem with which alone we were concerned),
since it was with the proprietors that the decision rested. But
those who are acquainted with the elementary principles which
govern the distribution of wealth, know that the profits of capitalists may be increased by the same process by which the gross
revenue of a country is diminished, and that therefore the community as a whole may be impoverished through the very
same means by which a portion of its number is enriched. The
economic success of slavery, therefore, is perfectly consistent
with the supposition that it is prejudicial to the material wellbeing of the country where it is established. The argument,
in short, comes to this: the interests of slave-masters-or rather
that which slave-masters believe to be their interests-are no
more identical with the interests of the general population in
slave countries in the matter of wealth, than in that of morals
or politics. That which benefits, or seems to benefit, the one
in any of these departments, may injure the other. It follows,
therefore, that the economic advantages possessed by slavery,
which were the inducement to its original establishment and
which cause it still to be upheld, are perfectly compatible with
its being an obstacle to the industrial development of the country, and at variance with the best interests, material as well as
moral, of its inhabitants.
Further, the profitableness which has been attributed to slavery does not even imply that the system is conducive to the
interests (except in the narrowest sense of the word) of the class
for whose especial behoof it exists. Individuals and classes
may always be assumed to follow their own interests according
to their lights and tastes; but that which their lights and tastes




48          ECONOMIC SUCCESS OF SLA VERY:
point out as their interest will vary with the degree of their
intelligence and the character of their civilization. WThen the
intelligence of a class is limited and its civilization low, the
view it will take of its interests will be correspondingly narrow
and sordid.  Extravagant and undue importance will be
attached to the mere animal pleasures: A small gain obtained
by coarse and obvious methods will be preferred to a great one
which requires a recourse to more refined expedients; and the
future well-being of the race will be regarded as of less importance than the aggrandisement of the existing generation.
But our admissions in favour of slavery require still further
qualification. The establishment of slavery in the Southern
States was accounted for by its superiority in an economic point
of view over free labour, in the form in which free labour
existed in America at the time when that continent was settled.
Now, the superiority of slavery over free labour to which its
establishment was originally owing, is by no means to be
assumed as still existing in virtue of the fact that slavery is still
maintained. Of two systems one may at a given period be
more profitable than the other, and may on this account be
established, but may afterwards cease to be so, and yet may
nevertheless continue to be upheld, either from habit, or from
unwillingness to adopt new methods, or from congeniality with
tastes which have been formed under its influence. It is a difficult and slow process under all circumstances to alter the industrial system of a country; but the difficulty of exchanging
one form of free industry for another is absolutely inappreciable when compared with that which we encounter when we
attempt to substitute free for servile institutions. It is therefore quite possible-how far the case is actually so I shall afterwards examine-that the persistent maintenance of the system
at the present day may be due less to its economical advantages
than to the habits and tastes it may have engendered, and to
the enormous difficulty of getting rid of it. Since the settlement of the Southern States a vast change has taken place in
the American continent. Free labour, which was then scarce
and costly, has now in many of the large towns become superabundant; and it is quite possible that, even with external
conditions so favourable to slavery as the southern half of North
America undoubtedly presents, free labour would now, on a fair
trial, be found more than a match for its antagonist. Such a
trial, however, is not possible under the present regime of the
South. Slavery is in possession of the field, and enjoys all the
advantages which possession in such a contest confers.
The concession then in favour of slavery, involved in the




INV WHAT SENSE CONCEDED.                49
explanation given of its definitive establishment in certain portions of North America, amounts to this, that under cerltain
conditions of soil and climate, cultivationT by slaves may for a
time yield a larger net.revenue thann cultivation by certain forms
of free labour. This is all that needs to be assumed to account
for the original establishment of slavery. But the maintenance
of the institution at the present day does not imply even this
quantum  of advantage in its favour; since, owing to the
immense difficulty of getting rid of it when once established on
an extensive scale, the reasons for its continuance (regarding
the question from the point of view of the slaveholders) may,
where it has once obtained a firm footing, prevail over those
for its abolition, even though it be far inferior as a productive
instrument to free-labour. The most, therefore, that can be
inferred from the existence of the system at the present day is
that it is self-supporting.
Having now cleared the ground from the several false inferences with which the economic success of slavery, such as it is,
is apt to be surrounded, I proceed to trace the consequences,
economic, social, and political, which flow from the institution.
The comparative anatomist, by reasoning on those fixed relations between the different parts of the animal frame which his
science reveals to him, is able fiom a fragment of a tooth or
bone to determine the form, dimensions, and habits of the creature to which it belonged; and with no less accuracy, it seems
to me, may a political economist, by reasoning on the economic
character of slavery and its peculiar connexion with the soil,,
deduce its leading social and political attributes, and almost
construct, by way of a priori argument, the entire system of
the society of which it forms the foundation. A brief consideration of the economic principles on which, as we have seen inl
a former chapter, slavery supports itself, will enable us to illustrate this remark.
It was then seen that slave labour is, from the nature of the
case, unskilled labour; and it is evident that this circumstance
at once excludes it from the field of manufacturing and mechanical industry. Where a workman is kept in compulsory ignorance, and is, at the same time, without motive for exerting his
mental faculties, it is quite impossible that he should take part
with efficiency in the difficult and delicate operations which,
most manufacturing and mechanical processes involve. The
care and dexterity which  the management of machinery
requires is not to be obtained from him, and he would often do
more damage in an hour than the produce of his labour for a.
year would cover. Slavery, therefore, at least in its modern,
4




50   AGI ICULTURE-THE SOLE CAREER FOR SLA. ERY.
form, has never been, and can never be, employed with success
in manufacturing industry. And no less plain is it that it is
unsuited to the functions of commerce; for the soul of commerce is the spirit of enterprise, and this is ever found wanting
in communities where slavery exists: their prevailing characteristics'are subjection to routine and contempt for money-making pursuits. Moreover, the occupations of commerce are
absolutely prohibitive of the employment of servile labour. A
mercantile marine composed of slaves is a form of industry
which the world has not yet seen. MIlutinies in mid-ocean and
desertions the moment the vessel touched at foreign ports would
quickly reduce the force to a cipher.
Slavery, therefore, excluded by these causes from the field
of manufactures and commerce, finds its natural career in agriculture; and, from what has been already established respecting the peculiar qualities of slave labour, we may easily divine
the form which agricultural industry will assume under a servile regimne. The single merit of slave labour as an industrial
instrument consists, as we have seen, in its capacity for organization-its susceptibility, that is to say, of being adjusted with
precision to the kind of work to be done, and of being directed
on a comprehensive plan towards some distinctly conceived
end. Now to give scope to this quality, the scale on which
industry is carried on must be extensive, and, to carry on industry on an extensive scale, large capitals are required. Large
capitalists will therefore have, in slave communities, a special
and peculiar advantage over small capitalists beyond that
which they enjoy in countries where labour is free. But there
is another circumstance which renders a considerable capital
still more an indispensable  condition  to the successful
conduct of industrial operations in slave countries.  A
capitalist who employs free labour needs for the support ot
his labour force a sum sufficient to cover the amount of their
wages during the interval which elapses from the commencement of their operations until the sale of the produce which
results from them. But the capitalist employing slave labour
requires not merely this sum-represented in his case by the
food, clothing, and shelter provided for his slaves during the
corresponding period-but, in addition to this, a sum sufficient
to purchase the fee-simple of his entire slave force. For the
conduct of a given business, therefore, it is obvious that the
employer of slave labour will require a much larger capital
than the employer of free labour. The capital of the one will
represent merely the current outlay; while the capital of the
other will represent, in addition to this, the future capabilities




RESTULTS: MiAGNITUDE OF PLANTATIONS.                         51
of tne productive instrument.        The one will represent the interest, the   other the principal and       interest, of the labour employed.*     Owing to these causes large capitals are, relatively
to small, more profitable, and are, at the same time, absolutely
more required in countries of slave, than in countries of free
labour.   It happens, however, that capital is in slave countries a
particularly scarce commodity, owing partly to the exclusion
from such countries of many modes of creating it-manmfactures
* The operation of the economic principle which I have endeavoured to explain
is well illustrated in the following case put by Mr. Olmsted --
" Let us suppose two recent immigrants, one in Texas, the other in the youn&
free State of Iowa, to have both, at the same time, a considerable sum of moneysay five thousand dollars-at disposal. Land has been previously purchased, a hasty
dwelling of logs constructed, and ample crops for sustenance harvested. Each has
found communication with his market interrupted during a portion of the year by
floods; each needs an ampler and better house; each desires to engage a larger part
of his land in profitable production; each needs some agricultural machinery or implements; in the neighbourhood of each, a church, a school, a grist-mill, and a
branch railroad are proposed. Each may be supposed to have previously obtained
the necessary materials for his desired constructions; and to need immediately the
services of a carpenter. The Texan, unable to hire one in the neighbourhood,
orders his agent in Houston or New Orleans to buy him one: when he arrives, he
has cost not less than two of the five thousand dollars. The Iowan, in the same
predicament, writes to a friend in the East or advertises in the newspapers, that he
is ready to pay better wages than carpenters. can get in the older settlements; and
a young man, whose only capital is in his hands and his wits, glad to come where
there is a glut of food and a dearth of labour, soon presents himself. To construct
a causeway and a bridge, and to clear, fence, and break up the land he desires to
bring into cultivation, the Texan will need three more slaves-and he gets them as
before, thereby investing all his money. The Iowan has only to let his demand be
known, or, at most, to advance a small sum to the public conveyances, and all the
labourers he requires-independent small capitalists of labour-gladly bring their
only commodity to him and offer it as a loan, on his promise to pay a better interest, or wages, for it than Eastern capitalists are willing to do. The Iowan next
sends for the implements and machinery which will enable him to make the
best use of the labour he has engaged. The Texan tries to get on another
year without them, or employs such rude substitutes as his stupid, uninstructed,
and uninterested slaves can readily make in his ill-furnished plantation worlshop. The Iowan is able to contribute liberally to aid in the construction of
the church, the school-house, the mill, and the railroad. His labourers, appreciating
the value of the reputation they may acquire for honesty, good judgment, skill, and
industry, do not need constant superintendence, and he is able to call on his neighbours and advise, encourage, and stimulate them. Thus the church, the school,
and the railroad are soon in operation, and with them is brought rapidly into play
other social machinery, which mfakes much luxury common and cheap to all. The
Texan, if solicited to assist in similar enterprises, answers truly, that cotton is yet
too low to permit him to invest money where it does not promise to be immediately
and directly productive. The Iowan may still have one or two thousand dollars, to
be lent to merchants, mechanics, or manufacturers, who are disposed to establish
themselves near him. With the aid of this capital, not only various minor conveniences are brought into the neighbourhood, but useful information, scientific, agricultural, and political: and commodities, the use of which is educative of taste and
the finer capacities of our nature, are attractively presented to the people. The
Texan mainly does without these things. He confines the imports of his plantaion




52         UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTIOfN OF WEALTH.
and commerce for example-which are open to fiee communities, and partly to what is also a consequence of the institutionthe unthrifty habits of the upper classes. We arrive therefore
at this singular conclusion, that, while large capitals in countries of slave labor enjoy peculiar advantages, and while the
aggregate capital needed in them for the conduct of a given
amount of industry is greater than in countries where labour
is free, capital nevertheless in such countries is exceptionally
scarce. From this state of things result two phenomena which
may be regarded as typical of industry carried on by slavesthe magnitude of the plantations and the indebtedness of the
planters.  Wherever negro slavery has prevailed in modern
times, these two phenomena will be found to exist. They form
the burthen of most of what has been written on our West
Indian Islands while under tie re'gime of slavery; and they
are not less prominently the characteristic features of the
industrial system  of the Southern States.   "Our wealthier
planters," says Mr. Clay, "are buying out their poorer neigh.
bours, extending their plantations, and adding to their slave
force. The wealthy few, who are able to live on smaller profits, and to give their blasted fields some rest, are thus pushing
off the many who are merely independent."      At the same
time these wealthier planters are, it is well known, very generally in debt, the forthcoming crops being for the most part
mortgaged to Northern capitalists, who make the needful
advances, and who thus become the instruments by which a
considerable proportion of the slave labour of the South is
mainntaied. The tendency of things, therefore, in slave countries is to a very unequal distribution of wealth. The large
capitalists, having a steady advantage over their smaller competitors, engross, with the progress of time, a larger and larger
proportion of the aggregate wealth of the country, and gradually acquire the control of its collective industry.  Meantime, amongst the ascendant class a condition of general
indebtedness prevails.
But we may carry our deductions from the economic character of slavery somewhat further.  It has been seen that slave
cultivation can only maintain itself where the soil is rich,
while it produces a steady deterioration of the soils on which
it is employed. This being so, it is evident that in countries
almost entirely to slaves, corn, bacon, salt, sugar, molasses, tobacco, clothing, medicine, hoes, and plough-iron. Even if he had the same capital to spare, he would
live in far less comfort than the Iowan, because of the want of local shops and
efficient systems of public conveyance which cheapen the essentials of comfort for
the latter."-Texas, pp. viii-x.




WASTE LANDS IN SLAVE COUNTRIES.            58
of average fertility but a small portion of the whole area will
be available for this mode of cultivation, and that this portion
is ever becoming smaller, since, as the process of deterioration
proceeds, more soils are constantly reaching that condition in
which servile labour ceases to be profitable. What, then, is to
become of the remainder-that large portion of the country
which is either naturally too poor for cultivation by slaves, or
which has been made so by its continued employment? It
will be thought, perhaps, that this may be worked by fiee labour, and that by ajudicious combination of both forms of industry the whole surface of the country may be brought to
the highest pointeof productiveness.  But this is a moral impossibility: it is precluded by what, we shall find, is a cardinal
feature in the structure of slave societies-their exclusiveness.
In free countries industry is the path to independence, to
wealth, to social distinction, and is therefore held in honour;
in slave countries it is the vocation of the slave, and becomes
therefore a badge of degradation.  The fiee labourer, consequently, who respects his calling and desires to be respected,
instinctively shuns a country where industry is discredited,
where he cannot engage in those pursuits by which wealth and
independence are to be gained without placing himself on a
level with the lowest of mankind.  Free and slave labour
are, therefore, incapable of being blended together in the
same system.   Where slavery exists it excludes all other
forms of industrial life.  "The traveller," says De Tocqueville,' who floats down the current of the Ohio, may be said to
sail between liberty and servitude. Upon the left bank of the
stream the population is sparse; from time to time one
descries a troop of slaves loitering in the half-desert fields;
the primreval forest recurs at every turn; society seems to be
asleep, man to be idle, and nature alone offers a scene of
activity and of life.  From the right bank, on the contrary,
a confused hum is heard which proclaims the presence of
industry; the fields are covered with abundant harvests; the
elegance of the dwellings announces the taste and activity of
the labourer; and man appears to be in the enjoyment of that
wealth and contentment which is the reward of labour. Upon
the left bank of the Ohio labour is confounded with the idea of
slavery, upon the right bank it is identified with that of prosperity and improvement; on the one side it is degraded, on the
other it is honoured; on the former territory no white labourers
can be found, for they would be afraid of assimilating themselves
to the negroes; on the latter no one is idle, for the white population extends its activity and its intelligence to every kind of




54                    SOCIAL C0ONSEQ UENCENS.
employment.       Thus the men whose task it is to cultivate the
rich soil of Kentucky are ignorant and lukewarm; whilst those
who are enlightened       either do nothing, or pass over into the
State of Ohio, where they may work without dishonour."*
Agriculture, therefore, when carried on by slaves, being by
a sure law restricted to the most fertile portions of the land,
and no other form     of systematic industry being possible where
slavery is established, it happens that there are in           all slave
countries vast districts, becoming, under           the   deteriorating
effects of slave industry, constantly larger, which are wholly
surrendered to nature, and remain for ever as wilderness. This
is a characteristic feature in the political economy of the Slave
States of the South, and is attended with social consequences
of the most important kind.        For the tracts thus left, or made,
desolate, become in time the resort of a numerous horde of
people, who, too poor to keep slaves and too proud to work,
prefer a vagrant and precarious life spent in the desert to engaging in occupations which would associate them               with the
slaves whom they despise. In the Southern States no less than
five millions of human beings are now said to exist in this manner in a condition little removed from        savage life, eking out a
wretched subsistence by hunting, by fishing, by hiring themselves but fbr occasional jobs, by         plunder.     Combining     the
* Democracy in America, vol. ii. pp. 222, 223. " The negroes," says Mr. Olmsted, " are a degraded people-degraded not merely by position, but actually immoral, low-lived; without healthy ambition; but little influenced by high moral considerations; and, in regard to labour, not at all affected by regard for duty. This is
universally recognized, and debasing fear, not cheering hope, is in general allowed
to be their only stimulant to exertion.... NIow, let the white labourer come here
from the North or from Europe-his nature demands a social life-shall he associate
with the poor, slavish, degraded, low-lived, despised, unambitious negro, with whom
labour and punishment are almost synonymous? or shall he be the friend and companion of the white man, in whose mind labour is habitually associated with no ideas
o duty, responsibility, comfort, luxury, cultivation, or elevation and expansion either
of mind or estate, as it is where the ordinary labourer is a free man-free to use his
labour as a means of obtaining all these and all else that is to be respected, honoured,
or envied in the world?  Associating with either or both, is it not inevitable that
he will be rapidly demoralized-that he will soon learn to hate labour, give as little
of it for his hire as he can, become base, cowardly, faithless-' worse than a nigger?'. When we reflect how little the great body of our workingmen are consciously
much affected by moral considerations in their movements, one is tempted to suspect that the Almighty has endowed the great transatlantic migration with a new
instinct, by which it is unconsciously repelled from the demoralizing and debilitating
influence of slavery, as migrating birds have sometimes been thought to be from pestilential regions. I know not else how to account for the remarkable indisposition
to be sent to Virginia which I have seen manifested by poor Irishmen and Germans,
who could have known, I think, no more of the evils of slavery to the whites in the
Slave States, than the slaves themselves know of the effect of conscription in France,
and who certainly could have been governed by no considerations of self-respect."




THE " EAN WHITES."                    55
restlessness and contempt for regular industry peculiar to the
savage with the vices of the proletaire of civilized communities,
these people make up a class at once degraded and dangerous,
and constantly reinforced as they are by all that is idle, worthless, and lawless among the population of the neighbouring
States, form an inexhaustible preserve of ruffianism, ready at
hand for all the worst purposes of Southern ambition.  The
planters complain of these people for their idleness, for corrupting their slaves, for their thievish propensities; but they cannot
dispense with them; for, in truth, they perform an indispensable function in the economy of slave societies, of which they
are at once the victims and the principal supports. It is from
their ranks that those filibustering expeditions are recruited
which have been found so effective an instrument in extending
the domain of the Slave Power; they furnish the Border Ruffians
who in the colonization struggle with the Northern States contend
with Freesoilers on the Territories; and it is to their antipathy
to the negroes that the planters securely trust for repressing
every attempt at servile insurrection. Such are the "L mean
whites " or a" white trash "' of the Southern States. They comprise several local subdivisions, the " crackers," the " sandhillers," the'" clay-eaters," and many more. The class is not peculiar to any one locality, but is the invariable outgrowth of negro
slavery wherever it has raised its head in modern times. It
may be seen in the new State of Texas* as well as in the old
settled districts of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia; in the
West India Islandst no less than on the Continent. In the
States of the Confederacy it comprises, as I have said, five millions of human beings-about seven-tenths of tl)e whole white
population.
The industry of the Slave. States, we have seen, is exclusively
agricultural; and the mode of agriculture pursued in them has
been represented as partial, perfunctory, and exhaustive. It
must, however, be admitted that, to a certain extent, this description is applicable to the industrial condition of all new
countries, and will find illustrations in the western regions of
the Free States; and it may therefore occur to the reader that
the economical conditions which I have described are rather
the consequence of the recent settlement of the societies where
they prevail than specific results of the system of slavery. But
it is easy to show that this view of the case is fallacious, and,
proceeds from confounding what is essential in slave-industry
with an accidental and temporary feature in the industrial
* Olmsted's Texas, p. xvii.; note.
f Merivale's Colonization and the Colonies, p. 83; note, new ed.




66        FREE IND USTRY IN NEW COUNVTRIES.
career of free communities.  The settlers in new countries,
whether they be slave-holders or free peasants, naturally fix in
the first instance on the richest and most conveniently situated
soils, and find it more profitable to cultivate these lightly, availing themselves to the utmost of the resources which nature
offers, tlan to force cultivation on infeior soils after the manner
of high farming in old countries. So far the cases are similar.
But here lies the difference.  The labour of fiee peasants,
though of course more productive on rich than on inferior soils,
is not necessarily confined to the former; whereas this is the
case with the labour of slaves. According, therefore, as free
peasants multiply, after the best soils have been appropriated,
the second best are taken into cultivation; and as they multiply still more, cultivation becomes still more general, until
ultimately all the cultivatable portions of the country are
brought within the domain of industry. But, as slaves multiply, their masters cannot have recourse to inferior soils: they
must find for them new soils: the mass of the country, therefore, remains uncultivated, and the population increases only
by dispersion.  Again, although the mode of cultivation
pursued by free peasants in new lands is generally far from
what would be approved of by the scientific farmers of old
countries, still it does not exhaust the soil in the same manner
as cultivation carried on by slaves. "I hold myself justified,"
says Mr. Olmsted, "in asserting that the natural elements of
wealth in the soil of Texas will have been more exhausted in
ten years, and with them the rewards offered by Providence to
labour will have been more lessened, than without slavery would
have been the case in two hundred."... "After two hundred
years' occupation of similar soils by a free-labouring conmunity, I have seen no such evidences of waste as in Texas I have
after ten years of slavery."*... "Waste of soil and injudicious application of labour are common in the agriculture of the
North;....but nowhere is the land with what is attached to
it now less promising and suitable for the residence of a refined
and civilized people than it was before the operations, which
have been attended with the alleged waste, were commenced."
The same is not true of Virginia or the Carolinas, or of any
other district where slavery has predominated for an historic
period. "The land in these cases is positively less capable of
sustaining a dense civilized community than if no labour at all
had been expended upon it."t The superficial and careless
mode of agriculture pursued by free peasants in new countries
* Olmsted's Texas, p. siv.    t Ibid. p. xviii.; note.




COMPARED WITH SLA YE ITI       USTR Y.          57
is, in short, accidental and temporary, the result of the exceptional circumstances in which they are placed, and gives place
to a better system as population increases and inferior soils are
brought under the plough; but the superficiality and exhaustiveness of agriculture carried on by slaves are essential and
unalterable qualities, rendering all cultivation impossible but
that which is carried on upon the richest soils, and irremovable
by the growth of population, since they are an effectual bar to this.
My position is, that in slave communities agriculture is substantially' the sole occupation, while this single pursuit is prematurely arrested in its development, never reaching those
soils of secondary quality which, under a system      of free
industry, would, with the growth of society, be brought under
cultivation; and of this statement the industrial history of the
Free and Slave States forms one continued illustration.   The
state of Virginia, for example, is the longest settled state in the
Union, and for general productive purposes, one of the most
richly endowed.   It possesses a fertile soil, a genial climate;
it is rich in mineral productions, in iron, in copper, in coalthe coal fields of Virginia being amongst the most extensive
in the world, and the coal of superior quality; it is approached
by one of the noblest bays; it is watered by numerous rivers,
some of them navigable for considerable distances, and most
of them capable of affording abundance of water power for
manufacturing purposes.t    With such advantages, Virginia,
a region as large as England, could not fail, in a career of two
hundred and fifty years, under a system of free industry, to
become a state of great wealth, population, and power. HIer
mineral and manufacturing, as well as her agricultural, resources would be brought into requisition; her population
would increase with    rapidity, and become concentrated in
large towns; her agriculture would be extended       over the
whole surface of the country.   But what is the result of the
experiment under a slave regime?     After a national life of
two hundred and fifty years the whole free population is still
under one million souls.:    Eight-tenths of her industry are
* I do not mean to assert that there is no mechanical or manufacturing industry
carried on.in the Slave States. In some of the principal towns, no doubt, there is,
though to a limited extent, and here it is chiefly the result of Northern enterprise.
What I intend to say is, that the amount of industry of this kind is so small, that
in speaking of the resources of national wealth, it need not be taken account of.
f Olmsted's Seaboard Slave States, pp. 165, 166.: The actual numbers were in 1850:Whites..... 894,800
Free coloured.... 54,333
Total free... 949,133




58     INiD USTRIAL DiEVtEL OPMENT OF SLA YE STATES
devoted to agriculture; and the progress which has been made
in this, the principal pursuit, may be estimated by the significant fact, that the average price per acre of cultivated land
in Virginia is no more than eight dollars.  Contrast this with
the progress made in fifty years by the free state of Ohio-a
state smaller in area than Virginia, and inferior in variety of
resources.  Ohio was admitted as a state into the Union in
1802, and in 1850 its population numbered nearly two millions.*  Like Virginia it is chiefly agricultural, though not
from  the same causes, Ohio being froim its resources and internal position adapted in a peculiar manner to agriculture,
while the resources of Virginia would fit it equally for manufactures or commerce; but, while the average price of cultivated land per acre in Virginia, after an agricultural career of
two hundred and fifty years, is eight dollars, the average price
in Ohio, after a career of fifty years, is twenty dollars. The
contrast will of course only become more striking, if, instead
of a free state of fifty years' growth, we take one more nearly
on a par in the duration of its career with the slave state with
which it is compared.  New Jersey, for example, was founded
about the same time as Virginia. Its climate, Mr. Olmsted tells
us, differs imperceptibly from  that of Virginia, owing to its
vicinity to the ocean, while its soil is decidedly less fertile;
but such progress    has   been made in bringing     that soil
under cultivation  that, against eight dollars per acre-the
average price of land in Virginia-there is to be set in New
Jersey an average of forty-four dollars.t Let us take another
example. New York and Massachusetts are also, in relation
to Virginia, contemporary states. In agricultural resources
they are greatly its inferiors, the soil of Massachusetts in particular being sterile and its climate harsh. What then has
* The actual numbers were, 1,980,329.
f Olmsted's Seaboard Slave States, p. 171. In connexion with this question Mr.
Weston (Progress of Slavery) gives the following striking statistics, p. 17:-" The
following were the prices per acre in the states and counties named, and the percentage of slaves in Kentucky and the counties named:Value per acre. Per ct. of slaves.
Ohio.............  $1999
Indiana............   10-66
Illinois........          *99
Kentucky..........           9'03     22
Ohio counties adjoining Kentucky....3234
Kentucky counties adjoining Ohio...  18'27  10
Indiana counties adjoining Kentucky..  1134
Kentucky counties adjoining Indiana.  1.044  21
Illinois counties adjacent to Kentucky.  4'65
Kentucky counties adjacent to Illinois.  454  18"




PREMATURELY ARRESTED.                     59
been the relative progress made by these three states in bringing their respective soils under cultivation. In Virginia, 261
per cent. of her whole area had, in 1852, been brought under
tillage; in New York, 41 per cent.; and in Massachusetts, 422
per cent. But these facts do not convey their full lesson till we
add that, in bringing 261 per cent. of her soil under cultivation, Virginia employed eight-tenths of her industrial population, while New York and Massachusetts, in brin ging under
cultivation much larger proportions of their areas, employed
but six and for-tenths of their respective populations.*  It
thus appears that Virginia, with great agricultural resources
and a population almost wholly devoted to agriculture, has been
far outstripped in her own peculiar branch of industry by states
of inferior resources, and whose industry has been largely or
principally devoted to other pursuits.  The same comparison
might be continued throughout the other Free and Slave states
with analogous results. The general truth is, that in the Free
States, where external circumstances are favourable, industry is
distributed over many occupations-manufactures, mining, commerce, agriculture; while in the Slave States, however various
be the resources of the country, it is substantially confined to
one-agriculture; and in this one is prematurely arrested, never
reaching that stage of development which in countries where
labour is free is early attained.
The reader is now in a position to understand the kind of
economic success which slavery has achieved.    It consists in
the rapid extraction from the soil of a country of the most easily
obtained portion of its wealth by a process which exhausts the
soil, and consigns to waste all the other resources of the country where it is practised. To state the case with more particularity-by proscribing manufactures and commerce, and confining agriculture within narrow bounds, by rendering impossible
the rise of a free peasantry, by checking the growth of population-in a word, by blasting every germ from which national
well-being' and general civilization may spring-at this cost,
with the further condition of encroaching, through a reckless
system  of culture, on the stores designed by Providence for
future generations, slavery may undoubtedly for a time be made
conducive to the pecuniary gain of the class who keep slaves;
* These facts are given in an " Address to the Farmers of Virginia," by the
Virginia State Agricultural Society, which, after having been twice read, approved,
and adopted, was finally rejected on the ground that "there were admissions in it
which would feed the fanaticism of the abolitionists;" but "no one argued against
it on the ground of the falsity or inaccuracy of its returns." It is quoted at length
by Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 167-170.




S60      CONSTITUTION OF SLA VE SOCIETY
Such is the net result of advantage which slavery, as an economic system, is capable of yielding. To the full credit of all
that is involved in this admission the institution is fairly entitled.
The constitution of a slave society, it has been seen, is sufficiently simple: it resolves itself into three classes, broadly distinguished from  each other, and connected by no common interest-tee slaves on whom devolves all the regular industry,
the slave-liolders who reap all its fruits, and an idle and lawless rabble who live dispersed over vast plains in a condition
little removed from  absolute barbarism. These fornm the constituent elements of the society of which the Slave Power is the
political representative.  What the nature of that power is,
now  that we have ascertained the elements out of which it
springs, we can have little difficulty in determining.  When the
whole wealth of a country is monopolized by a thirtieth part
of its population, while the remainder are by physical or moral
causes consigned to compulsory poverty and ignorance; when
the persons composing the privileged thirtieth part are all
engaged in pursuits of the same kind, subject to the influence
of the same moral ideas, and identified with the maintenance
of the same species of property-in a society so constituted
political power will of necessity reside with those in whom
centre the elements of such power-wealth, knowledge, and
intelligence-the small minority for whose exclusive benefit the
system exists. The polity of such a society must thus, in essence,
be an oligarchy, whatever be the particular mould in which it
is cast. Nor is this all.  A society so organized tends to develop with a peculiar intensity the distinctive vices of an oligarchy.   In a country of free labour, whatever be the form of
government to which it is subject, the pursuits of industry are
various. Various interests, therefore, take root, and parties
grow up which, regarding national questions from various points
of view, become centres of opposition, whether against the undue
pretensions of any one of their number, or against those of a single
ruler. It is not so in the Slave States. That variety of interests which springs from the individual impulses of a free population does not here exist. The elements of a political opposition
are wanting.  There is but one party,* but one set of men who
* There is one exception to this statement. Between the breeding and working
states a difference of interest has been developed which has resulted in the formation
of two parties within the Slave States. But (as will hereafter be shown) this difference of interest has never been sufficient to produce any serious discordance among
the politicians of the South. The sympathies which bind the breeding and working
states together are far stronger than any interests which separate them; and in the
main they have always acted as a single party.




ESSENTIALLY OLIGrARCHIOAL.             61
are capable of acting together in political concert. The rest is
an undisciplined rabble. From this' state of things the only
possible result is that which we find-a despotism, in the last
degree unscrupulous and impatient of control, wielded by the
wealthy few. Now it is this power which for half a century
has exercised paramount sway in the councils of the Union.
It is the men educated in the ideas of this system who have
filled the highest offices of State, who have been the representatives of their country to European Powers, and who, by their
position and the influence they have commanded, have given
the tone to the public morality of the nation. The deterioration of the institutions and of the character of the people of
the United States is now very commonly taken for granted in
this country. The fact may be so; so far as the South is concerned I believe, and shall endeavour to prove, that it unquestionably is so. But it is very important that we should understand to what cause this deterioration is due. There are writers who would have us believe that it is but the natural result
of democratic institutions working through the Federal system;
and for this view a plausible case may be easily made oxt.
Democratic institutions have admittedly exercised a powerful
influence in forming the American character and in determining the present condition of the United States. It is only necessary, therefore, to bring this point strongly into view in close
connexion with all that is most objectionable in the public
morals, and all that is most discreditable in the recent history,
of the Union, keeping carefully out of sight the existence in
the political system of institutions the reverse of democratic
and avoiding all reference to the cardinal fact, that it is these
and not the democratic institutions of the North which, almost
since its establishment, have been the paramount power in the
Union,-to leave the impression that everything that has been
made matter of reproach in transatlantic politics has been due
to democracy and to democracy alone. According to this
inethod of theorising, the abstraction of Florida,'the annexation
of Texas, the filibustering expeditions of Lopez and Walker,
the attempts upon Cuba, have no connexion with the aggressive
ambition of the Slave Power: they are only proofs of the rapacious spirit of democracy-armed with the strength of a powerful
federation. It is, indeed, quite astounding to observe the boldness with which this argument is sometimes handled. One would
have thought that an advocate of the Southern cause would
at least have shown some hesitancy in alluding to an attack
made by a Southern bully, on the floor of the Senate-house,
upon one of the most accomplished statesmen of the North.




62     REPR OA CH FALSEL Y CHARGED ONI DEM O CA C Y.
That attack was in all circumstances plainly branded with the
marks of its origin.     It was commlitted by a slaveholder, acting
as the champion of slaveholders, in revenge for an anti-slavery
speech; it was       characterized    by   that   mingled    treachery,
cowardice, and brutality which. are only to be found in societies reared in the presence of slavery; it was adopted and applauded by the whole people of the South, recognized by testimonials, and rewarded by gifts: yet this act is deliberately put
forward as an example of the " irreverence for justice" which
is produced by democratic institutions, and is employed to prepossess our minds       in favour of the Southern        cause!     The
present writer is far fiom being an admirer of democracy as it
* Spence's American Union, pp. 65-6, 74-5. Mr. Spence states the act, omitting
to mention the occasion, or whether the actors were Northern or Southern men,
but in the same paragraph, having alluded to the case of Mr. Sickles, he adds that
the man' who committed a deliberate and relentless murder in open day.  is now a Brigadier-General in the Northern army." Is the mention of the
criminal's origin in one case, and its suppression in the other, an accident?
In a later portion of the volume a still more striking instance occurs of Mr.
Spence's candour.  "A French writer, Raymond, comments upon the singular
fact that whilst between England and France but one serious quarrel has occurred
since 1815, there have arisen during the same period twelve or thirteew most serious
difficulties between the United States and ourselves.... We have had
minor wars with China, conducted on the principle of throwing open to the world
every advantage obtained by ourselves. On one occasion we invited the co-operation of the American Government, but in vain, and every opportunity was seized to
thwart our policy. Even the Chinese know they may expect to see the flag of any
other power in union with our own, but never that of America. There was, indeed,
a moment when our men were falling under a murderous fire, that for once an
American was heard to declare that'blood was thicker than water.' It would ill
become us to forget the noble conduct of Commodore Tatnall on that occasion.  ie
was a Southerner, and is now a'traitor and rebel'" (pp. 294-296). Let the reader
note the art with which the facts are here manipulated. We are asked to refuse
our sympathies to the North, because, since 1815 we have had frequent difficulties
with the United States (which the North now represents)-the circumstances that
during almost the whole of this period the Government of the United States was in
the hands of Southern statesmen being suppressed as of no importance in the case.
On the other hand a single instance in which a Southerner has performed ail act of
a friendly nature towards Great Britain is brought prominently forward as a ground
for giving our sympathies to the South. It is evident that the contrast thus instituted between the friendly conduct of Commodore Tatnall-a Southerner-and the
hostile spirit which had just been commented on as manifested by the Government
of the Union, can, taken in connexion with the general tenor of the argument, have
no other effect than to leave readers unacquainted with the facts (a rather numerous
class unfortunately in this country) under the impression that, as the friendly
demonstration was the act of a Southerner, so the hostile manifestations proceeded
from the North. The spirit evinced in this passage, which is merely a specimen of
the main argument of the work from which it is taken, is all the more remarkable in
a writer who in his preface bespeaks the confidence of his readers on the ground
that "personal considerations and valued friendships incline him without exception
to the Northern side," which he has been compelled reluctantly to abandon by
"convictions forced upon the mind by facts and reasonings."




CHARA CTER   F THE SLEA YE PO WER.         63
exists in the Northern States; but, whatever be the merits
or demerits of that form of government, it is desirable that it
should be judged by its own fruits, and not by the fruits of a
system which is its opposite -a system which, in place of conferring political power on the majority of the people, gives it,
free fiom all control, to a small minority whose interests are
not only not identical with those of their fellow-citizens, but
directly opposed to theirs. Democracy, beyond all doubt, has
been a powerful influence in moulding the character of the
Americans in the Northern States; it would be absurd to deny
this; but it would be no less absurd, and would be still more
flagrantly in defiance of the most conspicuous facts of the case,
to deny that that character has also been profoundly modified
by the influence of Southern institutions, acting through the
Federal government, in the persons of Southern men-institutiois which I repeat are the reverse of democratic. It is the
Slave Power and not the democracy of the North, which for
half a century has been dominant in the Union. It is this
Power which has directed its public policy; which has guided
its intercourse with foreign nations, conducted its diplomacy,
regulated its internal legislation, and which, by working on its
hopes and fears through the unscrupulous use of an enormous
patronage, has exercised an unbounded sway over the minds of
the whole people. Whatever other agencies may have contributed to shape the course of American politics, this at least has
been a leading one; and whatever be the political character of
the citizens, for that character this system must be held in a
principal degree responsible.
To sum up in a few words the general results of the foregoing discussion:-the Slave Power-that power which has long
held the helm of government in the Union-is, under the forms
of a democracy, an uncontrolled despotism, wielded by a compact
oligarchy. Supported by the labour of four millions of slaves,
it rules a population of five millions of whites-a population
ignorant, averse to systematic industry, and prone to irregular
adventure. A system of society more formidable for evil, more
menacing to the best interests of the human race, it is difficult
to conceive.




64           IN WHAT DIRECTION MO YVNG?
CHAPTER IV.
TENDENCIES OF SLAVE SOCIETIES.
IN what direction is slave society, as presented in the States of
the Confederation, moving? Towards a higher civilization, or
towards barbarism   On the answer to this question, I apprehend, will principally depend the degree of indulgence which
we may be disposed to extend to modern slavery. If the form
of society springing from the institution be found to be but an
incident of a certain stage of human progress, a shell of barbarism fiom which nations gradually work themselves free with
the development of their moral and material life, an evil which
will disappear by a spontaneous process-we shall probably be
disposed to regard the institution with considerable leniency,
to deprecate schemes for its overthrow, and, perhaps, in certain
cases, even to look with favour on plans for its extension. If,
on the other hand, it appear that the system is essentially
retrograde in its character, contrived so as to arrest and throw
back the development, moral and material, of the people on
whom it is imposed, and to hold them in a condition of permanent barbarism, the sentiments with which we shall regard it,
as well as our policy towards the countries which uphold it,
will be of a very different kind.
Thus, to give the point a practical illustration, the mode of
dealing with Miexico is at present a most perplexing question
for European statesmen. In the present condition of that
country-the prey of contending factions, whose alternate
excesses prevent the growth of steady industry, deter European
settlement, and deprive the world of the benefit which its great
natural resources are calculated to confer-almost any change
would be a change for the better. The establishment of an
effective government of some kind, of a power capable of
preserving the lives and properties of the inhabitants, is a
matter of prime necessity, without which the first foundations
of improvement cannot be laid.    NSow  the most obvious
method of effecting this purpose would be to hand the country
over to the Southern Confederation;* and this arrangement
would entirely fall in with the views of the leaders of that
body. But Mexico, whatever be the vices of its political sys* This is not a mere fanciful hypothesis. The plan has been suggested in terms
sufficiently unambiguous by the Times. See a leading article of the Times, 31st
July, 1861.




TENDENCIES OF SLA FE SOCIETIES.          65
tem, is a state in which labour is free; whereas, if annexed to
the dominions of the Southern Confederation, it would at once
become the abode of slavery. Nevertheless it can scarcely be
doubted that this annexation would, in the first instance, be
attended with some advantages. For the chieftains whose
combined weakness and violence now keep the country in constant agitation there would be substituted a strong government
-a government incompatible, indeed, with freedom of speech
or writing, or with security of life or property for such as ventured to dissent fiom its principles, but still able to preserve
order after a certain fashion-able to protect slaveholders in
the enjoyment of their property, and to prevent revolutions.
Under such a government productive industry might be
expected to start forward with vigour; those products which
are capable of being raised with profit by slave labour, and'
amongst these cotton, would be multiplied and cheapened in
the markets of the world; the position of Mexican bondholders
would be improved. Such would probably be the immediate
effect of the annexation. But what would be its permanent;
consequences? To answer this question we must resolve the
problem with which we started. We must determine the
direction in which society in the Southern States is moving.
If the " peculiar institution " be essentially temporary and provisional in its character, if it be not incompatible with the
ultimate emancipation of those on whom it is imposed, as well
as with the continued progress of the people among whom it
is established, then the permanent as well as immediate consequences of the extension of Southern rule over Mexico, notwithstanding that it would be attended with the introduction
of slavery into a country where labour at present is free, might
perhaps be thought to be, on the whole, advantageous. But,
if the institution of the South be a permanent thraldom, and
if the form of society to which it gives birth be of a kind
effectually to arrest the growth of the whole people among
whom it is planted-under these circumstances, to hand over
Mexico to the Southern Confederacy would be nothing less
than, for the sake of certain material advantages to be reaped
by the present generation, to seal the doom of a noble country
-a country which, under better auspices, might become a
perennial source of benefits for all future time, and a new
centre of American civilization.
It is therefore of extreme importance to ascertain the tendencies of these slave societies, and what prospects they holdout of future advancement to the people who compose them.
And, in approaching this question, it at once occurs that sla



66         ANCIENT AND MODERN SLA VER Y.
very is not a new fact in the world. It prevailed, as we know,
among all the nations of antiquity, of whom, nevertheless,
some displayed great aptitude for intellectual cultivation, and
attained a high degree of general civilization. It formed, at
one time, an ingredient in the social system   of all modern
states, which, however, did not find it incompatible with a progressive career, and the last traces of slavery, in the mitigated
form of serfdom, are but now disappearing from Europe.     If
slavery was not inconsistent with progressive civilization among
the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews-if mediseval Eu
rope contrived to work itself free from this vicious element of
its social constitution, it will perhaps be asked why need we
despair of progress for the States of the Confederation.  Why
are we to suppose that they, under the influence of the same
causes which operated in ancient and medieval society, should
not, in the same gradual fashion, emancipate their slaves, and
ultimately reach the same level of general cultivation which
those societies attained? Nay, it is possible that there may be
those who, while holding slavery to be, as a permanent status,
noxious, may nevertheless regard it as not incapable of performing a useful function towards people in a certain stage of
their development, as a kind of probationary discipline suitable
to their preparation for a higher form of civilized existence, and
may consider its maintenance in the Southern States at present
as defensible upon this ground.  Some such notion, it seems to
me, is at the bottom   of much of the indulgence, and even
favour, with which the cause of the South has come to be
regarded in this country;* and it is, therefore, worth while to
consider how far this view of modern slavery is well-founded.
And here it may be advantageous to bear in mind the caution of De Tocqueville.   "When I compare the Greek and
Roman republics with these American States; when I remember all the attempts which are made to judge the modern
republics by the assistance of those of antiquity, and to infer
what will happen in our time from what took place two thousand years ago, I am    tempted to burn my books, in order
to apply none but novel ideas to so novel a condition of society."  The truth is, between slavery, as it existed in classical
" Slavery," says a writer in the Saturday Review, " appears to die away, or at
least its most horrible incidents disappear in proportion as the community in which
it exists becomes older, more wealthy,-and therefore more dense.... The best
chance for the alleviation of the slave's condition lies in the increased wealth and
prosperity of the South. In other words, its freedom to develop its own resources,
without foreign intervention, is the slave's best hope. And it is agreed on all hands
that a modified and alleviated slavery is a transitional state in which it is very difficult for the slaveowners to halt long."-Nov. 2nd, 1861.




DIFFERENCE OF RACE AND COLO UR.            67
and medieval times and the system which now erects itself defiantly in North America, there exist the most deep reaching
distinctions. I will mention three, which, as it seems to me,
are in themselves sufficient to take the case of modern slavery
entirely out of the scope of the analogies furnished by the
former experience of mankind.
In tlhe first place, there is the vital fact-the difference in
race and colour between modern slaves and their masters-a
difference which had nothing corresponding to it in the slavery
of former times. The consequences flowing from this fact cannot be better stated than. in the language of De Tocqueville.
"The slave, amongst the ancients, belonged to the same race
as his master, and he was often the superior of the two in education and instruction.  Freedom  was the only distinction
between them; and when freedom was conferred, they were
easily confounded together."... "The greatest difficulty
of antiquity [in the way of abolition] was that of altering the
law; amongst the moderns it is that of altering the manners;
and, as far as we are concerned, the real obstacles begin where
those of the ancients left off. This arises from the circumstance
that, amongst the moderns, the abstract and transient fact of
slavery is fatally united to the physical and permanent fact of
colour. The tradition of slavery dishonours the race, and the
peculiarity of the race perpetuates the tradition of slavery. No
African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the
New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks
who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves
or freedmen. Thus the negro transmits the external mark of
his ignominy to all his descendants. The law may cancel servitude, God alone can obliterate its brand.
"The modern slave differs from his master not only in his
condition, but in his origin. You may set the negro free, but
you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European.
Nor is this all: we scarcely acknowledge the common features
of mankind in this child of debasement whom slavery has
brought amongst us. His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous,
his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost
inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man
and the brutes. The moderns, then, after they have abolished
slavery, have three prejudices to contend against, which are
less easy to attack, and far less easy to conquer, than the mere
fact of servitude: the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of
race, and the prejudice of colour."'>
Butf, secondly, the immense development of international
* Democracy in America, vol. ii. pp. 215-217.




68           VED JUCAA TION OF R OMEAN XSLA YES.
commerce in modern times furnishes another distinction between
ancient and modern slavery, which very intimately affects the
question we are discussing.
So long as each nation was in the main dependent on the
industry of its own members for the supply of its wants, it is
obvious that a strong motive would be present for the cultivation of the intelligence, and the improvement of the condition,
of the industrial classes. The commodities which minister to
comfort and luxury cannot be produced without skilled labour,
and skilled labour implies a certain degree of mental cultivation, and a certain progress in social respect. To attain success
in the more difficult industrial arts, the workman must respect
his vocation, must take an interest in his task; habits of care,
deliberation, forethought must be acquired; in short, there
must be such a general awakening of the faculties, intellectual
and moral, as, by leading men to a knowledge of their rights
and of the means of enforcing them, inevitably disqualifies
them  for the servile condition. Now, this was the position in
which the slave master found himself in the ancient world.
He was, in the main, dependent on the skill of his slaves for
obtaining whatever he required.    Ie was, therefore, naturally
led to cultivate the faculties of his slaves, and by consequence
to promote generally the improvement of their condition.   His
progress in the enjoyment of the material advantages of civilization depended directly upon their progress in knowledge and
social consideration. Accordingly the education of slaves was
never prohibited in the ancient Roman world, and, in point of
fact, no small number of them enjoyed the advantage of a high
cultivation.  "The youths of promising genius," says Gibbon,
" were instructed in the arts and sciences, aud almost every
profession, liberal and mechanical, might be found in the
household of an opulent senator." The industrial necessities of
Roman society (and the same was true of society in the middle
ages) in this way provided for the education of at least a large
proportion of the slave population; and education, accompanied
as it was by a general elevation of their condition, led, by a
natural and almost inevitable tendency, to emancipation.*
* "The only fair analogy," says Mir. Congreve, "to the slavery of Greece and
Rome is to be found in that which is still prevalent in Asia, where the evils of
West Indian or American slavery are wholly unknown, and the relation of master
and slave is accepted by both, as being, in Aristotle's words, at once light and for
the common interest." On the other hand, "if we seek for an analogy in ancient
times to modern slavery," we may find one in " the latifundia of the Roman nobles,
or what may be termed the corn plantations of Sicily. The population there was
slave, and there was no check to tie misuse of their power by the agents or masters
who superintended them. And there was no intercourse, no sense of connexion to




INCREASED RESO URCES OF SLA VERY.            69
But in the position of slavery in North America there is
nothing which corresponds to this. Owing to the vast develop
ment in modern times of international trade, modern slaveholders are rendered independent of the skill, and therefore of
the intelligence and social improvement, of their slave population. They have only need to find a commodity which is capable of being produced by crude labour, and at the same time
in large demand in the markets of the world; and by applying
their slaves to the production of this, they may, through an
exchange with other countries, make it the means of procuring
for themselves whatever they require. Cotton and sugar, for
example, are commodities which fulfil these conditions: they
may be raised by crude labour, and they are in large demand
throughout the world. Accordingly Alabama and Louisiana
have only to employ their slaves in raising these products, and
they are enabled through their means to command the industrial resources of all commercial nations. Without cultivating
one of the arts or refinements of civilization, they can possess
themselves of all its material comforts. Without employing
an artizan, a manufacturer, a skilled labourer of any sort, they
can secure the products of the highest manufacturing and
mechanical skill. "In one way or other," says Mr. lHelper,*
putting the point strikingly, though from the protectionist point
of view,' we are more or less subservient to the North every
day of our lives. In infancy we are swaddled in Northern
muslin; in childhood we are humoured with Northern gewgaws; in youth we are instructed out of Northern books; at
the age of maturity we sow our'wild oats' on Northern soil;.... in the decline of life we remedy our eye-sight with
Northern spectacles, and support our infirmities with Northern
canes; in old age we are drugged with Northern physic; and,
finally, when we die, our inanimate bodies, shrouded in Northern cambric, are stretched upon the bier, borne to the grave
in a Northern carriage, entombed with a Northern spade, and
memorized with a Northern slab!"  Yet all these products of
manufacturing and mechanical skill, the States which consume
them are able to command through the medium of a commodity which is raised by the crudest servile labour.  The
resources of slavery have in this way been indefinitely increased
in modern times. Its capabilities have been multiplied, and,
Boften the inherent hardships of their condition. They revolted once and again, and
there was danger lest their revolt should spread, lest throughout the Roman world
the slave population should feel that it had a common cause."-Congreve's Politics
of Arist te, p. 496.
* Impending Crisis, p. 27.




[0                    SEA VER Y OF THE MIND.
without submitting the slightest alleviation of its harshest features, it can adapt itself to all the varying wants of human
society.
But the consequences of the increased capabilities of slavery
do  not end in     merely    negative    results.    Whatever inducements may      exist for cultivating       the  intelligence    Of slaves,
there   are always very        weighty    reasons    against conferring,
this boon. Accordingly, the former not coming into play in
modern times, the latter have operated with unrestricted force.
The merest rudiments of learning are now rigorously proscribed for the negroes in the Slave States of North America; and
the prohibition is enforced, both in the persons of the teachers
and   the   taught, with     penalties    of  extraordinary     severity.*
"The only means by which the ancients maintained slavery
were fetters and death; the Americans of the South of the
Union have discovered more intellectual securities for the duration of their power. They have employed their despotism and
their violence against the human mind.             In antiquity, precautions were taken to prevent the slave from         breaking his chains;
* The following are some extracts from the laws of some of the Southern States
upon this subject. In South Carolina an act was passed in 1834, which provides as
follows: —"If any person shall hereafter teach any slave to read or write, or shall
aid in assisting any slave to read or write, or cause or procure any slave to be taught
to read or write, such person, if a free white person, upon conviction thereof, shall
for every such offence against this act be fined not exceeding one hundred dollars,
and imprisoned not more than six months; or if a free person of colour, shall be
whipped not exceeding fifty lashes, and fined not exceeding fifty dollars; and if a
slave, shall be whipped, not exceeding fifty lashes; and if any free person of colour
or a slave shall keep any such school or other place of instruction for teaching any
slave or free person of colour to read or write, such person shall be liable to the same
fine, imprisonment, and corporal punishment as are by this act imposed and inflicted
on free persons of colour and sIaves —forteaching slaves to read or write."  In Virginia, according to the code of 1849, "every assemblage of negroes for the purpose
of instruction in reading or writing shall be an unlawful assembly. Any justice may
issue his warrant to any officer or other person, requiring him to enter any place
where such assemblage may be, and seize any negro therein; and he or any other
justice may order such negro to be punished with stripes."  "If a white person
assemble with negroes for the purpose of instructing them to read or write, he shall
be confined to jail not exceeding six months, and fined not exceeding one hundred
dollars."  In Georgia in 1829 it was enacted: —"If any slave, negro, or free person
of colour, or any white person, shall teach any other slave, negro, or free person of
colour to read or write either written or printed characters, the said free person of
colour or slave shall be punished by fine and whipping, or fine or whipping, at the
discretion of the court; and if a white person so offending, he, she, or they shall be
punished with fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, and imprisonment in the common jail, at the discretion of the court."  By the act of Assembly of Louisiana,
passed in March, 1830, "all persons who shall teach or cause to be taught any slave
in this state to read or write shall, on conviction thereof, &c., be imprisoned not less
than one or more than twelve months."  And in Alabama, "any person who shall
attempt to teach any free person of colour or slave to spell, read, or write, shall upon
conviction, &c., be fined in a sum not less than 250 dollars nor more than 500 dollars."




ifTE SLA YE TRADE.                       71
at the present day measures are adopted to deprive him even
of the desire of freedom.   The ancients kept the bodies of their
slaves in bondage, but they placed no restraint upon the mind
and no check upon education; aud they acted consistently with
their established principle, since a natural termination of slavery
then existed, and one day or other the slave might be set free,
and become the equal of his master.       But the Americans of
the South, who do not admit that the negroes can ever be commingled with themselves, have forbidden them to be taught to
read and write under severe penalties; and as they will not
raise them   to their own level, they sink them as nearly as possible to that of the brutes."'*  The education of slaves amongst
the ancients prepared the way for emancipation.      The prohibition of the education of slaves amongst the moderns has naturally suggested the policy of holding them   in perpetual bondage; and laws and manners have conspired to interpose obstacles all but insuperable in the way of manumission.     Thus the
modern slave is cut off from the one great alleviation of his lot
-the hope of freedom.t
But there is yet another distinction between the slavery of
modern times and slavery as it was known among the progressive communities of former ages, which deserves to be noticed
— I mean the place which the slave trade fills in the organization of modern slavery.    Trading in slaves was doubtless practised by the ancients, and with sufficient barbarity.     But we
look in vain in the records of antiquity for a traffic which in
extent, in systematic character, and, above, all, in the function
discharged by it as the common support of countries breeding
and consuming human labour, which           can  with justice be
regarded as the analogue of the modern slave trade-of that
organized system which has been carried on between Guinea
and the coast of America, or of that between Virginia, the
Guinea of the New World, and the slave-consuming States of
the South and West.:     This peculiar outgrowth of the institu* Democracy int America, vol. ii. pp. 246, 247.
{ "In Aristotle himself we find suggested one of the greatest alleviations of which
slavery is susceptible. There ought to be held out to the slave, he says, the hope
of liberty as the reward of his service. Thus, by a gradual infiltration, the slave
population might pass into the free. It did so at Rome through the intermediate
stage of freedom; and the position of freed men at Rome in the later republic, and
even more under the empire, was such that the prospect of reaching it must have
been a great inducement to the slaves to acquiesce in their present lot; and it
would be an inducement which would have most weight with the highest class of
slaves."-Congreve's Politics of Aristotle, p. 497.: M. Dureau de la Malle, in a critical examination of the loose and rhetorical
statements of ancient authors and their modern critics, has dispelled much misconception respecting the extent of the ancient commerce in slaves. See his Economic
Politique des Romains, tom. i., pp. 246-269.




72                 THE SLAVE TRADE
tion forms a characteristic feature in modern slavery, and its
consequences, in connexion with the question which we are
considering, are of a very important kind.
The effects of the slave-trade in aggravating a hundredfold
all the evils of servitude have often been described. African
slave-hutnts, the horrors of the middle passage, the misery of
unhappy barbarians, accustomned to the wild freedom of their
native land, caught up and hurried away to a remote continent,
and compelled to toil for the rest of their days under the whip
of an alien taskmaster, have often been dwelt upon. So, also,
the story of human beings, reared amid the softening influences
of civilization, who, so soon as they arrive at the maturity of
their physical power, are, like so many cattle, shipped off to a
distant region of tropical heat there to be worked to deathof husbands separated fiom their wives, children fiom their
parents, brothers and sisters from each other-of exposure on
the auction-block and transfer to new masters and strange climates-all this happening not to heathen savages, but to men
and women capable of affection and fiiendship, and sensible to
moral suffering, —this story, I say, is familiar to us all; but my
object at present is to direct attention, not so much to the barbarous inhumanity of the slave-trade, whether foreign or domestic, as to what has not been so often noticed-the mode in which
it operates in giving increased coherence and stability to the
system of which it is a part. Now, it does this in two ways,
by bringing the resources of salubrious countries to supplement
the waste of human life in torrid regions; and, secondly, by
providing a new source of profit for slaveholders, which enables
theim to keep up the institution when, in the absence of this
resource, it would become unprofitable and disappear.
While countries depended for the supply of servile labour
upon the natural increase of their own slave population, there
existed an obvious limit to the range of the system and to the
hardships it was capable of inflicting. Where the character ot
the climate, or the nature of the work to be done, was such as
to be seriously prejudicial to human life, slavery, if recruited
from within, could only exist through great attention given to
the physical requirements of the slaves. Without this, it must
have become extinct by the destruction of its victims. But, a
commerce in slaves once established, these natural restraints
upon the fullest development of slavery are effectually removed.
The rice-grounds of Georgia or the swamps of the Mississippi
may be fatally injurious to the human constitution; but the
waste of human life, which the cultivation of these districts
necessitates, is not so great that it cannot be repaired from the




IN- ELATION TO THE OONSUMIXG COUNTRIES.              73
teeming preserves of Virginia and Kentucky. Considerations
of economy, moreover, which, under a natural system, afford
some security for humane treatment by identifying the nmaster's interest with the slave's preservation, when once trading
in slaves is practised, become reasons for racking to the
utmost the toil of the slave; for, when his place can at
once be supplied from foreign preserves, the duration of his
life becomes a matter of less moment than its productiveness
while it lasts. It is accordingly a maxim of slave management,
in slave-importing countries, that the most effective economy is
that which takes out of the Human chattel in the shortest space
of time the utmost amount of exertion it is capable of putting
forth.  " It is in tropical culture, where annual profits often
equal the whole capital of plantations, that negro life is most
recklessly sacrificed. It is the agriculture of the West Indies,
which has been for centuries prolific of fabulous wealth, which
has engulfed millions of the African race. It is in Cuba, at this
day, whose revenues are reckoned by millions, and whose planters are princes, that we see, in the servile class, the coarsest
fare, the most exhausting and unremitting toil, and even the
absolute destruction of a portion of its numbers every year, by
the slow torture of overwork and insufficient sleep and rest. In
our own country, is it in Maryland and Virginia that slaves fare
the worst, or is it in the sugar regions of Louisiana and Texas,
where the scale of profits suggests the calculation of using them
up in a given number of years as a matter of economy? Is it
not notorious, that the States upon tle Gulf of MIexico, in which
forced labour is most productive to those who own it, are made
use of by the northern slave States, not merely as markets in
which to dispose of slaves as a matter of profit, but as a Botany
Bay, furnished to their hands, to which their slaves are sent by
way of punishmentt?. "  The slave-trade thus affords the means
of extending the institution in its harshest form to countries in
which, without this support, it either could not have been permanently maintained at all, or only in a very mitigated form,
sustaining the waste of human life in tropical regions from the
hardier or healthier populations of barbarous countries and of
temperate climes.t
But the benefits of commerce are reciprocal, and if slavery
receives a new impulse from the slave-trade in the warm
* Progress of Slavery, pp. 132, 133.
f In this adaptation the slaveholders trace the finger of God. The Professor of
Agricultural Chemistry in the University of Georgia remarks on the " providential"
proportion between the untilled lands of the South, and the " unemployed power of
human muscles in Africa."-" I trace," he exclaims, " the growing demand for negro
muscles, bones, and brains to the good providence of God."




74                    DIVISION OF LABOUR
regions of the South, it acquires increased stability in        more
temperate countries through the same cause. We have already
seen the tendency of slave-labour to exhaust the soiil, and the
rapidity with which this process proceeds, reducing to the condition of wilderness districts which fifty years before were yet
untouched by the hand of cultivation.        Now, this would seem
to promise thae the reign of slavery, if ruinous, should at least
be brief. and we might expect that, when the soil had been
robbed of its fertility, the destroyer would retire from the region
which he had rendered desolate.        And such would be the fate
of slavery, were it depending exclusively on the soil for its support; but, when trading in human beings is once introduced, a
new source of profit is developed for the system, whi.ch renders
it in a great degree independent of the resources of the soil. It
is this, the profit developed by trading in slaves, and this alone,
which has enabled slavery in the older Slave States of North
America to survive the consequences of its own ravages.            In
Maryland     and  Virginia, perhaps also in the Carolinas and
Georgia, free institutions would long since have taken the place
of slavery, were it not that just as the crisis of the system had
arrived, the domestic slave-trade opened a door of escape from
a position which had become untenable.         The conjuncture was
peculiar, and would doubtless by Southern theologians be called
providential. The progress of devastation had reached the point
at which slave cultivation could no longer sustain itself. A considerable emigration of planters had actually taken place, and
the deserted fields were already receiving a new race of settlers from the regions of freedom.*      The long night of slavery
seemed to be passing away, and the dawn of a brighter day to
* The progress of this movement is thus described by the Southern Planter:Every farm was greatly impoverished-almost every estate was seriously impaired
-and some were involved in debt to nearly their value. Most of the proprietors had
died, leaving families in reduced circumstances, and in some cases in great straits.
No farm whether of a rilch or a poor proprietor had escaped great exhaustion, and
no property great dilapidation, unless because the proprietor had at first been too
poor to join in the former expensive habits of his wealthier neighbours. There was
nothing left to waste, but time and labour; and these continued to be wasted in the
now fruitless efforts to cultivate to profit, or to replace the fertility of soil which had
been destroyed. Luxury and expense had been greatly lessened. But on that
account the universal prostration was even the more apparent. Many mansions
were falling into decay. Few received any but trivial and indispensable repairs.
No new mansion was erected, and rarely any other farm-building of value.
There was still generally prevailing idleness among proprietors; and also an
abandonment of hope, which made every one desirous to sell his land and move
to the fertile and far West, and a general emigration and dispersion was only
prevented by the impossibility of finding purchasers for the lands, even at half
the then low estimate of market prices."  The consequences ate further described
by Mir. Olmsted:-" Notwithstanding a constant emigration of the decayed families,




BE TWEEN THE OLD AN D THE NEW STATES.                        75
have arrived, when suddenly the auspicious movement was
arrested. A vast extension of the territory of the United States,
opening new soils to Southern enterprise, exactly coincided with
the prohibition    of the external slave trade, and both fell in
with the crisis in the older States.        The result was a sudden
and remarkable rise in the price of slaves.        The problem    of the
planters' position was at once solved, and the domestic slavetrade commenced.        Slavery had robbed Virginia of the best
riches of her soil, but she still had a noble climate-a climate
which would fit her admirably for being the breeding place of
the South.     A  division of labour between the old and the new
states took place.     In the former the soil was extensively exhausted, but the climate was salubrious; in the latter the climate
was unfavourable to human life spent in severe toil, but the
soil was teeming with riches.       The old states therefore undertook the part of breeding and rearing slaves till they attained
to physical vigour, and the new that of using up in the development of their virgin resources the physical vigour which
had been thus obtained.*
It has been contended that the constant drain of slaves must
and of the more enterprising of the poor, the population steadily augmented.
If the apparent wealth of the country was not increasing, the foundation of a greater
material prosperity was being laid in the increase of the number of small but intelligent proprietors, and in the constantly growing necessity to abandon tobacco, and
substitute grains, or varied crops, as the staple productions of the country. The
very circumstance that reduced the old pseudo-wealthy proprietors was favourable
to this change, and to the application of intelligence to a more profitable disposal of
the remaining elements of wealth in the land. While multitudes abandoned their
ancestral acres in despair, or were driven from them by the recoil of their fathers'
inconsiderate expenditures, they were taken possession of by'new men,' endowed
with more hopefulness and energy if not more intelligence than the old."-Seaboard
Slave States, pp. 274-276.
* "The citizens of Virginia indignantly deny that they breed and rear slaves for
the purpose of selling them. Not only do those who interpose this denial do so, ir
the vast majority of cases, with a consciousness of truth; but, perhaps, in no single
instance can it be truly affirmed, that any individual slave is raised for the purpose
of being sold. The determination to rear slaves is formed and executed this year,
while the act of selling may not take place until twenty years hence. The two
things are probably never resolved and consummated as parts of one plan. The
fallacy of the denial interposed by the people of Virginia consists in this, that,
although no one slave may be raised with a special view to his sale, yet the entire
business of raising slaves is carried on with reference to the price of slaves, and
solely in consequence of the price of slaves; and this price depends, as they well
know, solely upon the domestic slave trade. Of the men who deny for themselves
individually the fact of raising slaves for the purpose of selling them, too many make
no scruple in insisting upon markets to keep up the price of slaves. The well-known
lamentation of a successful candidate for the governorship of Virginia, uttered without rebuke before a Virginia audience, that the closing of the mines of California to
slave labour had prevented the price of an able-bodied negro man from rising to five
thousand dollars, is only a single example of the freedom and publicity with which
the domestic slave trade is advocated in that state."-Progress of Slavery, pp.
147-148.




76            THE INTER)NAL SLA VE TRADE.
have its effect in diminishing, and ultimately exhausting, the
slave population in the states from which it proceeds; and on
this ground the domestic slave trade has found advocates
amongst persons who profess themselves opposed to slavery in
general, as tending to effect its extinction in the older states.
But such a view, if sincerely entertained, can only find credit
with those who are unacquainted with the laws of population,
and it has been amply refuted by the experience of half a century. Far from conducing in the slightest degree to the decline
of slavery in the older states, the inter-state traffic has tended
directly to establish it, and the slave population of those states
has steadily increased under the drain. The single exception
to this statement is the State of Delaware, and Delaware is the
only one of those states in which the sale or removal of slaves
is prohibited by law. The real character of the influence exercised by the internal trade on the breeding states was strikingly shown on the annexation of Texas. That event occurred
in 1844. It was followed by a great increase in the demand
for slaves for the South, and with what effect on the states
which supplied them? —with the effect of a positive increase in
their slave population. The slave population of the principal
slave-breeding state, Virginia, had declined in the decade previous to the annexation, but at the end of the following decade
it was found to have increased. The explanation of this, of
course, is perfectly simple. Slaves in the older states being
of little value for agricultural purposes, there is no inducement
to encourage their increase so long as agriculture is the sole
purpose to which they can be turned; but with the increase of
the slave trade, their value increases, and they are, therefore,
raised in greater numbers. The phenomenon need surprise no
one who has attended to the ordinary facts of emigrating countries. The United Kingdom is of all European countries that
from which emigration is greatest, and it is also that in which
population increases most rapidly. Emigration from Germany
is greater than from France, and population in Germany advances more rapidly than in France. Spain and Portugal were
once colonizing nations, and since they have ceased to colonize,
the rate at which their population increases has declined. A
more apposite illustration is that of cattle breeding. It has
never been found that the opening of new markets for cattle
has any tendency to exhaust the breed in the countries which
raise them; and, so long as human beings are subjected to precisely the same influences as cattle, it is idle to expect a different result. In each case the power of multiplication is the
same, and where the same inducement is offered, a corresponding result may be expected to follow.




OUTLINE OF THE ECONOMY OF SLA VE SOCIETIES.       77
CHAPTER V.
INTERNAL DEVELOP3ENT OF SLAVE SOCIETIES.
IT may be well here to trace briefly the salient features of the
system which in the previous chapters it has been attempted to
describe. A race superior to another in power and civilization
holds that other in bondage, compelling it to work for its profit.
The enslaved race, separated broadly from the dominant one in
its leading physical and moral attributes, is further distinguished from it by the indelible mark of colour, which prevents
the growth of mutual sympathy and transmits to posterity the
brand of its disgrace. Kept in compulsory ignorance and deprived of all motive for intelligent exertion, this people can
only furnish its possessors with the crudest form of manual
labour. It is thus rendered unfit for every branch of industry
which requires, in any but the lowest forms, the exercise of
care, intelligence, or skill, and is virtually restricted to the pur.
suit of agriculture. In agriculture it can only be turned to
profitable account under certain special conditions-in raising
crops of a peculiar kind and upon soils of more than average
fertility; while these by its thriftless methods it tends constantly to exhaust. The labour of the enslaved race is thus in
practice confined to the production of a few leading staples;
but, through the medium of foreign trade, these few commodities become the means of furnishing its masters with all the
conveniences and comforts of life-the product of intelligence
and skill in countries where labour is free. Further, it was
seen that the defects of servile labour are best neutralized, and
such advantages as it possesses best turned to account, where
the scale of the operations is large,-a circumstance, which,
by placing a premium on the employment of large capitals,
has gradually led to the accumulation of the whole wealth of
the country in the hands of a small number of persons. Four
million slaves have thus come into the possession of masters
less than one-tenth of their number, by whom they are held as
chattel property; while the rest of the dominant race, more
numerous than slaveholders and their slaves together, squat
over the vast area which slave labour is too unskilful to cultivate, where by hunting and fishing, by plunder or by lawless
adventure, they eke out a precarious livelihood. Three leading
elements are thus presented by the economy of the slave states
-a few planters cultivating the richest soils, a multitude of
slaves toiling for their profit, the bulk of the white population




78             NO ELE'MENT OF PROGRESS
dispersed in a semi-savage condition over a vast territory. In
course of time the system begins to bear its fruit. The more
fertile soils of the country, tasked again and again to render
the same products, at length become exhausted, and refuse any
longer to yield up their riches to servile hands; but there are
new soils within reach which the plough has not yet touched,
regions of high fertility, pre-eminently fitted for the cultivation
of slave products, bordering however on the tropics, and unfavourable to human life when engaged in severe toil. At this
point a new phase of the system discloses itself. A division of
labour takes place. A portion of the slaveholders with their
slave bands move forward to occupy the new territory, while
the remainder, holding to their old seats, become the breeders
of slaves for those who have left them, and take, as their part,
the repairing from their more healthy populations the waste of
slave life produced by tropical toil. Thus, as the domain of
slavery is extended, its organization becomes more complete,
and the fate of the slave population more harsh and hopeless.
Slavery in its simple and primitive form is developed into
slavery supported by a slave trade-into slavery expansive,
aggressive, destructive of human life, regardless of human ties,
-into slavery in its most dangerous and most atrocious form;
and for the system thus matured a secure basis is afforded by
the principles of population. Such is an outline of the economy of society in the Slave States of North America, as I have
ventured to describe it; and the condition of facts which it
discloses goes far, as it seems to me, to establish the conclusion
that it is a structure essentially different from any form of social life which has hitherto been known among progressive
communities, and one which, if allowed to proceed in its normal
development undisturbed by intervention from   without, can
only conduct to one issue-an organized barbarism of the most
relentless and formidable kind.
But it may be well to pursue this inquiry somewhat further.
If the germs of a future civilization are contained in the social
system which has been described, in what department of it are
they to be found?   Among the mean whites?     Among the
slaves? Among the slave masters?
The mean whites, as has been shown, are the natural growth
of the slave system; their existence and character flowing
necessarily from two facts-the slaves, which render the capitalists independent of their services,* and the wilderness, the
* "The rich," said General Marion, and in these few words he sketched the
whole working of slavery, "have no need of the poor, because they have their own
slaves to do their work."




IX SLA YE CO MMUNI TIES.             70
constant feature of slave countries, which enables them to exist
without engaging in regular work. There is no capital to support them as hired labourers, and they have the means of subsisting, in a semi-savage condition, without it.  Under these
circumstances, by what steps are they to advance to an improvement of their condition?
It will perhaps be thought that with a vast unappropriated
territory around them the mean whites may be expected in'
time to become peasant proprietors, and to cultivate the districts which they now merely occupy. This is undoubtedly
what would happen with an influx of Northern settlers. But
the mean whites lack for such a lot two indispensable requisites,
capital and industry. Had they the latter, they might perhaps
in time acquire the former; but regular industry is only known
to them as the vocation of slaves, and it is the one fate which
above all others they desire to avoid. They will for a time,
indeed, when pressed for food, their ordinary resources of
hunting or plunder failing them, hire themselves out for occasional services; but, so soon as they have satisfied the immediate need, they hasten to escape from the degradation of
industry, and are as eager as Indians to return to their
wilds.
Another means of redemption is sometimes imagined for
the mean whites. It is thought that, with the progress of
population in the Slave States, they will ultimately be forced
into competition with the slaves, and that, this competition
once effectually commenced, the whites once engaged in regular
industry, the superiority of free to servile labour will become
manifest, and will gradually lead to the displacement of the
latter. In this way, it is anticipated, the problem of abolishing
slavery, and that of elevating the white population, may in the
natural course of events be effectually solved by the same process. Unfortunately this cheering view is entirely unsustained
by any foundation of fact. Population in slave communities
follows laws of growth of its own. It increases, it is true, but
by dispersion, not by concentration, and consequently the pressure upon the poor white, which it is assumed will force him
into competition with the slave, is never likely to be greater
than at the present moment. In fact it has now in many districts
reached the starvation point, but without producing any of the
effects which are anticipated from it.  But, again, the free
labour of the South possesses none of that superiority to slave
labour, which is characteristic of free labour when reared in
free communities.  This is a distinction which in economic




80       FREE LABOUR THE BEST PROD UCTI E A GENT.
reasonings on slavery is frequently overlooked,* but which it
is all-important to bear in mind. The free labourer reared in
free communities, energetic, intelligent, animated by the impulse of acquiring property, and trained to habits of thrift, is
the best productive agent in the world, and, when brought into
competition with the slave, will, except under very exceptional
circumstances (such as existed when          the   continent was first
settled), prove more than       a match     for him.      But the free
labourer of the South, blighted physically and morally by the
presence of slavery, and trained in habits more suited to savage
than to industrial life, easily succumbs in the competition. In
fact the experiment is being constantly tried in the Southern
States, and   always with     the same result.        On   the relative
merits of slave and free labour-such free labour as the Slave
States can produce-there is but one opinion among the planters.
It is universally agreed that the labour of the mean whitest is
more inefficient, more       unreliable, more unmanageable than
even the crude efforts of the slaves.        If slavery in the South
is to be displaced by free industry, it can never be through the
competition of such free industry as this.
* Thus a writer in the Saturday Review (Nov. 2, 1861), in noticing. a work of
Mr. Olmsted's, reasons as follows:-"It would be hasty to infer, as a great many
philanthropists have done, that free labour would answer better than slave labour
in the South. The Southern planters are keen enough speculators to have discovered the fact if it were true. In reality the experiment has been tried and resulted
in favour of slave labour."  The experiment no doubt has been tried, and with the
result alleged; but how far the experiment, as it has been conducted, is conclusive,
the reader will be enabled to judge when he reads the following passage from Mr.
Olmsted, in a review of one of whose works the above argument occurred:-" The
labourer, who in New York gave a certain amount of labour for his wages in a day,
soon finds in Virginia that the ordinary measure of labour is smaller than in New
York: a' day's work' or a month's does not mean the same that it did in New
York. He naturally adapts his wares to the market.... The labourer, finding
that the capitalists of Virginia are accustomed to pay for a poor article at a high
price, prefers to furnish them the poor article at their usual price, rather than a
better article, unless at a more than correspondingly better price...  Now let the
white labourer come here from the North or from Europe-his nature demands a
social life-shall he associate with the poor, slavish, degraded negro, with whom
labour and punishment are almost synonymous? or shall he be the friend and companion of the white man?... Associating with either or both, is it not inevitable
that he will be rapidly demoralized-that he will soon learn to hate labour, give as
little of it for his hire as he can, become base, cowardly, faithless,-' worse than a
nigger'?" The case is simple. The moral atmosphere generated by slavery in the
South corrupts the free labourer, whether native or imported: thus corrupted, he
fails in competition with the slave; but does it follow from this that, if slavery no
longer existed, free labour would be less efficient in the South than slave labour is
at present? For that is the point.
f And it may be added, of such free labourers as will consent to the degradation
of living in a slave community.




SPARSENESS OF POPILATION.              81
It does not appear, therefore, in what manner habits of regular industry can ever be acquired by the mass of the population of the Southern States while under a slave regimve. The
demoralization produced by the presence of a degraded class
renders the white man at once an unwilling and an inefficient
labourer; and the external incidents of slavery afford him the
means of existing without engaging in regular toil. The question has, in truth, passed beyond the region of speculation.
For two hundred years it has been submitted to the proof; and
the mean whites are as far now from having made any progress in habits of regular industry as they were at the commencenient of the period.
The result, then, at which we arrive is, that regular industry
is not to be expected from the mass of the free people of the
Southern States while slavery continues. Let us for a moment
reflect upon some of the- consequences involved in this single
fact.
And, first, it is evident that under these conditions population
in the Slave States must ever remain sparse; for density of
population is the result of concentrated wealth, and concentrated wealth flows from the steady pursuit of systematic industry.  What are the facts? Over the whole area of the
Slave States the average density of population does not exceed
11.29 persons to the square mile. It is true a large portion of
the region included in this average has but recently been
acquired, and cannot be considered as having yet received its
full complement of inhabitants. Let us, then, confine our observations to the older states. If population be capable of
becoming dense under slave institutions, it should have realized;
this condition in Virginia. This state has been for two hundred and fifty years the seat of the Anglo-Saxon race, and the
chosen field of its industry: it abounds in natural advantages;
its climate is remarkably salubrious. What, then, is the result
of the experiment in Virginia? It appears from the census of
1850, that, after an industrial career of two hundred and fifty
years, this country contained an average of 23 persons to the.
square mile! This, however, does not adequately represent
the case; for of these 23 persons one-third on an average were
slaves. Deducting these, the density of population in Virginia-of population among whom knowledge is not considered
contraband, of population who are capable of mixing together
as fellow-citizen (which is the point essential to our argument).
-the density of this population is represented by the proportion of 15 persons to the square mile! Compare this with the
progress of population in an area of the Free States naturally
6




82             SPARSENESS OF POPULATION.
less favourable to the multiplication of people and not so long
settled,-with the area comprised by Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania
-and what do we find? Population has here, in a shorter
time, and under external conditions less favourable, reached an
average density of 82 persons to the square mile. For equal
areas in the Free and Slave States there are thus considerably
more than five persons capable of taking part in the business
of civilized life in the former for one in the latter.. Population
under slave institutions, in fact, only increases by dispersion.
Fifteen persons to the square mile represent the maximum
density which population under the most favourable circumstances is, with slavery, capable of attaining.*   Now, this
state of things is incompatible with civilized progress.  Under
such conditions social intercourse cannot exist; popular education becomes impracticable; roads, canals, railways, must be
losing speculations; in short, all the civilizing agencies of
highest value are, by the very nature of the case, excluded.
Among a people so dispersed, for example, how is popular edncation to be carried on? Not to dwell upon the obstacles presented to the diffusion of knowledge by the mental habits of a
people accustomed to the life of the mean whites-a life alternating between listless vagrancy and the excitement of marauding expeditions-the mere physical difficulties of the problem
— the task of bringing together from a population so dispersed
the materials of a school-would be such as might,,well discourage the most determined zeal. In point of fact, all"attempts
at conveying education to the bulk of the people in the Southern States have proved costly failures. Experiments have
been made in some of the states, and always with the same
result.t  The moral and physical difficulties of the problem
have proved insuperable; and the mass of the people remains,
and under the present social system ever must remain, entirely
uninstructed.
Nor is this the only way in which sparseness of population
operates unfavourably on the intellectual progress of a people.
Scarcely less important than school teaching, as instruments of
popular education, are the societies established for the mutual
improvement of those who take part in them, such as mecha* The density of population in Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky, is no doubt
greater than this; but it is because these States are occupied, over considerable districts, with a free labouring peasantry, because in fact in these districts slavery has
been abolished. This is the case with Western Virginia also to a considerable extent, and doubtless raises the average of the whole country above what a purely
servile regime would produce.
f See Olmsted's Seaboard Slave States, pp. 291, 292, 366, 361, 503.




DISTASTE FOR IND USTR Y.                     83
nics' institutes, and literary and scientific associations, of which
such extensive use is made in this country and in the Northern
States.  But from   this efficacious mode of awakening intelligence, a people, whose social institutions prevent it from attaining greater concentration than is reached by the people of the
Southll, is entirely excluded.:*
Lastly, how are the means of communication to be developed under such conditions?    How are railways to he made
profitable in a population of fifteen persons to the square mile 
Railways, no doubt, have been made in the South, but with
more advantage to the travellers than to the shareholders.     In
South Carolina a train has been known to travel a hundred
miles with a single passenger.t
The mean whites seem     thus, under an inexorable law, to be
bound to their present fate by the same chain which holds the
slave to his.  Slavery produces distaste for industry.   Distaste
for industry, coexisting with a wilderness which is also the fruit
of slavery, disperses population over vast areas as the one condition of its increase.  Among such a people the requisites of
progress do not exist; the very elements of civilization are
wanting.
If, then, society is to advance in the South, we must look
somewhere else than among the mass of the white population
for the motive principle which is to propel it.   And where are
we to look? Southern society furnishes but two other elements
-the slaves and their masters.        What germ     of hope does
either of these present?   If civilization is to spring up among
the negro race, it will scarcely be contended that this will happen while they are still slaves; and if the present ruling class
are ever to rise above the existing type, it must be in some
other capacity than as slaveholders.   The whole question therefore turns ultimately on the chances of slave emancipation,
Slave emancipation may, of course, be forced upon the South
by pressure from without; but the point which we have now
to consider is the prospect of this result being attained in the
natural course of its internal development.
* Some statistics bearing upon this aspect of the question have been given by
Mr. Helper, which are sufficiently striking. It appears that the number of public
libraries throughout the whole of the Slave States are only 695 against 14,911 in
the Free States; or about 1 public library in the South for 21 in the North. Again,
the number of volumes in public libraries in th8 Slave States is 649,577; while the
number in public libraries in the Free States is 3,888,284; that is to say, in the proportion of about 1 to 6.-(HIelper's Impending Crisis, p. 337.) Probably, were the
quality of the literature as well as the quantity given, the result would be still more
significant.
f See Stirling's Lettersfrom the Slave States, p 265.




84           OPBSTA CLES TO EMANCIPATIONY
And first let us observe the inherent difficulty of tie problem. It was shown in a former chapter that in the system of
North American slavery, obstacles exist to the emancipation of
the slave which had no place among the ancients. It may now
be added that the difficulties of slave emancipation in the present Slave States are far greater than those which were successfully encountered in the Northern. Owing to causes already
explained, slavery had never taken very firm root in the North:
it was becoming, with the growth of society, constantly less
profitable: the total number of slaves formed but a small fraction of the whole population: above all, the Northern States
had in the markets of the South a ready means of ridding
themselves, at trifling loss, of a class which had become an
incumbrance. For, to borrow the words of De Tocqueville,
the overthrow of slavery in the Northern States was effected
"by abolishing the principle of slavery, not by setting the
slaves free." The Northern people did not emancipate negroes
who were enslaved, but they provided for the future extinction
of slavery by legislating for the freedom of their offspring.
The operation of this plan may be readily supposed. The
future offspring of the slave having by the law of a particular
state been declared free, the slave himself lost a portion of his
value in that state. But in the South these laws bad no force,
and consequently in the South the value of the slave was unaltered by the change. The effect, therefore, of the Northern
measures of abolition was, for the most part, simply to transfer
Northern slaves to Southern markets. In this way, by an easy
process, without incurring any social danger, and at slight
pecuniary loss, the Northern States got rid of slavery. The
problem of enfranchisement in the South is of a very different
character. Slavery, instead of being, as it always was in the
North, but one, and an unimportant one, among many modes
of industry, is there virtually the sole industrial instrument'
instead of comprising an insignificant fraction of the whole
population, it comprises throughout the whole South one-third,
and in some States one-half: it numbers altogether four millions
of people: lastly, the South is wholly without that easy means
of shuffling off slavery which its own markets provided for the
North. The two cases are thus wholly unlike, and the spontaneous disappearance of slavery from the Northern section of
the Union gives little ground to hope for a similar result in the
present Slave States.
And still less warranted are we in expecting a policy of
emancipation from the South by the history of British emancipation in the West Indies; for that event was not brought




OBSTACLES TO E.IANCIPATION.                          85
about in the natural course of social improvement in those
islands, but was forced upon them by the mother nation, in the
face of the protests and remonstrances of their ruling classes.
Instead of being the natural result of principles called into action
under slave institutions, it was only accomplished with difficulty
through the direct and forcible interposition of an external authority.
So far as to ancient and modern precedents: they are palpably inapplicable to the present case. But there are those who
anticipate the growth of a liberal policy in the South from the
gradual operation of economic causes in ultimately identifying
the interests of planters with those of the general community.*
It will be worth while briefly to examine the argument which
is founded upon this view of the case. It is said that free labour
(regarded from    a purely economic point of view-moral considerations apart) being superior to slave labour, and this principle being    exemplified by the whole industrial history of the
Northern and Southern States-the former, though naturally
less fertile, having far outstripped the latter in the race of material prosperity-the truth must ultimately be recognised by
the slaveholders themselves, and that, so soon as this happens,
they will be led by self-interest to adopt a policy of emancipation.   The case may     indeed be put more strongly than this;
for slavery has not merely thwarted the general prosperity of
the South, it may even be shown to have operated to the special
detriment of the particular class for whose exclusive behoof it
is maintained.    For the slaveholders of the South are also its
landed   proprietors, and the uniform       effect of slavery   (as has
* Mr. Stirling relies upon the following considerations as containing the solution
of the problem. " Within the last ten or fifteen years the value of slaves has risen
fifty per cent. at least. During the same time the price of bacon has risen 100 to
200 percent. Let this process only be continued for ten years longer, and where
will be the profits of the cotton-planter? And here we may perhaps find the longlooked-for solution of the nigger question. When slave-labour becomes unprofitable
the slave will be emancipated. South Carolina herself will turn abolitionist when
slavery ceases to pay. When she finds that a brutalized race cannot and will not
give as much efficient labour for the money as a hired class of superior workers, it is
possible that she may lay aside the cowhide, and offer wages to her niggers."-Letters
from Slave States, pp. 182, 183.  The argument is palpably fallacious. It is the
same as if one were to argue that the high rent of land must ultimately destroy
agriculture. In each case the high price of the natural agent-land or slaves-results from the comparative profitableness of capital invested in the employment of
one or the other. When the high price of land leads landlords to throw up their
estates, an analogous course of conduct may be expected from slaveholders from an
analogous inducement.  The high price of the slave's food is scarcely to the point,
since this must tell also against the free labourer: at all events, so long as the slave
fetches any price, it is a proof that he is considered to be worth at least more than
his keep.




86     ECONOXIC MGOTIVES NOT TO BE RELIED ON.
been shown in a former part of this essay) has been, by confining cultivation to the rich soils, to prevent the growth of
rent.  So powerfully, indeed, has this cause operated, that it
has been calculated, apparently upon good grounds,* that the
mere difference in rent between the returns from lands of equal
quality in the Free and Slave States, would be more than sufficient to buy up the whole slave property of the South. By the
abolition of slavery in that country, therefore, not merely would
the general prosperity of the inhabitants be promoted, but,
by the rise of rent which would be the consequence of this
measure, there would result to slaveholders a special gain-a
gain which, it may reasonably be thought, would form a liberal compensation for any temporary inconvenience they might
suffer from the change. Considerations so obvious, it is argued,
must in the end have their effect on the minds of the ruling
class in the South, and must lead them before long to abolish a
system which is fraught with such baleful effects to the country
and to themselves.
To the soundness of this reasoning, so far as it proves the
beneficial results which would follow from the abolition of slavery, I do not think that any valid objection can be offered.
It appears to me as demonstrable as any proposition in Euclid,
that, extending our view over some generations, slavery has
acted injuriously on every class and every interest in the South,
and that its continued maintenance is absolutely incompatible
with the full development of the resources of the country.
Nevertheless it would, I conceive, be infinitely precarious from
this position to infer that slaveholders will ever be induced
voluntarily to abolish slavery. The slaveholders of the South
are perfectly aware of the superior prosperity of the Free
States: it is with them. a subject of bitter mortification and
envy; but, with the most conclusive evidence before their eyes,
they persist in attributing this to every cause but the right one.
Supposing, however, that they are in the end convinced, by
such arguments as I have referred to, of the injurious effects of
their system, and that they are satisfied that the immediate loss
from the abolition of slavery would be more than made good
to their descendants in the future increase in the value of their
land, still I apprehend that they would be as far as ever from
being won over to a policy of abolition. For, whatever be the
future advantages which may be expected from the change,
it is vain to deny that the transition from slavery to freedom
could not be effected without great inconvenience, loss, and,
doubtless, in many cases, ruin, to the present race of slave* See Olmste's Seaboard Slave States, pp. 1V0, 171.




SLA VERY A POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INSTRUMENiT.        87
holders. The accumulated results of two hundred years of
tyranny, cruelty, and disregard of the first of human rights are
not thus easily evaded. A sacrifice there would need to be.*
And it is vain to expect that slaveholders, of whose system
selfishness is the fundamental principle, and whose profits are
purchased, not merely at the cost of misery to the whole race
of living men, but at the cost of the future prosperity of their
own descendants, whose interests in the soil their spendthrift
system anticipates-it is vain to expect that they of all men
should voluntarily devote themselves for the good of their
country. So long, therefore, as slaveholders have at their disposal an unlimited extent of fertile soil suited to slave products,
it is, I think, vain to hope that the question of slavery will ever
find its solution in economic motives. But, in truth, it is idle
to argue this question on purely economic grounds. It is not
simply as a productive instrument that slavery is valued by its
supporters. It is far rather for its social and political resultsas the means of upholding a form of society in which slaveholders are the sole depositaries of social prestige and political
power, as the " corner stone 9 of an edifice'of which they are
the masters-that the system is prized. Abolish slavery and
you introduce a new order of things, in which the ascendancy
of the men who now rulb in the South would be at an end.
An immigration of new men would set in rapidly from various
quarters. The planters and their adherents would soon be
placed in a hopeless minority in their old dominions. New
interests would take root and grow; new social ideas would
germinate; new political combinations would be formed; and
the power and hopes of the party which has long swayed the
politics of the Union, and which now seeks to break loose from
that Union in order to secure a free career for the accomplishment of bolder designs, would be gone for ever. It is this
which constitutes the real strength of slavery in the Southern
States, and which precludes even the momentary admission by
the dominant party there of any proposition which has abolition
for its object.
And in view of this aspect of North American slavery, we
may see how perfectly futile, how absolutely childish, is the
suggestion, that the Slave party should be bought ov3'r by the
Federal government through the offer of a liberal compensation,
after the precedent of Great Britain dealing with her West
Indian possessions. Putting aside the magnitude of the sum,
* The West Indian experiment, I conceive, proves this as conclusively as it proves
that the ultimate and permanent results of emancipation are beneficial to the whole
country in the highest degree.




88                SLAVE CODE OF ETHICS.
which, at the price of slaves which recently prevailed, would
certainly not be less than 3S,00,0 000 sterling, and the impossibility of raising it in the present state of American credit, who
that knows anything of the aims of the Southern party can suppose that the proposal, if made, would not be rejected with
scorn X   The suggestion supposes tlat men who have long
held paramount influence over the North American continent,
and who are probably now meditating plans of annexation and
conquest, would at once abandon their position as the chiefs of
an  independent confederacy, and     forego their   ambitious
schemes, for what?-for a suni of money which, if well invested,
might perhaps enable them and their descendants to vegetate
in peaceful obscurity!
l3nt there is yet another infiluence to be taken account of in
arguing this question. Slavery has not merely determined the
general form and character of the social and political economy
of the Southern States, it has entered into the soul of the people, and has generated a code of ethics and a type of Christianity adapted to its peculiar requirements.
At the epoch of the revolution, as has been already intimated,
slavery was regarded by all the eminent men who took part in
that movement as essentially an evil-an evil which might
indeed be palliated as having come down to that generation from
an earlier and less enlightened age, and which, having intwined
itself with the institutions of the country, required to be delicately dealt with-but still an evil, indefensible on moral and
religious grounds, and which ought not to be permanently
endured. The Convention of 1774 unanimously condemned the
practice of holding slaves. The Convention of 17 87, while legislating for the continuance of slavery, resolved to exclude from
the constitution the word " slave," lest it should be thought that
the American nation gave any sanction to " the idea that there
*could be property in men."  Washington, a native of the South
and a slaveholder, declared it to be among his first wishes to see
slavery abolished by law, and in his will provided for the emancipation of his slaves.  Jefferson, also a native of the South and
* I am speaking, of course, of the reception which the proposition would meet
with while the Slave party were yet triumphant. What it might be induced to
accept if thoroughly beaten by the North, is another question which it is not necessary here to discuss.
Since these observations were written, the news of Mr. Lincoln's project of emancipation has arrived. It will be seen that the condition stated in the last sentence
-the subjugation of the South-is precisely the circumstance which gives to that
scheme the least chance of success. Mr. Lincoln knew too well the men with whom
he had to deal to think of making such an offer till he was, or thought himself, in a
position to enforce it.




GRO WTH OF THE PR O-SLA V'ER Y SENTIIENT.      89
a slaveholder, framed a plan of abolition, and declared that in
the presence of slavery " he trembled for his country when he
reflected that God was just;" that in the event of a rising of
slaves,' the Almighty had no attribute which could take side
with slaveowners in such a contest."  The other leading statesmen of that time, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Patrick Henry, the Randolphs, MIonroe, whether from the North or from
the South, wliether agreeing or not in their views on the practi.
cal mode of dealing with the institution, alike concurred in
reprobating at least the principle of slavery.
Bnt it seems impossible that a whole people should live
permanently in contemplation of a system which does violence
to its moral instincts. One of two results will happen. Either
its moral instincts will lead it to reform the institution which
offends them, or those instincts will be perverted, and become
authorities for what in their unsophisticated condition they
condemned. The latter alternative is that which has happened
in the Southern States. Slavery is no longer regarded there as
a barbarous institution, to be palliated with whispering humbleness as an inheritance from a ruder age; but rather as a system admirable for its intrinsic excellence, worthy to be upheld
and propagated, the last and completest result of time.*  The
right of the white man to hold the negro in permanent thraldom, to compel him to work for his profit, to keep him in
enforced ignorance, to sell him, to flog him, and if need be, to
kill him, to separate him at pleasure from his wife and children, to transport him for no crime to a remote region where he
is in a few years worked to death-this is now propounded as
a grand discovery in ethical and political science, made for the
first tine by the enlightened leaders of the Southern Confederation, and recommended by that philanthropic body to all
civilized nations for their adoption. This Confederation, which
is the opprobrium of the age, puts itself forward as a model for
its imitation, and calmly awaits the tardy applause of mankind.
" The ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old
Constitution," says the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, "were that the enslavement of the African race was in
violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle,
socially, morally, and politically.  Our new government is
founded on exactly opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its
corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not
t It is instructive to observe the gradation by which this advanced point has been
reached. Thirty years ago it was contended "that there was not the slightest
moral turpitude in holding slaves under existing circumstances in the South."Quarte:ly Review, Sept. and Dec., 1832.




90          SLA YER Y A FASHIONABLE TASTE.
equal to the white man; that slavery-subordination to the
superior race —is his natural and moral condition.  Tais, our
Government is the first in the histo y of the world based upon
this great physical, philosophical, andd moral truth. It is upon
this our social fabric is firmly planted, and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of thle full recognition of this
principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.
This stone which was rejected by the first builders'is become
the chief stone of the corner' in onr new edifice."* Opinion in the
South has long passed beyond the stage at which slavery needs
to be defended by argument. The subject is now never touched but in a strain such as the freedom conquered at Marathon
and Platea inspired in the orators of Athens. It is "the
beneficentsource and wholesome foundation of our civilization;"
an institution, " moral and civilizing, useful at once to blacks
and whites."  "To suppress slavery would be to throw back
civilization two hundred years."  " It is not a moral evil. It
is the Lord's doing, and marvellous in our eyes...It is by
divine appointment."
But slavery in the South is something more than a moral
and political principle: it has become a fashionable taste, a
social passion. The possession of a slave in the South carries
with it the same sort of prestige as the possession of land in this
country, as the possession of a horse among the Arabs: it
brings the owner into connexion with the privileged class and
forms a presumption that he has attained a certain social position. Slaves have thus in the South acquired a factitious
value, and are coveted with an eagerness far beyond what the
intrinsic utility of their services would explain. A Chancellor
of South Carolina describes slavery as in accordance with " the
proudest and most deeply cherished feelings" of his countrymen-"' feelings, which others, if they will, may call prejudices."
A governor of Kansas declares that he "loves " the institution,
and that he votes for it because he "loves" it. Nor are
these sentiments confined to the slaveholding minority. The
all-important circumstance is that they are shared equally by
the whole white population. Far from reprobating a system
which has deprived them of the natural means of rising in the
scale of humanity, they fall in with the prevailing modes of
thought, and are warm   admirers, and, when need arises,
effective defenders, of an institution which has been their curse.
To be the owner of a slave is the chief object of the poor white's
* Speech of Mr. A. H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy,
delivered March, 1861.




HOPELESSNESS OF THE SLA VE'S POSITION.       91
ambition; " quot servos pascit?" the one criterion by which he
weighs the worth of his envied superiors in the social scale.
Such has been the course of opinion on the subject of slavery
in the Southern States. The progress of events, far from conducing to the gradual mitigation and ultimate extinction of the
system, has tended distinctly in the opposite direction-to the
aggravation of its worst evils and the consolidation of its
strengtl. The extension of the area subject to the Slave Power
and the increase in the slave population have augmented at
once the inducements for retaining the institution and the
difficulty of getting rid of it; while the ideas of successive
generations, bred up in its presence and under the influence
of the interests to which it has given birth, have provided for it
in the minds of the people a moral support. The result is, that
the position of the slave in the Southern States at the present
time, so far as it depends upon the will and power of his masters, is in all respects more hopeless than it has ever been in
any former age, or in any other quarter of the world. A Fugitive Slave law, which throws into shade the former atrocities
of slavery, has been enacted, and until the recent disturbances
was strictly enforced. The education of the negro is more
than ever rigorously proscribed. Emancipation finds in the
growth of fanatical pro-slavery opinions obstacles more formidable even than in the laws. Propositions have been entertained
by the legislatures in some states for reducing all free coloured
persons to slavery by one wholesale enactment; in others these
people have been banished from the state under pain of this
fate. Everything in the laws, in the customs, in the education
of the people, has been contrived with the single view of degrading the negro to the level of the brute, and blotting out
from his mind the hope and even the idea of freedom.
The thoroughness-the absolute disregard of all consequences
with which this purpose has been pursued, is but little understood in this country.  History can supply no instance of a
despotism more complete and searching than that which for
some years past has prevailed in the Southern States. Since
the attempt of John Brown at Harper's Ferry, its oppression
has reached a height which can only be adequately described
as a reign of terror. It is long since freedom of discussion on
any question connected with slavery would have been tolerated.
But it is not merely freedom of discussion which is now prohibited. The design seems to have been formed of putting
down freedom of thought, and of banishing from the South
every trace of dissentient opinion. A system of espionage has
been organized. The mail bags have in many states been freely




92                             ERORISu.
opened, and the postmasters of petty villages have exercised a
free discretion in giving or withholding the documents entrusted
to their care.    In the more sonthern states vigilance committees have been established en pernmanence.           Before these selfconstituted tribunals persons of unblemished reputation             and
inoffensive manners have been summoned, and, on a few days'
notice, for no other offence than that of being known to entertain sentiments unfavourable to slavery, have been banished
from the state where they resided; and this in direct violation
of a specific provision of the Constitution of the United States.*
Clergymen, who have broken no law, fbr merely discharging
their duties according to their consciences, have been arrested,
thrown into prison, and visited with ignominious punishment.
Travellers, who have incautiously, in ignorance of the intensity
of the popular feeling, ventured to give temperate expression
to anti-slavery opinions, have been seized by the mob, tarred
and feathered, ducked, flogged, and in some instances hanged.
Nay, so sensitively jealous has the feeling of the South become,
that the slightest link of connexion with a suspected localityto have resided in the North, to have sent one's children to a
Northern school-is sufficient to secure expulsion from a slave
state.   An abolitionist in the ethics of the South is the vilest of
all human beings, and every one is an abolitionist who does not
reside in a slave state and share to the full the prevailing proslavery sentiment.t      Such is the point which civilization has
reached under slave institutions.        At this cost the system       is
maintained.T
* "The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities
of citizens in the several states."
f It may readily be conceived that Southern intolerance did not relax as the great
social schism approached its crisis. M. Cucheval-Clarigny gives the following vivid
sketch of the measures by which unionist sentiment was overborne in the South:
"Chaque jour on voyait arriver, dans les etats du centre ou de l'ouest, des gens
qui avaient 6te d6nonces comme mal pensans, et qui avaient recu, par lettre
anonyme, l'invitation d'emigrer dans les vingt-quatre heures, sous peine de voir leur
maison incendiee et de recevoir un coup de couteau. Les journaux de la NouvelleOrleans, qui combattaient la separation, furent contraints l'un apres l'autre de cesser
leur publication ou de changer completement de langage. Dans les villes un peu
importantes du sud, des bandes armees parcouraient les rues, prcededes d'un drapeau
avec le palmier, et des menaces de mort etaient profderes devant les maisons des
gens suspects d'attachement a l'Union. Quand une legislature paraissait hesiter
devant un vote belliquenx, on tenait des reunions publiques pour gourmander sa
lenteur, et on lui adresacit des objurgations. On ne parlait de rien moins en effet
dans certains 6tats que de l';"e voter des mesures d'exception, l'emprisonnement ou
l'exile des suspects, et la confiscation de leurs biens."-Annuaire des Deux Mondes,
1860, p. 617.
t The Reign of Terror in the South, &c. passim; also Reports of the American Anti
Slavery Society, for the years 1857-50.




ITS AGGRESSIVE CHARACTER.                93
CHAPTER VI.
EXTERNAL POLICY OF SLAVE SOCIETIES.
IN the foregoing chapters an attempt has been made to analyze
the system of society presented in the Slave States, and to
ascertain the direction in which, under ordinary circumstances,
and in the absence of intervention from without, the development of such a system proceeds; and the result of an examination, as well of the several elements of which the whole
society is composed as of their joint action, has been to show
that it is essentially retrograde in its character, containing
within it no germs from which improvement can grow, and no
forces competent to counteract those which press it downwards.
In the remaining portion of this essay I shall endeavour to
exhibit the working of this system in the politics of the Union;
and as, in relation to the people who compose it, the social
system of the Slave States has been seen to be retrograde, so,
in relation to other societies with which it may come into
contact, it will be found to be aggressive-to be constantly
urged by exigencies, which it cannot control, to extend its
territory, and by an ambition not less inevitable to augment
its power.
The aggressive character of a social system deriving its
strength from slavery-that is to say of a Slave Power-proceeds primarily from the vell-known economic fact, already
more than once adverted to-the necessary limitation of slaveculture to soils of more than average richness, combined with
its tendency to exhaust them. It results from this that societies
based upon slavery cannot, like those founded upon free industrial institutions, take root, grow, and flourish upon a limited
area. To secure their vigour, their roots must be always
spreading. A constant supply of fresh soils of high fertility
becomes, therefore, an indispensable requisite for the permanent industrial success of such societies. This is a fundamental
principle in their political economy, and one which, we shall
find, exercises a powerful influence on the course of their general history.  As the principle will hereafter be frequently
referred to, it is important to observe that it is one about which
no controversy can be said to exist, being as fully recognized
by the upholders as by the opponents of slavery. "' There is
not a slaveholder," says Judge Warner of Georgia, "in this




94                SLA VERY MIGRA TOR Y.
house or out of it, but who knows perfectly well that, whenever slavery is confined within certain specified limits, its future
existence is doomed; it is only a question of time as to its final
destruction. You may take any single slaveholding county in
the Southern States, in which the great staples of cotton and
sugar are cultivated to any extent, and confine the present
slave population within the limits of that county. Sucll is the
rapid natural increase of the slaves, and the rapid exhaustion
of the soil in the cultivation of those crops (which add so much
to the commercial wealth of the country), that in a few years
it would be impossible to support them within the limits of
such county. Both master and slave would be starved out;
and what would be the practical effect in any one county, the
same result would happen to all the slaveholding States. Slavery cannot be confined within certain specified limits without
producing the destruction of both master and slave; it requires
fresh lands, plenty of wood and water, not only for the comfort
and happiness of the slave, but for the benefit of the owner."
It is further important to observe that the internal organization of slave societies adapts them in a peculiar manner for a
career of constant expansion. "In free communities property
becomes fixed in edifices, in machinery, and in improvements
of the soil. In slave communities there is scarcely any property except slaves, and they are easily movable. The freeman embellishes his home; the slaveiolder finds nothing to
bind him to soils which he has exhausted. Freedom is enterprising, but not migratory as slavery is. It is not in the nature
of slavery to become attached to place. It is nomadic. The
slaveholder leaves his impoverished fields with as little reluctance as the ancient Scythian abandoned cropped pastures for
fresh ones, and slaves are moved as readily as flocks and
herds."t'
Slavery thus requires for its success a constantly expanding
field. It is also to be noted that within this field it is exclusive
of all other industrial systems. It is true, indeed, that there
exists in certain districts through the Slave States a considerable free population engaged in regular industry; but this forms
no real exception to the essential exclusiveness of slave societies. These settlements of free farmers occur only where, from
some cause, slavery has disappeared from tracts of country
large enough to form the abode of distinct societies; as in
Western Virginia, where the exhaustion of the soil, under a
long continued cultivation by slaves, compelled at one time an
* Progress of Slavery, p. 227.        J Ibid., p. 8.




THE RACE OF COLONIZATION.                   95
extensive emigration of planters; or along the slopes of the
Alleghanies, where the land is better suited to cereal crops than
to cotton or tobacco; or, again, in Texas, where the available
slave force has not been sufficient to enable planters to appropriate the vast regions suddenly placed at their disposal. In
these cases, no doubt, colonies of free peasants are to be found
in the midst of the Slave States; but there is here no real
intermixture of the two forms of society.  The free settlements
remain in the Slave States as distinct communities -oases of
freedom in the vast desert of slavery-without bond of interest
or sympathy to connect them with the surrounding population.
Slave society is thus essentially exclusive of all other forms of
social life.t  Now this characteristic of it is as well understood
by the free population of the Northern States, as is the necessity to their system of a constantly expanding area by the
planters of the South; and hence it has happened that, whenever free and slave societies have come into contact on the
same field, a mutual antagonism has sprung up between them.
Each has endeavoured to outstrip the other in the career of
colonization, and, by first occupying the ground, to keep the
field open for its future expansion against the encroachments
of its rival.  " It has thus," says AMr. Weston, " become a race
whether the negro from    Texas and Arkansas, or the white
labourer from Kansas and the free West, shall first reach New
Mexico and the Gulf of California."
But it is less in the economic, than in the moral and social,
attributes of slave societies that we must look for the motive
principle of their aggressive ambition.  That which the necessity for fresh soils is to the political economy of such communities, a lust of power is to their morality.  The slaveholder
lives from  infancy in an atmosphere of despotism.    He sees
around him none but abject creatures, who, under fearful penalties to be inflicted by himself, are bound to do his slightest, his
most unreasonable, bidding.   "The commerce between master
and slave,' says a slaveowner, " is a perpetual exercise of the
most boisterous passions-the most unremitting despotism     on
the one hand, and degrading submission on the other. Our
children see this, and learn to imitate it....   The parent
* See Olmsted's account of the German settlement in Texas.-A Journey through
Texas, pp. 143-146, 176-178.
f This is not only instinctively felt.by the Southerns, but maintained in theory.
The following passage from the Richmoznd Inquirer is sufficiently explicit: " Two
opposite and conflicting forms of society cannot, among civilized men, co-exist and
endure. The one must give way and cease to exist; the other become universal.
If free society be unnatural, immoral, unchristian, it; must fall, and give way to
aiave society, a social system old as the world, universal as man."




96          TENDENCY TO FOSTER AiIBITION.
storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath,
puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a
loose to the worst passions, and thus nursed, educated, and
daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped with its
odious peculiarities."*  "The first notion," says De Tocqueville, " which the citizen of the Southern States acquires in
life, is that he is born to command, and the first habit which
he contracts is that of being obeyed without resistance." The
despot mood is thus early impressed on the heart of the slaveholder; and it bears fruit in his manners and life. " The existence of a dominant class necessarily leads to violence. Trained
up from youth to the unrestrained exercise of will, the superior
race or class naturally becomes despotic, overbearing, and impatient. In. their intercourse with their inferiors this leads to
unresisted oppression; but with their equals, armed with similar power and fired by the same passions, it breaks out into
fierce strife.... In this country the relation of master
and slave produces the same effect on the character of the
dominant class as was formerly produced in Europe by that of
lord and serf. There is the same imperious will, the same inmpatience of restraint, the same proneness to anger and ferocious
strife. The passions which are developed in the intercourse
with inferiors show themselves, though in a different form, in
the intercourse with equals. Thus, by an inevitable retribution,
wrong is made self-chastising, and the hand of the violent man
is turned against himself.
" Duelling is not the only form of this national proneness to
acts of violence; rather, it is the modified form  which it
assumes among fair and honourable men, who, even in their
anger, disdain to take advantage of an adversary, and who
have at least sufficient self-command to give a semblance of
reason to their passion. There are others, whose hasty impulses
disdain even this slight self-restraint, who carry with them
habitually the means of deadly injury, and use them  on the
slightest provocation.'"..  "The custom   of carrying
arms is at once a proof of proneness to violence, and a provocation to it. This habit, I am informed, prevails very extensively in the South. When coming down the Mississippi, a
Colonel B, to whom I had been introduced, pointing to
a crowd of men of all ranks clustered round the cabin stove,
said:' Now, there is probably not a man in all that crowd who
is not armed; I myself have a pistol in my state-room.' "t
Such are the private influences by which the slaveholder is
* Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, p. 39.
j Stirling's Letters from the Slave States, pp. 270, 272.




SLA VER Y ITS SOLE RESO URCE.            97
moulded to an intense craving for power. And what scope do
the institutions of the South provide for the satisfaction, on a
large theatre, of the passion which they generate?  In free
societies the paths to eminence are various. Successful trade,
the professions, science and literature, social reform, philanthropy, furnish employment for the redundant activity of the
people, and open so many avenues to distinction.  But for
slaveholders these means of advancement do not exist. Commerce and manufactures are excluded by the necessities of the
case. The professions, which are the result of much subdivision
of employment where population is rich and dense, can have
no place in a poor and thinly peopled country.  Science and
literature are left without the principal inducements for their
cultivation, where there is no field for their most important
practical applications.  Social reform and philanthropy would
be out of place in a country where human chattels are the
principal property.  Practically, but one career lies open to
the Southerner desirous of advancement-agriculture carried
on by slaves. To this, therefore, he turns. In the management
of his plantation, in the breeding, buying, and selling of slaves,
his life is passed.  Amid the moral atmosphere which this
mode of life engenders his ideas and tastes are formed. He
has no notion of ease, independence, happiness, where slavery
is not found. Is it strange, then, that his ambition should connect itself with the institution around which are entwined his
domestic associations, which is identified with all his plans in
life, and which offers him the sole chance of emerging fiom
obscurity?
But the aspirations of the slaveholder are not confined within
the limits of his own community.  Ile is also a citizen of the
United States. In the former he naturally and easily takes the
leading place; but, as a member of the larger society in which
he is called upon to act in combination with men who have
been brought up under free institutions, the position which he
is destined to fill is not so clearly indicated.  It is plain, however, that he cannot become blended in the general mass of the
population of the Union. His character, habits, and aims are
not those of the Northern people, nor are theirs his.  The
Northerner is a merchant, a manufacturer, a lawyer, a literary
man, an artisan, a shopkeeper, a schoolmaster, a peasant farmer;
he is engaged in commercial speculation, or in promoting social
or political reform; perhaps he is a philanthropist, and includes
slavery-abolition in his programme. Between such men and'
the slaveholder of the South there is no common basis for
political action. There are no objects in promoting which he.
7




98       POSITION OF THE SOUTH IN THE UNION
can combine with them in good faith and upon public grounds.
There lies before him, therefore, but one alternative: he must
stand by his fellows, and become powerful as the assertor and
propagandist of slavery; or failing this, he mlust submit to be
of no account in the politics of the Union.  Here then again
the slaveholder is thrown back upon his peculiar system as th
sole means of satisfying the master passion of his life. In the
society of the Union, no less than in that of the State, he finds
that his single path to power lies through the maintenance and
extension of this institution.  Accordingly, to uphold it, to
strengthen it, to provide for its future growth and indefinite
expansion, becomes the dream of his life-the one great object
of his existence. But this is not all; this same institution,
which is the beginning and end of the slaveholder's being,
places between him and the citizens of free societies a broad
and impassable gulf.  The system which is the foundation of
his present existence and future hopes is by them denounced
as sinful and inhuman; and he is himself held up to the reprobation of mankind. The tongues and hands of all freemen
are instinctively raised against him. A consciousness is thus
awakened in the minds of the community of slaveholders that
they are a proscribed class,'that their position is one of antagonism to the whole civilized world; and the feeling binds
them together in the fastest concord.  Their pride is aroused;
and all the energy of their nature is exerted to make good their
position against those who would assail it. In this manner the
instinct of self-defence and the sentiment of pride come to aid
the passion of ambition, and all tend to fix in the minds of
slaveholders the resolution to maintain at all hazards the keystone of their social order. To establish their scheme of society
on such. broad and firm foundations that they may set at defiance the public opinion of free nations, and, in the last resort,
resist the combined efforts of their physical power, becomes at
length the settled purpose and clearly conceived design of the
whole body. To this they devote themselves with the zeal of
fanatics, with the persistency and secrecy of conspirators.
The position of slaveholders thus naturally fosters the passion of ambition, and that passion inevitably connects itself
with the maintenance and extension of slavery. Whether this
ambition would find means to assert itself in the politics of the
United States might at one time have seemed more than doubtful. From the very origin of the Republic there were causes
in operation which threatened, if not vigorously encountered,
to exclude the South from that influence which it aspired to
attain. The institutions of the Union are based, in a large




NATURALLY INFERIOR TO THAT OF THE NORTH.          99
degree, on the principle of representation in proportion to numbers. But, as we saw on a former occasion, the social system
of the Southern States is ill calculated to encourage the growth
of population, while the institutions of the North peculiarly
favour it. On the formation of the Federal Union the North
and South started in this respect upon nearly equal terms;*
and for a while-so long as slave trading with Africa was permitted-this equality was approximately maintained. But in
1808 the African slave trade was abolished; and the principal
external source on which the South relied for recruiting its
population was thus cut off: On the other hand, free emigration from Europe continued to pour into the Northern States in
a constantly increasing stream; while at the same time the
natural increase of the Northern people, under the stimulus
given to early marriages by the great industrial prosperity of
the country, was rapid beyond precedent. From the influence
of these causes, the original equality in numbers between North
and South was soon converted ilto a decided preponderance of
the North; and the natural course of events tended constantly
to increase the disproportion.
This state of things, it was obvious, threatened ultimately
the political extinction of the South, incapable as it was of
taking part in politics except as a distinct interest. At first
view, indeed, it might seem as if this consummation was not
merely ultimately inevitable, but imminent. In point of fact,
however, the South, far from being reduced to political insignificance, has, throughout the whole period that has elapsed
since the foundation of the government, maintained paramount
sway in the councils of the Union.
This result, so contrary to what one might at first sight have
anticipated, it is the fashion to attribute to superior capacity
for politics among thie Southern people; and the theory certainly
receives some countenance from the fact, that of the illustrious
men who founded the republic some of the most eminent were
furnished by the South. It is, however, quite unnecessary to
resort to so improbable an hypothesis, as that political capacity is best nourished by institutions which tend to barbarize
the whole life, in order to understand the part taken by the
South in the politics of the Union. The sufficient explanation
* In 1790 the numbers were respectively as follows:Free States.               Slave States.
Whiles..... 1,900,976     Whites..... 1,271,488
Free Blacks...  27,102  Free Blacks..  32,354
Slaves.....      40,364   Slaves.....    657,533
Total.....  1,968,452  Total.....  1,961,375




100               THE THREE FIFTHS VOTE.
is to be found in two circumstances-in the nature of the Federal Constitution, regarded in connexion with the singleness
of aim and steadiness of purpose, which naturally characterize
men whose interests and ideas are confined within the narrow
range permitted by slave institutions.
The Federal Constitution, as is well known, was a compromise between two principles-the democratic principle of
representation in proportion to numbers, and the federal principle of representation according to states. In the Lower House
of Congress-the House of Representatives-the former principle prevailed; the several states of the Union sending members
to this assembly in proportion to the relative numbers of their
population.  In the Senate-the Upper House,-on the other
hand, representation took place according to states-each state,
without regard to extent or population, teing there represented
by the same number of senators. In the election of the President these two principles were combined, and the voting power
of the several states was determined by adding to the number
of their representatives in the Lower House the number of their
representatives in the Senate-that is to say, by the proportion
of members which each state respectively sent to both Houses.
Such was the general character of the scheme.*
In the arrangement, as thus stated, there would seem to be
nothing which was not calculated to give to numbers, wealth,
and intelligence, their due share in the government of the country. But in applying to the South the principles just described, a
provision was introduced which had the effect of very materially
altering, as regards that portion of the Union, the popular character of the Constitution. This was the clause enacting what is known
as the three-fifths vote. The House of Representatives professed
to be based on the principle of representation in proportion to
population; but, by virtue of this clause, in reckoning population slaves were allowed to count in the proportion of five slaves
to three free persons. Now, when we remember that the slaves
of the South number four millions in a population of which the
total is under ten millions, it is not difficult to perceive what
must be the effect of such an arrangement upon the balance of
* The means by which it has been sought to preserve the balance between these
two principles of the Constitution are thus briefly and comprehensively stated in the
Federalist:-" The Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal
Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national;
in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn it is
partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers it is national,
not federal; in the extent of them again it is federal, not national; and, finally, in
the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal
nor wholly national."-Story on the Constitution of the United States, vol. i., p. 199o




SUPERIOR CAPA CITY FOR COMBINED A CTIOi.   101
forces under the Constitution. In the Presidential election of
1856, the slave representation was nearly equal to one-third of
the whole Southern representation; from which it appears that
the influence of the South in the general representation of the
Union was, in virtue of the three-fifths vote, nearly one-half
greater than it would have been had the popular principle of
the Constitution been fairly carried out. But the influence of
the South, as we formerly saw, merely means the influence of
a few hundred thousand slaveholders; the whole political power
of the Slave States being in practice monopolized by this body.
The case, therefore, stands thus: under the local institutions of
the Slave States, the slaveholding interest-a mere fiaction in
the whole population-predominates in the South; while, under
this provision of the Federal Constitution, the South acquires
an influence in the Union by one-half greater than legitimately
belongs to it. It is true this would not enable the Southern
States, while their aggregate population was inferior to that of
the Northern, to command a majority in the Lower House by
means of their own members. But we must remember that
the South is a homogeneous body, having but one interest to
promote and one policy to pursue; while the interests and aims
of the North are various, and its councils consequently divided.'The selfish, single-purposed party," says Mr. Senior,* "to
which general politics are indifferent, which is ready to ally
itself to Free-traders or to Protectionists, to Reformers or to
Anti-reformers, to Puseyites or to Dissenters, becomes powerful by becoming unscrupulous. If Ireland had been an independent country, separated from England, the Ultra-Catholic
party, whose only object is the domination of the clergy and of
the Pope, would have ruled her. This is the source of the influence of a similar party in France. The Clerical, or Jesuit,
or Popish, or Ultramontane faction-whatever name we give
to it-has almost always obtained its selfish objects, because
those oljects are all that it cares for.  It supported the Restoration, its Priests blessed the insurgents of February, 1848, and
it now worships Louis Napoleon. The only condition which it
makes is ecclesiastical and Popish supremacy, and that condition the governor for the time being of France usually accepts.
Such a party is the Southern party in the United States."
Its single aim has been the consolidation and extension of
slavery; and to the accomplishment of this end it has always
been ready to sacrifice all other interests in the country, and, if
necessary, the integrity of the Union itself. We may see, then,
in what consists the vaunted aptitude for politics exhibited by
* Slavery in the United States, pp. 16, 17.




102          DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE: ITS BASIS.
Southern men: it lies simply in the intense selfishness and utter
absence of scruple with which they have persistently pushed
their object.  They have acted steadily together-a course for
which no political virtue was necessary where there was but a
single interest to promote, and that interest their own. They
have contrived, by an unscrupulous use of an immense patronage, to detach from the array of their opponents a section sufficiently large to turn the scale of divisions in their favour: —in
other words, they have been successful practitioners in the art
of political jobbery.   Lastly, they have worked on the apprehensions and the patriotism of the country at large by the constantly repeated threat which they have now proved themselves
capable of putting in force —of dissolving the Union.*
The actual inferiority in population of the Southern to the
Northern States, even under the peculiar advantage conferred
by the three-fifths clause, rendered it necessary that the slaveholders should procure an ally among the northern people; and
this indispensable ally they found in the Democratic party.     It
has been frequently remarked upon with surprise that, in seeking a political connexion, the South-whose social and political
system is intensely aristocratic-should have attached itself to
that party in the Union in which the democratic principle has
been carried to the greatest extreme.     But the explanation is
to be found in the circumstances of the case.     The peculiarity
of the industrial and social economy of the Southern States led
them from the first to lean to the doctrine of state rights, as
opposed to the pretensions of the central government; and the
doctrine of state rights is a democratic doctrine.   On this fundamental point, therefore, the      principles of the Southern
oligarchy and those of the Northern democracy were the same.
But the alliance was not destitute of the cement of interest and
feeling. The Democratic party had its principal seats in the
great towns along the Northern seaboard; and between the
capitalists of these towns and the planters of the South the
commercial connexion had always been close. Capital is much
* "Figurez-vous sur un vaisseau un homme debout pres de la sainte-barbe, aves
un meche allumee; il est seul, mais on lui obeit, car, a la premiere desobeissance, il
se fera sauter avec tout 1'equipage. Voila precisement ce qui se passait en Amerique depuis qu'elle allait a la derive. La manceuvre etait commandee par l'hommo
qui tenait la meche.'A la premiere ddsobeissance, nous nous quittons.' Tel a
6te de tout temps le langage des Etats du Sud. On les savait capables de tenir parole: aussi n'y avait-il plus qu'un argument en Amerique, la scission.' Rvoquez
le compromis, sinon la scission; modifiez la legislation des Etats libres, sinon la
scission; courez avec nous les aventures, et entreprenez des conquetes pour l'esclavage, sinon la scission; enfin, et par dessus tout, ne vous permettez jamais d'elire un
president qui ne soit pas notre candidat, sinon la scission.' "-Un Grand Peuple qui
ea relive, p. 37.




THE TERMS OF THE BARGAIN.              103
needed under a slave system, and is at the same time scarce.
In the Northern cities it was abundant. To the capitalists of
the Northern cities, therefore, the planters in need of funds for
carrying on their industry had recourse; and a large amount
of democratic capital came thus to be invested on the security
of slave property. A community of interest was in this way
established. But there was also a community of sentiment; for
the Northern cities had formerly been the great emporia of the
African slave trade, and had never wholly abandoned the nefarious traffic; and the tone of mind engendered by constant
familiarity with slavery in its worst form naturally predisposed
them to an alliance with slaveholders. Widely sundered, therefore, as were the Southern oligarchy and the Democratic party
of the North in general political principle, there was enough
in common between them to form the basis of a selfish bargain.
A bargain, accordingly, was struck, of which the consideration
on the one side was the command of the Federal government
for the extension of slavery, and, on the other, a share in the
patronage of the Union. On these terms a coalition between
these two parties, so opposed in their general tendencies, has,
almost from the foundation of the republic, been steadily maintained; and in this way the South-vastly inferior though it
has been to its competitor in wealth, population, and intelligence-in all the conditions to which political power attaches
in well-ordered states-has, nevertheless, contrived to exercise
a leading influence upon the policy of the Union.
These considerations will suffice to explain how the South
has been enabled, even when in a minority, to engage with
success the representatives of the North. In the Lower House
of Congress it has been always of necessity in this position;
representation being here in proportion to population, in which,
even including slaves, the South is inferior to its rival. But in
the Upper House-the House which under the Constitution
enjoys the most important prerogatives and the highest influence
-the South has found itself at less disadvantage. In the Senate,
as has been already stated, representation takes place according
to states; each state returning two members without regard either
to the number of its inhabitants or to the extent of its territory.
To maintain itself, therefore, on an equal footing with the North
in this assembly, the South has only need to keep the number
of slave states on an equality with that of the free; and this
did not seem to be beyond its power. For, the tendency of
slavery being to disperse population, a given number of people
under a slave regime would naturally cover a larger space of
country, and consequently would afford the materials for the




104    THE POLITICAL MOTIVE ALAI LY OPERATIVE.
creation of a greater number of states, than tie same number
under a regime of freedom. What, therefore, the Soutl required
to secure its predominance in the Senate, was a territory large
enough for the creation of new slave states as fast as the exigencies of its politics might demand them. To keep open the
territory of the Union for this purpose has, in consequence,
always been a capital object in the politics of the South; and
in this way a political has been added to the economic motive
for extended territory. Two forces have thus been constantly
urging on the Slave Power to territorial aggrandizement-the
need for fresh soils, and the need for slave states. Of these the
former-that which proceeds from its industrial requiretlentsis at once the most fundamental and the most imperative; but
it has not been that which, in the actual history of the United
States, has been most frequently called into play. In point of
fact, the political motive has in a great measure superseded the
economic. The desire to obtain fiesh territory for the creation
of slave states, with a view to influence in the Senate, has
carried the South in its career of aggression far beyond tho
range which its mere industrial necessities would have prescribed. Accordingly, for nearly a quarter of a century-ever
since the annexation of Texas-the territory at the disposal of
the South has been very much greater than its available slave
force has been able to cultivate; and its most urgent need has
now become, not more virgin soils on which to employ its
slaves, but more slaves for the cultivation of its virgin soils.
The important bearing of this change on the views of the
Slave Power will hereafter be pointed out: for the present, it
is sufficient to call attention to the fact.
A principle of aggressive activity, in addition to that which
is involved in the industrial necessities of slavery, has thus been
called into operation by the conditions under which the Slave
Power is placed in the Senate. But we should here be careful
not to overrate the influence exercised on that Power by its
position in the Federal Union. It would, I conceive, be an
entire mistake to suppose that this desire for extended territory,
which, under actual circumstances, has shown itself in the
creation of slave states with a view to influence in the Senate,
is in any such sense the fruit of the position of the South in the
Federal Union as that we should be justified in concluding
that, in the event of the severance of the Union, the South
would cease to desire an extension of its territory on political
grounds.  Such a view would, in my opinion, imply an entire
misconception of the real nature of the forces which have been
at work. The. lust of dominion, which is the ruling passion of




TRUE SOURCE OF THIS MOTIVE.                  105
the Slave Power, is not accidental but inherent-has its source,
not in the constitution of the Senate, but in the fundamental
institution of the Slave States; and the lust of dominion, existing in an embodied form in a new continent, cannot but find
its issue in territorial aggrandizement.   This by no means
depends upon speculative inference.    It admits of proof, as a
matter of fact, that the projects of the South for extending its
domain have never been more daring, and have never been
pushed with greater energy, than during the last five years*tle very period in which the Southern leaders have been
maturing their plans for seceding fromt tle Union.  The Federal
connexion may have facilitated the ambitious aims of the South
while the Federal government was in its hands, but, far from
being the source of its ambition, it is because it offers, under
the changed conditions, impediments to the expanding views
of the more aspiring minds of the South, that the attempt is
now made to break loose from Federal ties.     Extended dominion is in truth the very purpose for which the South has
engaged in the present struggle; and the thought which now
sustains it through its fiery ordeal is (to borrow the words ol
the ablest advocate of the Southern cause) the prospect of "an
empire in the future... extending from  the home of Washington to the ancient palaces of Montezuma-uniting the proud
old colonies of England with Spain's richest and most romantic
dominions-combining the productions of the great valley of
the Mississippi with the mineral riches, the magical beauty,
the volcanic grandeur of iMexico."t   In plain terms, the stake
for which the South now plays is Mexico and the intervening
Territories.  The position of the Slave Power in the Union
has thus determined the mode, not supplied the principle,
of its aggressive action.  It has brought out into more distinct
consciousness, and presented in a more definite shape, the connexion between the ruling passion of the Slave Power and the
natural means for its gratification.  But the passion and the
means for its gratification were there independently of the poli* See Reports of the American Anti-Slavery Society for the years 1859 and 1860.
j Spence's American Union, p. 286. Here for a moment the genius of the South
is revealed in naked majesty. It is but for a moment. A few pages further on (p.
291) the scene changes, and the South is restored to its proper r6le. We have
presented to us the aspect of a people spurning the idea of conquest, bounding its
aspirations to the lowest requirement of free men-the demand for autonomy:" Be our ignorance of the merits of this question ever so great, we behold a country
of vast extent and large numbers earnestly desiring self-government. It threatens
none, demands nothing, attacks no one, but wishes to rule itself, and desires to be'let alone.'"
"Amphora ccepit
Inatitui; currente rota cur urceus exit?"




106   POSITION OF SLA VE~RY AT THE REVOLUTION.
tical system of the United States; and the Slave Power, with a
vast unoccupied or half-peopled territory around it, could not
have failed under any circumstances, in the Union or out of it,
to find in the appropriation of that territory its natural career.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CAREER OF THE SLAVE POWER.
THE aggressive ambition of the Southern States has been traced
in the last chapter to two principles-the economic necessities
forced upon them by the character of their industrial system,
and the growth of passions and habits, generated by the presence of slavery, which require for their satisfaction political
predominance. In the present chapter I propose to show how
these two principles have operated in the actual history of the
United States.
At the time of the establishment of the Federal Union the
position of slavery in NTorth America was that of an exceptional
and declining institution. Mnany circumstances conspired to
produce this result. The war of independence had kindled
among the peoplea spirit of liberty which was strongly antagonistic to compulsory bondage. In the leaders of the revolt this
spirit burned with peculiar intensity; and though many of them
were natives of the South and slaveholders, they were almost
to a man opposed to the system, and anxious for its abolition.
From the Northern States, where slavery had originally been
planted, it was rapidly disappearing. In the unsettled territory
then at the disposal of the central government-notwithstanding that this territory had been ceded to it by a slave state —
the institution was by an ordinance of the central government
proscribed. Economic causes were also tending to its overthrow. The crops whicl are adapted to slave cultivation are,
as we have seen, few in number. Those which at this time
formed the principal staples of the slave states of the Union
were rice, indigo, and tobacco. The last was already produced
in quantities more than sufficient for the market; and in the
two former India was rapidly supplanting the United States.
Sugar was not yet grown in the Union. Cotton was still an
unimportant crop. But it happened that about this time several
causes came into operation, which in their effect completely
reversed the direction of events, drove back the tide of freedom,
and gave to slavery a new vitality and an enlarged career. It




RISE OF THE COTTON TRADE.              107
was now that the steam engine, having undergone the improvements of Watt, was first applied on a large scale to manufacturing industry. Contemporaneously the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton in cotton-spinning had been
made. But these inventions, momentous as they were, would
have failed in great part of their effect, had they not been supplemented by another-the invention of the saw-gin by Whitney. Previously to this invention the only cotton grown in
America, which was available for the general purposes of commerce, was that which was known as the Sea Island kind. This
was long fibred and only grew in a few favoured localities.
The bulk of the cotton crop consisted of the short-fibred varieties, but the difficulty of separating the seed from the wool in
this species of the plant by the methods then in use, was so
great as to render it for the ordinary purposes of cotton manufacture of little value. It was to overcome this difficulty that
Whitney addressed himself; and the success of his invention
was so complete, that the whole American crop came at once
into general demand. At the same time, while these causes
were conducing to a great increase in the general consumption
of cotton, a vast territory, eminently adapted for the cultivation
as well of this as of most other slave products, came into the
possession of the United States. The combined effect of all
these occurrences was to give an extraordinary impulse to the
cultivation of cotton; and cotton being pre-eminently a slave
product, and moreover only suited to those districts of the
United States where slavery was already established, this was
followed by a corresponding extension of slavery. In a few
years after Whitney's invention, the exports of cotton from the
United States were decupled; by the year 1810, they had been
multiplied more than a hundredfold, and, from being a product
of small account, cotton rapidly rose to be the principal staple
of the Southern States.
The early progress of the Southern planters, under the stimulus thus given to their enterprise, attracted little observation.
To the west of the original slave states-Virginia, the Carolinas,
and Georgia-lay extensive districts still unsettled, well suited
for cultivation by slave labour, and too far removed from the
Free States to be sought as a field for free colonization. Over
these regions the planters rapidly spread themselves. But in
1804 an immense range of country was gained to the United
States by purchase from France, which, including some of the
richest portions of the valley of the Mississippi, from its junction with the Missouri to its mouth, offered equal attractions to
settlers from both divisions of the Union. This was the Terri



108    ACQUISITION OF THE LOUISIANA TERRITORY.
tory of Louisiana, out of which the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Miissouri, and Kansas have since been formed; and it was
here that the rival pretensions of the two systems of freedom
and slavery first came into collision.
The Territory thus acquired stood, in its relations to the Federal governmrent, on precisely the same footing with a large district known as the North-western Territory, which had at an
earlier period, by cession from Virginia, come into possession
of the United States. The government of this Territory had
been provided for by a celebrated instrument the ordinance
of 1787-enacted by Congress while yet constituted under the
Articles of Confederation, and by this instrument involuntary
servitude, except in punishment of crime, was prohibited within
the Territory. It has been questioned whether, in issuing this
ordinance while still under the Articles of Confederation, Congress did not exceed its proper powers.*  The question is, however, curious rather than important; for in framing the Constitution of the United States an article was introduced to provide
for this very case. By this article it was enacted that " Congress should have power to dispose of, and make all needful
rules and regulations respecting, the Territory or other property
belonging to'the United States."  There could, therefore, be no
doubt as to the competency of Congress, under the Constitution,
to legislate for the Territories; and there was, consequently, no
legal barrier to applying to the new acquisition obtained from
France the same rule which had by the ordinance of 1787 been
applied to the North-Western Territory. There were, however,
practical difficulties in the way. Slave institutions were
already existing in some portions of the Territory of Louisiana;
and when the occasion arose for providing for the government
of the remainder, it happened that the attention of the North
was fully occupied with its foreign relations; for this was the
time when those negociations with England were in progress
which resulted in the war of 1812. These circumstances were
favourable to the advances of the Slave Power. From   the
basis of operations supplied by the French slave colony at the
mouth of the Mississippi the planters rapidly carried their institution along the western bank of that river. By degrees they
reached the district which now forms the State of Missouri, and
by the year 1818 had acquired there so firm a footing as to be
enabled to claim for it admission into the Union as a slave
state.
The admission of Missouri to the Union forms for many rea* The Federalist, No. 38. See Story on The Constitution of the United States, vol
i. p. 184.




IMPOR TAPCE 0E   MISSO URI.            109
sons an epoch in the grand struggle between free and slave
labour in North America. It was on this occasion that both
parties appear first to have become sensible of the inherent
antagonism of their respective positions, and to have put forth
their whole strength in mutual opposition. The contest was
carried on with extraordinary violence, and was terminated by
a compromise, which was long considered in the light of a
national compact irrevocably binding on the combatants on
both sides. The occasion being of this importance, it is desirable that we should appreciate with as much precision as possible the stake which was at issue, and the motives which animated the contending parties.
And here, though at the risk of wearying the reader, it may
be well once more to repeat that the aggressive character of the
Slave Power has been traced to two principles-the one economicj proceeding from the necessity to slavery of a constant supply of fresh soils; the other political, having its roots in that
passion for power which the position of slaveholders-as a
dominant race, isolated from their equals, and shut out from
the pursuits which distribute the energies of free communities
into various channels-inevitably engenders. Again, it has
been seen that this latter principle, under the Constitution of
the United States, exerts itself chiefly in the effort to increase
Southern representation in the Senate through the creation of
new slave states. Lastly, it has appeared that the system of
society which slavery produces is in its nature an exclusive system-its presence acting as a cause of repulsion towards free
societies-and that, consequently, when these two forms of
society come into contact on the same territory, an inevitable
antagonism springs up between them, an antagonism which
displays itself in the efforts which they make to outstrip each
other in a race of colonization, each side endeavonring by prior
occupation of the soil to exclude its rival and keep open for
itself a field for future growth.
These being the principles which governed the conflicting
interests, we shall find that the stake which was at issue in the
Missouri controversy was well calculated to call them actively
into play.
The position of Missouri is one of the most commanding in
the central portion of North America. Possessing great agricultural and mineral resources, it is watered by two of the noblest rivers in the continent-the Mississippi and the Missouri.
It is in the direct line of movement' westward from the Free
States. If established as a free state, it would. become a centre
of colonization for the North, from which free labour would




110           OPPOSITION OF THE NORTH.
pour along the valleys of the Mississippi, the Missouri., and the
Arkansas, and thence to Northern Texas. On the other hand,
if occupied by slave institutions, it would cut off the natural
expansion of the Free States, and turn the stream of emigration
in the direction of the north-west-to less fertile and less genial
regions. But the political consequences depending upon the
settlement of this question were not less momentous than the
industrial and social. When the proposal for the admission of
Missouri was first brought before Congress, the Fiee and the
Slave States were exactly equal in number. The admission of
Missouri as a slave state would just turn the scale in favour of
the South, and, by consequence, give it a superiority in the
Senate-a superiority, which, in conjunction with the advantages it possessed in the Lower House in virtue of its capacity
for combined action, could scarcely fail to render it the paramount power in the Union. The success of the South, moreover, in this instance, owing to the commanding geographical
position of Missouri, would open for it the path to future conquests; for, by diverting the stream of Northern emigration to
the north-west, it would secure for the future use of the Slave
Power the vast reach of fertile territory lying between that
state and Texas-an area which comprised some of the richest
and best watered lands within the domain of the Republic.
The terms, therefore, on which Missouri should be admitted to
the Union became a question of prime importance, in connexion
with the present and future interests of slave and fiee institutions on the continent of North America.
Accordingly, no sooner was the proposition raised for the
admission of Missouri to the Union than the North rose energetically against the demand, and a violent political contest
ensued. It lasted nearly three years, and was terminated by
the celebrated Compromise which has become a landmark in
American history. Under this settlement Missouri was received
into the Union as a slave state, on the condition that in future
slavery should not be carried north of the parallel 36~ 30' of
north latitude. In all essential respects this was a victory for
the slaveholders. They obtained all that they then desiredthe most commanding position in central America, a path to
future conquests, a recognised footing in the Territory of the
Union; and in return for this they gave but a naked promise,
to be fulfilled at a future time, and which could be revoked as
easily as it was given. Their triumph was slightly qualified
by the admission about the same time of Maine as a free state,
but it was sufficiently complete, and it entailed all the consequences which might have been, and which were, foreseen to




DESIGNS UPON TEXAS.                111
be involved in it. From the passing of the Missouri Compromise down to the Presidential election of 1860 the predominance
of the Slave Power in the politics of the Union has suffered no
effectual check.
The episode of the Seminole war-the next prominent scene
in which the Slave Power figured-though sufficiently costly
and humiliating to the United States, need not detain us here
at any length. It was little more than a protracted slave-hunt,
carried on with circumstances of more than usual cruelty, by
means of the forces of the Union, against the Indians of Florida
to whom a multitude of slaves had escaped. In this war Oceola,
the celebrated Indian chief, was' treacherously captured by two
American generals, while  holding a talk " with them. In this
war also the soldiers of the Union allowed themselves to be
disgraced by co-operating with bloodhounds, imported for the
purpose from Cuba, in hunting down the Indians. The general
who commanded the Union forces in this ignoble service, and
who is said to have lent his sanction to these atrocities, was
General Zachary Taylor, afterwards rewarded for his zeal in
the cause of the Slave Power by elevation to the Presidency.
The war lasted seven years, cost the country, it is estimated,
40,000,000 dollars, and resulted in the capture of a few hundred slaves.
If the Seminole war led to no important results, it was far
otherwise with the annexation of Texas. This transaction has
long passed into a byeword for unprovoked and unscrupulous
plunder of a weak by a strong power. The designs of its authors
have always been notorious. Still, as affording a typical example of a mode of aggression which has since been fiequently
employed and is probably not yet obsolete, it may be well to
recall some of its leading incidents at the present time.
Texas, as all the world knows, was before its annexation to
the Union a province of Mexico-a country at peace with the
Union, and anxious to cultivate with it friendly relations.
Mexico, however, was a weak state, still fresh from the
throes of revolution. The district in question was one of great
fertility, possessing in this respect, as well as in its climate and
river communications, remarkable advantages for slave settlement: it was, moreover, but very thinly peopled, and was
separated by an immense distance from the seat of government. So early as 1821, while Spanish authority was still
maintained in Mexico, three hundred families from Louisiana
were permitted to settle in this tempting region, under the
express condition that they should submit to the laws of the
country. By this means a footing was obtained in the district.




112         VIE WS OF TEE ANNEXATIOVISTS.
The original immigrants were in time followed by others, why
like their predecessors undertook to conform to the laws of
Mexico; and for some years the proceedings of the new settlers
were conducted with proper respect for the authority of the
state in which they had taken up their ablde. But this aspect
of affairs did not long continue. As the colony increased in
numbers and wealth, it became evident to the slaveowners of
the neighbouring states that they had a " natural right" to the
territory. It offered an admirable field for slave cultivation; it
was in their immediate proximlity; of all claimants they were
the strongest and " smartest:" in short, they wanted the country, and felt themselves able to take it; and they resolved it
should be theirs. (' Manifest destiny" beckoned them forward,
and they prepared, with reverent submission to the decrees of
Providence, to fulfil their fate.
The agency by which the annexationists proceeded to give
effect to their natural right was land speculation. Grants of
extensive districts were corruptly obtained from local bodies
which had no competency to make them; these were made the
basis for a creation of scrip, which was thrown in large quantities upon the markets of the United States. To give an idea
of the scale on which these transactions were carried on, one
grant, obtained from the legislature of Coahuila, conveyed in
perpetuity to American citizens, in direct violation of the laws
of Mexico, no less than four hundred square leagues of the public land-an area as large as Lancashire-for a consideration
of 20,000 dollars! In addition to transactions of this kind, a
manufacture of titles purely fictitious was freely carried on.
By this means great numbers of the people in the United
States became the possessors of nominal titles to land in Texas
-titles, which, being of course unrecognized by the central
authority in Mexico, could only be substantiated by setting aside
that authority.; Texan independence could alone legalize the
mighty frauds of the land speculators. Texas must be wrested
from the country to which she owed allegiance, that her soil
might pass into the hands of cheating and cheated foreigners."
But the motive of rapacity was reinforced by a stronger one.
Mexico from the moment of her independence had shewn a
creditable determination to uphold the most essential of human
rights. By a law, passed shortly after her severance from
Spain, slavery was abolished in her dominions, and prohibited
for all future time. Such a law was far fiom being in keeping
with the views of the new settlers. Accordingly, they proceeded to evade it by various artifices. The most usual expedient was that of introducing slaves into the country under the




TEXAS ANNEXED.                   113
guise of apprentices, the term of whose service commonly
extended to ninety-nine years. On the point, however, of
maintaining freedom of labour in their dominions, the Mexican
authorities were in earnest, and the move of the settlers was
met by a decree of the legislatures of Coahuila and Texas,
annulling all indentures of labour for a longer period than ten
years, and providing for the freedom of children born during
apprenticeship.  But slaveholders were not to be so baffled.
6" The settled invincible purpose of Mexico to exclude slavery
from her limits created as strong a purpose to annihilate her
authority. The project of dismembering a neighbouring republic that slavelholders and slaves might overspread a region
which had been consecrated to a free population, was discussed
in the newspapers as coolly as if it were a matter of obvious
right and unquestioned humanity."* The plot having been
carried to this point, the consummation of the plunder was
easy. A conspiracy was hatched; a rebellion organized; filibusters were introduced from the border states; and a population, which at the commencement of the outbreak did not
number twenty thousand persons, asserted its independence,
was recognized by the Federal Government, and with little
delay annexed to the Union.
The annexation of Texas was too successful a stroke of
policy not to be regarded as a precedent. It was accordingly
followed by the Mexican war of 1846, which resulted in an
easy victory over an unequal antagonist. By the treaty concluded between the United States and Mexico in 1848, the
immense range of country extending from Texas to the Pacific
in one direction, and from the present frontier of Mexico to the
Territory of Oregon in the other, and including the magnificent
prize of California, was added to the domain of the Republic.
The disposal of this opulent spoil became at once a subject of
overwhelming interest, and for two years the Union was shaken
by the contests which it produced. The point on which the
immediate interest centred was California. Was it to be a free
or a slave state? The Southern party which had forced on the
war had no other intention than to appropriate this, its richest
fruit; but the discovery of gold in the alluvial sands of the
Sacramento, just at the time when the annexation was accomplished, had attracted thither from the North a large preponderance of free settlers, and these pronounced loudly for free
institutions. The question was settled, as so. many similar
questions had been settled, by a compromise. The Slave partyChanning's Works, Letter on Texas.
8




114              DESIGNS UPON KANSAS.
consented to waive its claim, but not without stipulating for a
concession in return. The admission of California as a free
atate was purchased by the Fugitive Slave Law.*  The price
was a shameful one; yet it seems certain that this transaction
forms an exception to the ordinary course of dealing between
the Slave Power and its opponents, and that in the event the
balance of advantage lay largely with the Free States. The
Fugitive Slave Law has been for the Slave Power a questionable gain. Amongst its first fruits was Uncle Tom's C8abin.
On the other hand, the acquisition of California has been a
solid advantage for the free party. A free state has thus been
established in the rear of the Slave Power, a centre henceforward for free immigration, and probably destined at no distant time to play an important part in the struggle between
the rival principles. Thus, by the accident of a gold discovery,
the well laid plans of the Slave party were frustrated, and a,war which was undertaken by slaveholders in the interest of
Slvery has eventuated in a serious blow to their power.
The differences arising out of the conquests made in the
Xexican war having been adjusted by the compromises of
1850, the Slave Power was again at liberty to look around it
aid to meditate new acquisitions. The Territory which had
fafllen to slavery under the Missouri Compromise had now been
appropriated; Florida had also been acquired; Texas had been
annexed; New Mexico lay open, but for the present it was too
distant for settlement, and the numerous tribes of Indians
which:inhabited it, made it an undesirable abode for slaveholders, w'hose experience in Florida naturally rendered them
averse to such neighbours. But the territory of Kansas and
Nebraska was comparatively close at hand, and was inviting
from its fertility and salubrity. On political grounds, moreover, there was need that the Slave Power should bestir itself.
The occasion was not unlike that which had preceded the
admission of Missouri to the Union. From the passing of the
Missouri Compromise down to the year 1850, the balance
between the Free and Slave States had been fairly preserved.
The North had during that time acquired Michigan, Iowa, and
Wisconsin; the South, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas; the natural expansion of the one section had been steadily counterpoised by the.factitious annexations effected by the other. But
the admission of California as a free state had disturbed this
equilibrium. To restore it there was need of a new slave state;
* To which the opponents of slavery contrived to add a bill for the exclusion of
the slave market from the District of Columbia. The same series of measures also
included bills for the-settlement of the Territories of Utah and New Mexico.




THE KANSAS AND NEBRASKA BILL.            115
and where could this be more conveniently placed than in the
rich contiguous Territory of Kansas?
But to the realization of this scheme there was an obstacle
in the way. The Territory of Kansas was part of the great
tract obtained by purchase from France in 1804, and being
north of the line traced by the Missouri Compromise, was
therefore by the terms of that measure withdrawn from the
field of slave settlement. Now, the Missouri Comprornise was
something more than an ordinary legislative act. It was a
compact between two great opposing interests, in virtue of
which one of those interests obtained at the time valuable consideration on the condition of abstaining fiom certain pretensions in the future. It was, moreover, eminently a slaveholders'
measure. " It was first brought forward by a slaveholdervindicated by slaveholders in debate-finally sanctioned by
slaveholding votes-also upheld at the time by the essential
approbation of a slaveholding President, James Monroe, and
his cabinet, of whom a majority were slaveholders, including
Mr. Calhoun himself."* The measure was thus binding on the
Slave Party by every consideration of honour and good faith.
But honour and good faith have always proved frail bonds in
restraining the ambition of the Slave power. The Missouri
Compromise had served its end. Under it the most commanding central position in the continent had been secured. Under
it Arkansas had been added to the slave domain. There was
nothing more to be gained by maintaining it.  The plea of
unconstitutionality, therefore,-"like the plea of usury after
the borrowed money has been enjoyed "-was set up. In passing the Missouri Compromise Congress was said to have
exceeded its competence. It was not for it to "legislate" freedom or slavery into the Territories. This was a question to be
determined by the inhabitants of those Territories, whose right
it was to "regulate their domestic institutions in their own
way."   Accordingly, in 1854, a bill known as the Kansas and
Nebraska Bill was introduced by Mr. Douglas, a Northern
democrat and an aspirant to the Presidency. By this bill the
Missouri Compromise was abrogated, and in its place a principle was established, popularly known as that of "squatter
sovereignty," by which it was resolved that the future settlement of the Territories should be determined. The principle
is thus described in the words of the act:-" It being the true
intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any
state or territory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the
* Sumner's Speech.




116   IKANSAS THROWN OPEN.FOR SETTLEMENT.
people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." By this plausible measureplausible because it appeared to extend to the settlement of the
question of slavery the democratic principle which was acknowledged as the basis of the general government-the
inconvenient restraints of the Missouri Compromise were got
rid of, and the ground was cleared for the operations of the
Slave Power.
Meanwhile, however, the North, aroused by the discussions
which had taken place to a sense of the importance of the
crisis, was preparing to try issues with its opponent on the
ground which it had chosen. On the 30th of May, 1854, the
territory of Kansas was by Act of Congress thrown open to
settlers; and at once from all quarters of the Free States
crowds of emigrants flocked to the debatable land. The work
of settlement was pushed with characteristic ardour. The land
was rapidly cleared; cultivation was commenced; the foundations of towns were marked out: the whole country glowed
with the bustle of colonizing activity. In a few months the
free settlers had acquired a decided preponderance over their
rivals in the new territory; and all things seemed to promise
-the will of the inhabitants being the arbiter of the question
-that Kansas would ere long be peaceably enrolled in the
Union as a Free State. But the Slave Power had other resources in store. It could not, and probably did not, hope to
triumph on a fair field in a colonization struggle with the
North. In all the qualifications requisite for such a struggle
the North was immeasurably its superior. It had at its disposal a vastly larger population, and this population, energetic,
intelligent, and enterprising, was in all essential respects far
better adapted to the work in hand than any which the South
could bring against it. But it was not by fair means that the
South hoped to attain its object.  Kansas adjoined Missouri. In Missouri, as in all the Slave States, there was a
mean white population-a population utterly unfit for the
work of colonization, but well qualified and well disposed
to take part in any expedition which promised rapine and
blood.  It was on the services of this people that the
Slave Power relied for the success of its scheme. It could
not 6ut-colonize the freesoilers from the North, but it could,
it was hoped, make the territory too hot to hold them,
and ultimately, being left master of the field, it might occupy
it at leisure. This, however, was not its only resource. In
the government at Washington it had a sure ally, which,




INVASSION OF THE TERRITORY.            117
though affecting to disapprove, could be depended upon to
connive at, and when necessary to sustain, its lawless proceedings. Resting upon these supports, the Slave Power took its
measures. It was necessary, in the first place, that a staff of
functionaries should be appointed for the Kansas territory. Of
these the normination lay with the President, and needed to be
confirmed by the Senate. But the President was the nominee
of the South, and in the Senate the South was all-powerful.
There was, therefore, no difficulty in securing officials on whom
the South could thoroughly rely. Meantime preparations were
made for active operations. Bands of border ruffians were
mustered on the Missouri frontier, and held in leash to be let
slip at the decisive moment. That moment at length arrived.
On the 29th of November, 1854, the infant Territory was to
elect a delegate to appear and speak in its behalf in the
National Congress. On that day the myrmidons of slavery,
led by experienced filibusters from the South, rushed upon the
scene, seized by force upon the ballot-boxes, and crushed all
free action among the inhabitants. On the 30th of March following the Territorial legislature was to be chosen. The invasion was repeated on a larger scale and with a more complete
organization. Armed violence was now reduced to system.
Again and again were these raids renewed with circumstances
of ever-increasing atrocity, turning the Constitution into a
mockery-a pliant instrument in the hands of a reckless faction.  Under these auspices the elections were held. The
result was the return, by a population of whom the great majority were freesoilers, of a pro-slavery delegate, the erection
of a pro-slavery legislature, and the promulgation of a proslavery constitution.
Some of the provisions of this strange instrument deserve to
be recorded. Taking the laws of their own state as their
model, the invaders, in the first place, re-enacted in the gross
the code of Missouri. But more stringent measures than the
Missourian code contained were required to meet the present
emergency.  Accordingly, all persons holding anti-slavery
opinions were by a single stroke disfranchised. On the other
hand-the object being to rule the territory through the armed
rabble of Missouri-it was enacted that every one might vote,
whether resident or not, who, holding opinions favourable to
slavery, should pay one dollar on the day of election, and swear
to uphold the Fugitive Slave Law and the Nebraska Bill.
The ideas which the Slave Power entertained on the subject of
freedom of the press may be gathered fiom one enactment,
which provided that the advocacy of anti-slavery opinions




118           THE LEA PENWORTH CONSTITUTIOf.
should be treated as felony, and punished with imprisonment
and hard labour; while its notions of lenity are illustrated by
its mode of dealing with the offence of facilitating the escape
of slaves.   Against this-of all crimes in the ethics of the Slave
Power the most heinous-and against other modes of attacking
slave property, the penalty of death was denounced no less than
forty-eight different times.
Such was the mild and liberal spirit of the Leavenworth
Constitution.    Once promulgated, it became necessary to carry
it into effect; and the means adopted for this purpose were in
keeping with all which had         gone before.     The country was
given over to be dealt with by the invaders at their pleasure.Gangs of these armed ruffians, making no pretence of being
settlers, having no other means of support than pillage, patrolled the country, " preserving," so it was phrased in Congress,
" law and order." The Federal functionaries, meanwhile, looked
on in silence, contenting themselves with ratifying the Constitution which had been passed; while the Federal troops, by abstaining from   all interference with the apostles of" order," and,
when necessary, by overawing the disaffected, proved useful
allies of the movement.
By such means the Slave Power succeeded in establishing
itself in Kansas; but its reign was brief.       The atrocities it had
committed roused a spirit for which the South was not pre* General statements fail to convey any idea of the atrocities which were committed. The following anecdote is told by Mr. Thomas K. Gladstone-an Englishman who visited Kansas during the time of the disturbances-in his work entitled
Kansas; or Squatter Life and Border Warfare in the Far West:"Individual instances of barbarity continued to occur almost daily. In one
instance, a man, belonging to General Atchinson's camp, made a bet of six dollars
against a pair of boots that he would go and return with an Abolitionist's scalp
within two hours. He went forth on horseback. Before he had gone two miles
from Leavenworth on the road to Lawrence, he met a Mr. Hops, driving a buggy.
Mr. Hops was a gentleman of high respectability, who had come home with his
wife, a few days previously, to join her brother, the Rev. Mr. Nute of Boston, who
had for some time been labouring as a minister in Lawrence. The ruffian asked Mr.
Hops where he came from. He replied he was last from Lawrence. Enough!
The ruffian drew his revolver, and shot him through the head. As the body fell
from the chaise, he dismounted, took his knife, scalped his victim, and then returned
to Leavenworth, where, having won his boots, he paraded the streets with the
bleeding scalp of the murdered man stuck upon a pole. This was on the 19th of
August. Eight days later, when the widow, who had been left at Lawrence sick,
was brought down by the Rev. Mr. Nute, in the hope of recovering the body of her
murdered husband, the whole party, consisting of about twenty persons in five
waggons, was seized, robbed of all they had, and placed in confinement. One was
shot the next day for attempting to escape. The widow and one or two others
were allowed to depart by steamer, but penniless. A German incautiously condemning the outrage was shot; and another saved his life only by precipitate
flight."




ALARM INX THE NORTH.                 119
pared. The settlers, finding  themselves betrayed by  the
government which should have protected them, rose in arms.
The injuries to which they had been exposed only fixed them
in the resolution to defend the country which was rightly theirs;
and the story of their wrongs, being carried to the North,
excited there a feeling which brought flocking to their assistance crowds of freemen. The efforts of the Slave party, though
violent, were fitful; those of tile Free settlers were resolute and
sustained. After a desultory civil war, the former was utterly
defeated, the pro-slavery constitution was overthrown, and a
free legislature and free institutions were established.
Such was the result of the experiment of "squatter sovereignty" in the Territories. After a long career of success, the
South had at length been forced to give way and to abandon a
design which it had deliberately formed. But the defeat in
Kansas was not an ordinary reverse. It could be attributed
neither to remissness nor to fbrtune. The South had brought into
action all its available strength, and the contesthad been fought
under conditions which it had itself prescribed. It had selected
its own ground; it had taken its opponents by surprise; it had
not hesitated to employ every means, legal and illegal, in the
prosecution of its end; in all its measures it had been powerfully sustained by the central government; and yet, with all
these advantages, it had been utterly defeated. The experiment was absolutely decisive; and it was henceforth certain
that, with the resources at present at the disposal of the two
parties, slaveholders were no match in the work of colonization
for the freemen of the North.
This was a serious result for a community for which territorial expansion was a necessity of prosperous existence. But
the crisis assumed a still graver aspect from the movements of
political parties to which the events in Kansas led. These
events brought home to the Northern people with irresistible
force the real aims and character of the power to whose domi
nation it had submitted. It was not simply that the South in
Kansas sought to extend the area of slavery-this was a familiar fact; it was that in prosecuting this object it had shown
itself prepared to perpetrate any atrocity, any perfidy; it was
that, in promoting its ambitious schemes, it had turned with
utter unscrupulousness those powers of government, with which
it had been entrusted for the general good, to the purpose of crushing the liberties and taking away the lives of those who dared
to thwart it. A feeling of profound indignation, mingled with
alarm, pervaded the people of the Free States. It was felt that
the time had come when all who were not content to yield them



120    FORAMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
selves up to the tender mercies of this unscrupulous and wicked
Power should take measures for their safety. A strong reaction set in, and the earliest fruit of the reaction was the formation of the Republican party.
The policy of this party was first given to the world by a
manifesto issued in the summer of 1856. The Republican party,
it was declared, had no purpose to interfere with slavery in the
states where it was already established. Within those limits it
had been recognized by the Constitution, and to transcend constitutional bounds was no part of the Republican programme.
But it was denied that the authority of Congress, or of any
other power in the Union, so long as the present Constitution
was maintained, could give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States. The fundamental principle of the
party was thus the non-extension of slavery. Taking its stand on
this ground, it invited the co-operation of all who were opposed
to the dominion of the Slave Power, asking them to lay aside
past political differences and divisions, and by one grand effort
to rescue the country fiom the rule of the common fie.*
This was in the summer of 1856. In the autumn of the same
year the Presidential election gave occasion for the first trial
of strength between the new party and its opponents. The contest occurred within a few months from the time when tlie first
idea of a party on the basis indicated had been formed, and
before its leaders had had time to complete its organization. As
might have been expected, it was defeated, but under circumnstances which inspired the strongest hope of ultimate victory.
"The Republicans," said the central association at Washington,
addressing the country after the event of the election, " wherever
able to present clearly to the public the real issues of the canvass
-slavery restriction or slavery extension-have carried the people with them by unprecedented majorities, almost breaking
up in some States the organization of their adversaries." 
"Under circumstances so adverse, they have triumphed in
eleven, if not twelve of the Free States, pre-eminent for enterprise and general intelligence, and containing one half of the
whole population of the country."....  We know," continued this body, <' the ambition, the necessities, the schemes
of the Slave Power. The policy of extension, aggrandisement,
and universal empire is the law of its being, not an accidentis settled, not fluctuating. Covert or open, moderate or extreme, according to circumstances, it never changes in spirit or
aim."... "The true course of the Republican party is to
* See the Republican platform adopted at Philadelphia, June 18, 1856.




SOUTHERN POLICY OF " THOROUGH."          121
organize promptly, boldly, and honestly upon their own principles, and avoiding coalitions with other parties, appeal directly
to the masses of all parties to ignore all organizations and
issues which would divert the public mind from the one danger that now threatens the honour and interests of the country,
and the stability of the Union."
The long ascendancy of the Slave Power in the Union was
thus at length seriously threatened, and on its ascendancy depended its existence as a Power. The leaders of the South
were not slow to appreciate the critical nature of their position.
With a boldness and practical sense characteristic of men long
and successfully conversant with the affairs of government, they
looked the danger in the face, and, perceiving that the emergency was one in which ordinary expedients would be unavailing, they resolved upon a policy of " Thorough;" and, without
hesitation or compunction, advanced straight to their object.
The real cause of the defeat of the South in the Kansas struggle it was not difficult to discover.  It lay in the want of a
population adapted to the purpose in hand-slavery colonization. The South had conquered the ground, but, owing to the
insufficiency of its slave force, it had been unable to hold it,
and the result was its defeat. The remedy, therefore, was plain.
It would be necessary to increase the slave force of the South
in such a manner as to put it on a par in point of disposable
population with its Northern rival, and, meantime, pending
the accomplishment of this result, to find means to maintain a
footing in the Territories in spite of the legislation of the freesoilers. Such was the problem proposed to the South. Nothing short of this would enable the Slave Power to keep open
the Territories for its future expansion, and to retain its hold
on the Federal Government. Nothing short of this would give
it predominance in the Union. There was need, therefore, of
" Thorough." It resolved to give effect to this policy in all its
fulness, or, failing this, to dissolve the Union.
With a view to the first point-the augmentation of the supply of slave labour —the obvious, and the only adequate, expedient was the reopening of the African Slave Trade.  That
trade had been prohibited by an act of Congress in 1808, and
the prohibition had, up to the present time, been acquiesced in
by all parties. But, like every other enactment which stood in
the way of the freest development of slavery, this prohibition
was now discovered to be'unconstitutional.' Congress had,
it seemed, exceeded its proper powers in passing the act. It
was, accordingly, determined that an agitation should forthwith
be set on foot for its repeal.




122                A GITA TION i OR REOPENINVG
The first blast of tle trumpet announcing the new policy was
sounded by Governor Adams of South Carolina in his address
to the legislature of that state in 1857.        The obnoxious prohibition was denotnced in vehement terms.              It was a violation
of the Constitution, and it interfered with the essential interests
of the South.     By the closing of the Afiican slave trade the
equilibriuln between North and South had been destroyed, and
this equilibrium    could   only be restored      in  one way-by the
re-opening of that trade.       Let this once be accomplished-let
the South have free access to the only labour market which is
suited   to her wants-and she has no rival whom                 she need
fear.
The key-note having been struck, the burden of the strain
was taken up by other speakers, and the usual machinery of
agitation was put in motion through the South.            The Southern
press freely discussed the schemne.         It was brought before the
annual conventions for the consideration           of Southern affairs,
and received the energetic support of the leaders of the extreme
Southern party.t       At one of these conventions held         at Vicks* The Charleston Standard, complaining that the position of the South had
hitherto been too much one of defence and apology, adds, " To the end of changing
our attitude in the contest, and of planting our standard right in the very faces of
our adversaries, we propose, as a leading principle of Southern policy, to reopen and
legitimate the slave trade."  And it then proceeds, in a series of articles, to argue
at length the rightfulness and expediency of this measure, expanding and elaborately enforcing the following propositions, viz.:-" That equality of states is necessary to equality of power in the Senate of the Union; that equality of population
is necessary to equality of power in the House of Representatives; that we cannot
expand our labour into the Territories without decreasing it in the States, and what
is gained upon the frontier is lost at the centres of the institution; that pauper
white labour will not come into competition with our slaves, and, if it did, that it
would not increase the integrity and strength of slavery, and that, therefore, to the
equality of influence in the Federal legislature there is a necessity for the slave
trade."
* Mr. Yancey has denied this in a letter to the Daily News, and declared that he
"does not know two public men in the South, of any note, who ever" advocated
the restoration of the trade, and that " the people there are and have been almost
unanimously opposed to it."  It is unnecessary to reopen a question which has
been disposed of, and I therefore refer the reader, who wishes to ascertain the
authenticity of Mr. Yancey's statement, to the Daily News of the 27th and 28th
January, 1862.  One or two specimens, however, may be given of the views of
Southern politicians upon this subject. The Hon. L. W. Spratt of Georgia, in a
speech at Savannah in favour of the African slave trade, thus expressed himself:" The first reason for its revival is, it will give political power to the South. Imported slaves will increase our representation in the national legislature. More
slaves will give us more states; and it is, therefore, within the power of the rude
untutored savages we bring from Africa to restore to the South the influence she has
lost by the suppression of the trade. We want only that kind of population which
will extend and secure our peculiar institutions, and there is no other source but
Africa."




THE AFRICAN SLA. YE TRADE.                    123
burgh, Mississippi, in Mfay, 1859, a vote in favour of the reopening of the trade was passed by a large majority; and this was followed up     by the formation of an "African Labour Supply
Association," of which Mr. De Bow, the editor of the leading
Southern review, was the president.        In Alabama, a " League
of United Southerners" issued a manifesto in which the Federal
prohibition of the foreign slave trade is denounced as an unworthy concession to the demands of Northern fanaticism, and
which insists on "the necessity of sustaining slavery, not only
where its existence is put directly in issue, but where it is remotely concerned." In Arkansas and Louisiana the subject
was brought before the state legislatures.       A  motion brought
forward in the Senate of the former state, condemnatory of the
agitation for the revival of the African slave trade, was defeated by a majority of twenty-two. In the latter a bill embodying the views of the advocates of the trade was passed successfully through the Lower House, and only by a narrow majority
lost in the Senate.   In Georgia the executive committee of an
agricultural society offered "a premium      of twenty-five dollars
for the best specimen of a live Afiican imported within the
last twelve months, to be exhibited at the next meeting of the
society."   Nor was the principle of competition confined to the
show yard. Southern notions would have been shocked if so
solemn a work had missed the benediction of the church.           Accordingly, it was proposed in the True Southern, a Mississippi
paper, to stimulate the zeal of the pulpit by founding a prize
for the best sermon in favour of free, trade in human flesh.
Meanwhile those who were immediately interested in the
Mr. A. H. Stephens, the present Vice-president of the Southern Confederation,
has thus pointedly put the argument for the opening of the trade:-" We can divide
Texas into five slave states, and get Chihuahua, Sonora,. &c., if we have the slave
population, and it is plain that unless the number of African stock be increased, we
have not the population, and might as well abandon the race with our brethren of
the North in the colonization of the Territories... slave states cannot be made
without Africans. I am not telling you to do it, but it is a serious question concerning our political and domestic policy; and it is useless to wage war about abstract
rights, or to quarrel and accuse each other of unsoundness, unless we get more
Africans..... Negro slavery is but in its infancy."
And Mr. Jefferson Davis, while declaring his disapprobation of opening the trade
in Mississippi, earnestly disclaimed "any coincidence of opinion with those who
prate of the inhumanity and sinfulness of the trade. The interest of Mississippi,
not of the African," he said, " dictates my conclusion.  Her arm is, no doubt,
strengthened by the presence of a due proportion of the servile caste, but it might
be paralyzed by such an influx as would probably follow if the gates of the African
slave-market were thrown open."...  This conclusion, in relation to Mississippi,
is based upon my view of her present condition, not upon any general theory.  It is
owt supposed to be applicable to Texas, to New Mexico, or to any future acquisition to
be made south of the Rio Grande."




124        PERVERSION OF THE CONSTITUTION.
question had taken the law into their own hands, and the trade
in slaves with Africa was actually commrenced on a large scale,
Throughout tlie years 1859 and 1860 fleets of slavers arrived
at Southern ports, and, with little interference from the Federal
Goveirnment, succeeded in landing their cargoes. Tlie traffic
was carried on with scarcely an attempt at concealment. Announcements of the arrival of cargoes of Africans, and advertisements of their sale, appeared openly in the Southern papers;
and depots of newly imported "savages" were established
in thle principal towns of the South, "I lhave had ample
evidences of the fact," said iMr. Underwood, a gentleman of
known respectability, in a letter to the New  York Tribune,
"that the reopening of the African slave trade is already a
thing commenced, and the traffic is brisk and rapidly increasing. In fact, the most vital question. of the day is not the opening of the trade. but its suppression. The arrival of cargoes
of negroes, fresh fromr Africa, in our Southern ports is an event
of frequent occlrrence.'"t
One-half of the policy of' Thorough" was thus fairly inaugurated.  Bat the process of augmenting a population is slow;
and, even on the supposition that the Federal prohibition of the
external slave trade were removed, some years would elapse
before the South could hope to renew, with any prospect of
success, the colonization struggle with the fieesoilers.  During
the interval the movements of the North must by some means
be held in check; the Territories must be kept open. It was
necessary, therefore, to devise a principle of policy on which
the party could act together with a view to this end: and for
this purpose the South, according to its custom in similar emergencies, had recourse to the Constitution of the United States.
True, the whole tenour of the Constitution ran in an opposite
direction.  But'the leaders of the party did not despair.
Though they might not find their favourite principle, totideim
verbis, in the Constitution, nor yet, perhaps, totidem syllais,'"tlhey daredengage," like the book-learned brother in a like
difficulty, "they should make it out tertio modo or totiderm
literis."$
It was beyond question that the Constitution had recognized
the right of property in human beings. This could not be
* Not, however, it would seem, without interruption from the English cruisers.
A correspondent of the New York Jo2rnal of Commerce, writing from the coast of
Africa, mentions the capture of no less than twenty-two vessels as having been
effected by English cruisers in the summer and autumn of 1857. "All but one
were American, and the larger number belonged to New York."
f Annual Reports of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1857-8, 1858-9, 1859-60.
t Tale of a Tab.




EQUAL RECOGNAITiVON OF SLAVERY CLAIIED.        125
denied, and this was a sufficient basis for the policy of the South.
The recognition, it is true, was partial and local, so admittedly
so, that, even under the rule of the Slave party, the whole
course of law and government had proceeded upon this assumption. The latest enactment, for example, bearing upon the
question was the Kansas and Nebraska bill. This measure had
been brought forward by a Democratic member acting in concert with the whole South, and had been carried against a
vehement Northern opposition. Yet even this measure did not
assume an equality between slavery and freedom under the
Constitution; for, while it left it open to the inhabitants of a
Territory to prohibit slave labour therein, it permitted no corresponding prohibition to be directed against free labour;
while it refused to recognize property in slaves under certain
circumstances, and left such property unprotected by law, it
contemplated no occasion on which other kinds of property
should not receive recognition and protection. The very expression, "peculiar institution," showed the light in which
slavery was popularly regarded. But the Slave party had now
resolved neither to see nor to admit any of these qualifying
considerations. It took its stand on the principle that the Constitution recognized the right of property in man; and, refusing
to acknowledge anything which did not harmonize with this, it
reasoned with ruthless consistency to the conclusion that Congress, which was the organ, of the Constitution, was bound to
protect this property in whatever part of the Union it might be
found. The doctrine of "squatter sovereignty," which left it
open to the inhabitants of a district to decide for or against
slavery-albeit a doctrine fabricated to order, with a view to
meet the special exigencies of the Slave power-was therefore
denounced as no less unconstitutional than the Missouri Compromise, as no less dangerous than the Wilmot Proviso. It was
not for the people of a territory to say what property was to be
protected, and what to be left without protection; but it was
for Congress, to which it belonged to give effect to the Constitution over the whole Union, to protect all property without
distinction, whatever might be its nature, and in whatever part
of the Union it might be placed-whether consisting of human
or of other chattels, whether existing in the States or in the
Territories, in the Slave States or in the Free,
Such was the daring doctrine advanced by the leaders of the
South in the critical position of their affairs at which they had
now arrived. To make good their ground, they had need of
two things; first, a judicial decision by the highest Federal
authority in their favour; and secondly, a government at




126                    DRED SCOTT CASE.
Washington prepared to supply the necessary administrative
machinery for giving full effect to this decision.   The Supreme
Court of the United States is the tribunal of ultimate appeal
in constitutional questions.  Tlis court had for a long series of
years been composed of the most eminent lawyers of the Republic, and had maintained a high character for learning and
wisdom, as well as for the spirit of enlightened impartiality
with which it discharged its high     functions.   But this court
was now destined to suffer from     the same causes which had
affected injuriiously so many other institutions of the Union.
The judges of the Federal courts were appointed by the President and approved by the Senate.          In the Senate the Slave
party was predominant, and it had hitherto been able to nominate the President. It had, therefore, the appointments to the
national judicatory in its own hands; and for some yearsforeseeing that in the controversies which were pending it would
be of importance to have the judicial bench on its side-it had
been silently shaping to its purposes this great organ of the
nation's power.    With such success had the process been carried on, that in 1855, although the North had always furnished
by far the greatest share of legal talent and learning to the bar
of the Union, out of the nine judges who constituted the Supreme Court of the United States, five were Southern men and
slaveholders, and the rest, though not natives of the South,
were known to be in their sympathies strongly Southern. The
tribunal of ultimate appeal in the Union was thus brought to
a condition which commended it to the confidence of the
" thorough " politicians,* and before the court so constituted a
case was submitted for judgment, involving the principle which
it was desired to establish. This was the celebrated Dred
Scott case.   The facts of it are sufficiently simple.  A slave of
* The following, which occurs in the judgment of Chief Justice Taney in the
Dred Scott case, will give the reader an idea of the spirit with which the court
was animated. The question before the court was whether coloured persons are
legally citizens of the United States. Chancellor Kent had laid it down in his
Commentaries, that "it is certain that the Constitution and statute law of New
York speak of men of colour as being citizens; " and that " if a slave be born in
the United States, and lawfully discharged from; bondage, or if a black man be born
free in the United States, he becomes thenceforth a citizen." But Chief Justice
Taney contended that coloured persons were incapable of enjoying this privilege.
"Such persons," he said, " had been regarded as unfit to associate with the white
race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights
which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and
lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit; that this opinion was, at that time,
fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race, and was regarded as
an axiom in morals as well as politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute."




EFFECT OF THE DECISION.              127
the name of Dred Scott had been carried by his master from
Missouri, his native state, first to Illinois, a free state, and subsequently to the United States territory north of Missouri,
which, under the Missouri Compromise, was free territory. On
being brought-back to Missouri, the slave claimed his freedom
on the ground that his removal by his master to a free state
and territory had emancipated him; and that, once free, he
could not be enslaved by being brought again into a slave state.
This demand was strictly in accordance with the prevailing
course of decisions over the whole South up to that time; and
was thus, in conformity with precedent, conceded by the state
court of Missouri, before which it was in the first instance
brought. But the defendant appealed against this decision,
and the case came on under a writ of error first before the Supreme Court of the State, and ultimately, having in the interval passed through one of the circuit Federal courts, before the
Supreme Court of the Union. The result was the reversal by
a majority of the Supreme Court of the judgment of the court
below. In announcing the decision, Chief Justice Taney, who
delivered judgment, laid down two principles which went the
full length of the views of the Slave party. He declared, first,
that in contemplation of law there was no difference between
a slave and any other kind of property; and secondly, that all
American citizens might settle with their property in any part
of the Union in which they pleased.
Such was the momentous decision in the Dred Scott case.
Its effect was to reverse the fundamental assumption upon
which up to that time society in the Union had been based;
and, whereas formerly freedom had been regarded as the rule
and slavery the exception, to make slavery in future the rule
of the Constitution. According to the law, as expounded by
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, it was now competent
to a slaveholder to carry his slaves not merely into any portion
of the Territories, but, if it pleased him, into any of the Free
States, to establish himself with his slave retinue in Ohio or
Massachusetts, in Pennsylvania or New York, and to hold his
slaves in bondage there, the regulations of Congress or the laws
of the particular state to the contrary notwithstanding. The
Union, if this doctrine were to be accepted, was henceforth a
single slaveholding domain, in every part of which property in
human beings was equally sacred. So sweeping were the consequences involved in the Dred Scott decision. Reading that
decision in the light of subsequent events, we cannot but
admire the sagacious foresight of De Tocqueville:-" The
President who exercises a limited power may err without caus



128     SECOND REQ UIREMENT OF THE SLA YE PO WER.
ing great mischief in the state.     Congress may decide amiss
without destroying the Union, because the electoral body in
which Congress originates may cause it to retract its decision by
changing its members.    But if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent men or bad citizens, the Union may be
plunged into anarchy or civil war."
The Slave Power had thus accomplished its first object.    The
Constitution had been turned against itself, and, by an ingenious
application of the   totidem literis  principle of interpretation,
the right to extend slavery over the whole area of the Union
was declared by the highest tribunal in the republic to be good
in constitutional law.   But it was further necessary to give
practical effect to this decision; and this      could   only  be
accomplished through a government at Washington favourable
to the principle it embodied. It was therefore resolved that, in
the approaching Presidential election, the party of the South
should be reconstructed on the basis of this principle in its
application to the Territories (for it was thought prudent for
the present to abstain from extending the new     doctrine to the
Free States).   This policy was, however, in the last degree
hazardous.    The   South   had hitherto   carried its measures
through an alliance with the Democratic party of the North;
but this party was now led by Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Douglas
was the author of the Kansas and Ncbraska bill, the repeal of
which was for the moment the main object of the South.        Mr.
Douglas was, therefore, plainly told that he must recant his
former principles-principles which, at the cost of much loss of
credit among his Northern friends, he had devised expressly for
the benefit of the Slave Power-and that he must make up his
mind to uphold slavery in the Territories in spite of anti-slavery
decisions by the squatter sovereignty, or forfeit the support of the
South.   Now this was a length to which Mr. Douglas and the
section which he led-highly as they prized the Southern alliance, and    indulgently   and   perhaps   approvingly   as  they
regarded the institution of slavery-were not prepared to go.*
* Yet every point was strained to meet the views of the South. The distinction
between the programmes of the two sections as they were ultimately amended, is so
fine that it may easily escape the inattentive reader. The essence of the demand of
the extreme (Breckenridge) section was contained in the second of the amendments
made in the Cincinnati platform; which was to the effect "That it is the duty of the
Federal government, in all its departments, to protect when necessary the right of
persons and property in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority
extends;" while the Douglas party embodied in its amendments the principle of the
Dred Scott decision. Theoretically, the positions were identical, but practically they
involved an important difference. The Douglas programme, although acknowledg
ing the right of slave property to protection in the Territories, gave to the slave



APOLOGY FOR SO UTHERN A GGRESSION.             129
Mr. Douglas was, therefore, cast aside. The combined phalanx
which had so long ruled the Union was broken in two, and the
Slave Power stood alone. This position of affairs could only
lead to one result-that which actually occurred-the triumph
by a large majority of the Republican party. The South having thus failed to make good the one alternative of its'thorough' policy, at once accepted the other; and the dissolution of the Union was proclaimed.
Such has been the career of aggression pursued by the Slave
Power in North America for the last fifty years. It forms, as
it seems to me, one of the most striking and alarming episodes
in modern history, and furnishes a remarkable example of what
a small body of men may effect against the most vital interests
of human society, when, thoroughly understanding their position and its requirements, they devote themselves deliberately,
resolutely, and unscrupulously to the accomplishment of their.
ends. It has indeed been contended that " the action of the,
South on this subject [the extension of slavery], though in
appearance aggressive, has in reality been in self-defence, as a
means of maintaining its political status against the growth of
the North."'   And in one sense/this is true, though by no
means in the sense in which the author of this argument would
have us believe it. What is suggested is, that the political
ascendancy of the South has been necessary to prevent its
being sacrificed t6 the selfish ends of the Northern majority;
and that it has been with a view to this object-security against
Northern rapacity-and not at all on its own account, that the
extension of slavery has been sought. The policy of slavery
extension by the South is thus represented as but a means to
an end-that end being the legitimate development of its own
resources. Such is thetheory. One more strikingly at variance with the most conspicuous facts of the case it would perhaps be difficult to imagine. The extension of slavery sought
as a means to an end! and that end free trade, fiscal equality,
and the internal development of the Southern States! Why,
if these were the real objects of the South, where was the
need, and what was the meaning, of secession? They were all
secured to it by the Cincinnati platform; they had all been
holders no other guarantee than a resort to the ordinary tribunals; whereas the
assertion in the Breckenridge programme of the duty of the Federal government, " in
all its departments, to protect" slavery, was understood to imply the neoeesity of
drawing up a black code for use in the Territories. " There must,' says the Richmond Enquirer, "be positive legislation. A civil and criminal code for the proteo —
tion of slave property in the Territories ought to he provided."
* Spence's American Union, p. 107.
9




130           IN WHAT SENSE DEFENSIVE.
advocated by Mr. Douglas. Why then reject the Democratic
manifesto and the Democratic candidate, and break with the
Democratic party-if this was all that was sought? Were
state rights threatened by the Cincinnati platform? Was Mr.
Douglas a protectionist? Yet if the South had not broken
with this party-a party whose motto was state rights and free
trade, a party which regarded slavery with something more
than indulgence-the Democratic organization might never
have been shaken, and the South might still have been in possession of the Federal Government. "But why discuss on
probable evidence notorious facts? The world knows what the
question between the North and South has been for many
years, and still is. Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked
of. Slavery was battled for and against, on the floor of Congress and in the plains of Kansas; on the slavery question
exclusively was the party constituted which now rules the
United States; on slavery Fremont was rejected, on slavery
Lincoln was elected; the South separated on slavery, and proclaimed slavery as the one cause of separation."'
But, though not true in the sense suggested by the English
champions of the Southern cause, there is a sense in which it
is strictly true that the aggressions of the Slave Power have
been defensive movements. This is indeed the essence of the
case which I have endeavoured to establish. For I have endeavoured to show that, while the economic necessities of the
South require a constant extension of the area of its dominion,
and while its moral necessities require no less urgently a field
for its political ambition, it is yet, from the peculiarity of its
social structure, incapable of amalgamating with societies of a
different type, and has no objects which it can pursue with
them in common; and that, consequently, it can only attain its
ends at their expense. It must advance; it cannot mix with
free societies; and, where these meet it in the same field, it
must push them from its path. In this sense it must be allowed
that the aggressive movements of the South have been but
efforts prompted by the instincts of self-defence; but whether
the fact, when thus understood, is likely to help the argument
of those who employ it, it is for themn to consider. It is suggested, indeed, that this necessity of aggression arises from the
relative inferiority of the South in wealth and numbers-that
its encroachments are but " means of maintaining its political
status against the growth of the North." But in all political
confederacies particular members or groups of members must
be inferior to other members or groups, or to the rest combined,
* Mr. Mill in Faver's Mfagazine for February, 1862.




ATTEMPT OF JOHN BRO WN.                           131
and if this were a reason      for political separation, there     could
be no such thing as political union.        The Southern States are
not more interior in wealth and numbers to the Northern than
is Ireland to Great Britain, or Scotland to England and Ireland;
yet neither Ireland nor Scotland is compelled in self-defence to
pursue towards the more powerful confederation of which they
severally form a part, a policy of aggression. Why should it be
different with    the Southern     States of the Union?         Let the
champions of the South address themselves to this problem,
and if they can solve it without being brought at last to slavery
as the ultimate cause of all other dissensions-the          one incompatibility in the case-they will show more ingenuity than they
have even yet displayed.        I venture' to   suggest that solution
which has been foreshadowed by De Tocqueville, and which is
at once the most obvious and the most profound.              The South
has been compelled to pursue a policy of aggression towards
the North, not because        it is less rich   or less populous, but
because it is different, and all the       differences which      divide
North and South have originated in slavery-in an             institution
which prevents the growth of interests, ideas, and aims in
which free societies can share, and which can prosper only by
perpetually encroaching on their sphere.*
* Some explanation, perhaps, is needed why in the foregoing sketch no mention
has been made of one of the most signal and devoted acts of heroism in modern
times-the attempt of John Brown to open a guerilla warfare against slavery in
Virginia. The omission has been made designedly. The enterprise, however worthy of being recorded, having yet originated exclusively in the noble heart of the
man who conducted it, and having been carried into operation without the connivance of any considerable party in the United States, could not properly be included
in a sketch of which the object was to trace the workings of those parties. The
effort stood apart from the combination of agencies which were working towards
the same end; yet it would not be correct to say that it was without influence on
the cause which it was designed to serve. Its connexion with the history of the
movement appears to have been this. The alarm which the attempt created in the
South had the effect of strengthening the influence of the extreme party there, and
of transferring the conduct of affairs in the Slave States from such men as Hammond and Hunter, Wise and Clingham, to such men as Jefferson Davis, Stephens,
and Yancey-from the representatives of the Border to those of the Cotton States.
(See Annuaire des Deux Mondes, 1860, pp. 553-555.) It can scarcely be doubted
that this hastened the split in the Democratic party, and thereby the triumph of the
Republicans. In this manner the enterprise of John Brown conduced directly to
the present crisis, and, through this, we may now with some confidence assert, to
the downfall of the great crime against which he had sworn undying enmity. The
reflection will be welcome to those who would deplore that an act of such serene
self-devotion should be performed in vain.
"Actions of the just
Smell sweet in death, and blossom in the dust."
The reader who desires to see a faithful and spirited sketch of this worthy representative of the sturdy virtue of the Pilgrim Fathers is referred to the Life and Letters of Captain John Brown, edited by Richard D. Webb. London: Smith, Elder
and Co. 1861.




I132   ESSENTIAL CHARACTER Of SLA E SOCIETY
CIAPTER VIII.
THE DESIGNS OF THE SLAVE POWER.
WE have traced in the foregoing chapter the career of the
Slave Power. In the present it is proposed to consider its
probable designs. This, indeed, might well seem to be a
superfluous inquiry; since, if we have correctly appreciated
the past history of that Power, and the motives which have
carried it to its present perilous attempt, we shall not easily err
as to the objects which it would pursue in the event of that
attempt being successful. Combinations of men do not in a
moment change their character and aims; of all combinations
aristocracies are the most persistent in their plans; and of all
aristocracies an aristocracy of slaveholders is that the range of
whose ideas is most limited, and whose career, therefore, is least
susceptible of sudden deviation from the path which it has long
followed.
Nevertheless, it will not be expedient to take for granted
what would seem to be in such little need of proof; for there
are those who tell us that this party, whose whole history has
been a record of successful aggression and of pretensions rising
with each success, has engaged in this last grand effort from
motives the reverse of those whicl have hitherto notoriously
inspired it; and who would have us believe that the Slave
Power, which in the space of half a century has pushed its
boundary from the foot of the Alleghanies to the borders of
New Mexico, and which, from the position of an exceptional
principle claiming a local toleration, has reached the audacity
of aspiring to embrace the whole commonwealth in its domain
-that this Power has suddenly changed its nature, and, in now
seeking to secede from the Union, aims at nothing more than
simple independence-the privilege of being allowed to work
out its own destiny in its own way.
This assumption, indeed, however paradoxical to those who
are familiar with the exploits of the Southern party, underlies
most of the speculation which has been current in this country
upon the probable consequences of a severance of the Union,
and is that which has procured for the cause of secession the
degree of countenance which it has enjoyed. It will therefore
be desirable to consider how far the basis of the assumption is
warranted-how far the altered position of the South-suppos



UNCHANGED BY IINDEPEDENCE.              1388
ing it to make its ground good in the present struggle-is calculated to affect the character which it has hitherto sustained, and
to convert an unscrupulous and ambitious faction into the moderate rulers of an inoffensive state.
And here we must advert to principles already established.
We have seen the causes which have made the Slave Power
what it is:-in its new position which of these causes will cease
to operate? Slavery is to remain the " corner stone" of the
republic more firmly set than ever. The economic and moral
attributes of the South will therefore continue to be such as
slavery must make them. Cultivation will be carried on accord
ing to the old methods; the old process of exhaustion must,
therefore, go on; and thus the necessity for fresh soils will be
not less urgent under the new regime than under the old. The
stigma which slavery casts on industry will still remain: there
will, therefore, still be an idle and vagabond class of mean
whites; and, since cultivation must still be contracted to the
narrow area which is rich enough to support slave labour, there
will, as now, be the wilderness to shelter them. There they
must continue to drag out existence, lawless, restless, incapable
of improvement, eager as ever for filibustering raids on peaceful neighbours. Lastly, the moral incidents of slavery must
remain such as we have traced them. The lust of power will
still be generated by the associations and habits of domestic
tyranny, and the ambition of slaveholders will still connect
itself with that which is the foundation of their social life, and
offers to them their only means of emerging from obscurity.
In a word, all those fundamental influences springing from the
deepest roots of slave society, which have concurred to mould
the character and determine the career of the Slave Power
while in connexion with the Union, will, after that connexion
has been dissolved, continue to operate with unabated energy.
Nor does this adequately represent the case. While the
same motives to ambition will remain, the appetite for power
will be still further stimulated by the exigencies of its new position. Connected with the North, the Slave Power was suetained by the prestige of a great confederation. Through the
medium of its government it was brought into harmonious relations with free countries; under the regis of its protection it
enjoyed almost complete immunity from foreign criticism.- It
so happened, too, that, during the chief period of its connexion
with the Union, the South contrived to hold the reins of government in its own hands, and was thus enabled in the prosecution
of its'designs to wield a power far greater than its own, and to
compass ends, which, in the absence of such support, could not




134    POSSIBLE CONDITIOVNS OF INDEPENVDENCE.
have failed to call up in other countries effectual opposition.
But, separated from the North, it will neither command the
same resources nor enjoy among foreign powers the same consideration. Its position will be one of absolute isolation fiom
the whole civilized world: it will be compelled to encounter
without mitigation the concentrated reprobation of all free society. Such a position will only be permanently tenable on one
condition-that of vastly augmenting its power.  The South
will not be slow to discover this; and thus, by more p)owerful
inducements than it has yet experienced, the Slave Power will
be precipitated upon a new career of aggression.
These considerations apply to every conceivable lhypothesis
as to the terms on which the independence of the Southern
Confederacy may be accomplished. But, in order to bring out
more distinctly the views which are likely to govern this body
as an independent power, it will be convenient to consider the
case on three distinct suppositions.
We may suppose, first, that the independence of the Slave
Republic is recognized on the terms of permanently limiting
its area to those portions of the South which are already definitely settled under slavery.
Or, secondly, we may suppose its independence to be recognized on the condition of its being restricted for the present to
the above limits, but with liberty of colonizing, and, after
colonization, of annexing the unsettled districts on equal terms
with the North-the question of free or slave institutions being
left to be determined by some principle analogous to squatter
sovereignty.
Thirdly, we may suppose an equal division of the unsettled
portions of the public domain between the contending parties,
the South taking that portion which lies westward of its own
boundary, including the Indian Territory and New Mexico.
Taking tle first of these suppositions-the recognition of the
independence of the South on the terms of being permanently
confined within the limits of country already settled under
slavery-this would involve a considerable curtailment of the
present area of the Slave States. Extensive districts included
in this area cannot in any correct sense be said to be settled at
all; and others are settled under freedom. The latter observation applies to large portions of Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, which would, therefore, on the hypothesis we are at present considering, pass to the side of the North; the former
applies to Texas, and in a considerable degree to Arkansas.
Thus, Texas, comprising an area of 274,356 square miles-an
area greatly larger than that of France-contained in 1850 but




LIMITATIONr OF SLA VERY TO ITS PRESENT AREA. 135
58,161 slaves; and Arkansas, extending over 52,198 square
miles-an area larger than that of England-contained but
47,100 slaves. Districts in which the slaves are not more
numerous than this-albeit they may have been enrolled as
slave states to meet the political exigencies of the Slave Power
— cannot be said to have been yet appropriated to slavery.
The task of their colonization has yet to be performed; and on
the supposition, therefore, that the Slave Power were restricted
within the country which it has really settled, these districts
with the others would pass from its grasp. Now, what future
would lie before the Slave Power in the event of its being shut
up within these limits? It seems to rne we can have little difficulty in forecasting its destiny. If there be any truth in the
best established conclusions, independence upon such terms
could only be the prelude to an early overthrow of the present
social and political fabric of the South. Once confine the operations of slavery to the tracts which it already occupies, and
the ultimate extinction of the system  becomes as certain
as the ultimate surrender of the garrison of a beleaguered
town which is absolutely cut off from  relief.  Emancipation would be gradually but surely forced upon slaveholders
by irresistible causes; and scope would at length be given for
the resuscitation of society upon wholesome principles. Each
year would bring, on the one hand, an increase of the slave
population, and on the other-as the soil deteriorated under the
thriftless methods of slave culture-a diminished area of land
suitable for its employment; and the process would continue
till, in the words of Judge Warner, " both master and slave
would be starved out." The process of decay would commence
in the older states. There would be a fall in the price of
slaves; breeding would no longer be profitable; and thus the
single prop which has for fifty years supported slavery in those
states would be at once withdrawn. For a time the working
states might not be losers, and might even be gainers by the
change. The price of labour might fall more rapidly than
their lands would deteriorate. But it would be for a time only.
The decreasing productiveness of the slave's exertions would
at length reach the point at which the returns from them would
not equal the cost of his support, and then the progress towards
the catastrophe would be rapid. The fate of the older states
would overtake every portion of the slave domain; and the
whole body of slaveholders would be compelled to face the
fearful problem of doing justice to four million victims of their
own and their ancestors' wrong. It is not to be supposed, however, that the solution would be postponed to the last moment.




136     SECOND CONDITION OF INDEPENDENCE.
So soon as the end came distinctly into view, provision would
doubtless be made to meet the inevitable cllange; and the
gradualness of the process would allow time for the action of
palliative influences.  Such, it seems to me, would be the
result of independence on the terms involved in the first hypothesis. In such terms, however, we may be well assured, the
Southern leaders, fully understanding as they do their own
case, would only acquiesce after complfete subjugation.
Btt, secondly, we may assume, as the condition of Southern
independence, that the unsettled portions of the public domain
(including under this expression, besides the Territories technically so called, the greater part of Arkansas and nearly the
whole of Texas) should be open for slave colonization, wlile a
like liberty should be accorded for free settlement; and we
have now to consider what would be the effect of its position,
as thus determined, on the fortunes of the Slave Power. Now
I think it is plain that, in view of the competition which such
a determination of the question would inevitably engender, the
necessity would at once be forced upon the South of maintaining a footing in the unsettled districts at whatever cost. The
attractions offered by the fertile soils and fine river systems of
Texas and Arkansas could not fail to draw from the North, on
the one hand, and from California, on the other, crowds of free
settlers, who would quickly establish themselves upon the most
eligible sites. If the South did not proceed with equal energy,
it would find itself forestalled at every point. A cordon of free
states would in no long time be drawn around its border, barring its advance towards the rich lands of Mexico, and throwing
it back upon its exhausted fields. Is it likely that the Slave
Power would quietly contemplate this consummation,-that it
would look forward to what Mr. Spence aptly calls " the painful process of strangulation,' without making an effort to break
the bands which were gradully but surely closing around it?
The supposition is incredible.  Freedom  and slavery would
therefore once more renew their race in the colonization of the
Territories. And on what grounds could the South hope for
success in such a contest? The mortifying lesson taught in
Kansas has not been forgotten. The South knows well that a
renewal of the contest under conditions which then brought
sighal defeat must inevitably lead to a like result. But the
conditions of the new trial of strength would, in one respect at
least, be far less favourable for the Southern cause than those
which proved disastrous in Kansas. The Slave Power would
no longer find an accomplice enthroned at Washington. What
happened in Kansas, therefore, would of necessity be repeated




THIRD CONDITION OF INDEPENDENXCE.          137
in Texas and New Mexico; the' South would be out-colonized
by its rival, and the goal would appear in no distant view.
There would be but one escape from this fate-such a rapid
increase of its disposable slave population as would supply the
defect froml which it suffered in its former attempts; and this
increase could only be accomplished in one way-a revival of
the Afiican slave trade. The revival of this trade would, accordingly, in the event we are consideritng, become a vital question for tlme South. Whether the measure would really prove
effectual for the purpose designed is a question which I do not
think we lhave sufficient data to resolve; but that such would
be the case is undoubtedly the opinion of tlle Southern leaders.
"We can divide Texas into five slave states," says the Vicepresident of the Southern Confederation, " and get Clhihuahua
and Sonora, if we have the slave population; but unless the
number of the African stock be increased we have not the
population, and might as well abandon the race with our brethren of tlie North in the colonization of the Territories. Slave
states cannot be made without Africans."  "Take off," says
Mr. Gaulden of Georgia, "the ruthless restrictions which cut
off the supply of slaves from foreign lands. take off the
restrictions against the African slave trade, and we should then
want no protection, and I would be willing to let you have as
much squatter sovereignty as you wish. r Give us an equal
chance, and I tell you the institution of slavery will take care
of itself." From all this it seems to follow-assuming a separation on the terms of an open field for free and slave colonizatin over the still unsettled districts-that the only chance of
permanently establishing the Southern Republic on that " corner stone" which its builders have chosen, would lie in reopening the African slave trade, and rapidly increasing the supply
of slaves; and that the Southern leaders would, in the contingency supposed, at once adopt this expedient I cannot for a
moment doubt. As we have seen in a former chapter, the trade
had actually been commenced on an extensive scale before the
breaking out of the civil war; and, with vastly more urgent
reasons for reviving it, while there would be entire'freedom
from the restraints of Federal legislation, it is difficult to believe
that there would be any hesitation about recurring to the same
course.
But there is yet another condition under which the independence of the South may be regarded. We may suppose that
the Union is dissolved on the terms of an equal division of the
unsettled districts between the contending parties. This arrangement would probably satisfy the utmost aspirations of the




138      GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS IGNORED.
Southern party. It would probably also-so far as any distinct
ideas on the subject exist-fall il with the conception of an
independent South which for the most part rises befjre those
who in this countiy take tie Southern side, incltlding, it may
be observed, some whose sincerity in disclaiming all symplathy
with slavery it is impossible to doubt. It becomes. tlieiefore,
of importance that the consequences involved in this mnode of
establishing Southern independence be carefully examinied.
Tile argument by which the support of the Soutlern cause,
understood as I have just stated it, is reconciled witil the
avowal of anti-slavery opinions, is one with tile basis of whlich
the reader is now familiar. It is this, that under the proposed
arrangement the limits of slavery would be fixed; and that,
this point being attained, the downfall of the system would in
due tiine follow. "Tlhe Southern Confederacy, henmmed in
between two free and jealous neighbours [the Northern. States
and Mhexico] will henceforth see its boundaries, and comprehend and accommodate itself to its future conditions of national
existence. The moment slavery is confined definitively with
its present limits, according to the best opinions, its character
becomes modified and its doom is sealed, though the execution
of the sentence may seem to be relegated to a very distant
day. "
This theory, it will be remarked, involves a suspicious paradox. It supposes that the most complete success which the
South can hope for in the present war would effectually defeat
the precise object for which the South has engaged in war. It
supposes that Englishmen know more of the real necessities of
slavery than the men whose lives have been spent in working
the system, and who have now staked them on an attempt to
establish it upon firm foundations. Before accepting so improbable a doctrine, it would be worth considering whether there
may not be more to be said for the wisdom of IMr. Jefferson
Davis and his friends, than those would have us think who in
this country favour their cause.
It seems difficult to believe that those who speculate on the
prospects of slavery in the manner of the writer from whom I
have quoted, have attended to the geographical conditions
under which, in the case supposed, the institution would be
placed. The South is described as "hemmed in" between
Mexico and the North. The expression implies ideas of magnitude truly American; for the Power thus "hemmed in" would
be master of a space as large as all Europe west of the Vistula,
and would have at its disposal a region, still unsettled and
* North British Review for February, 1862, p. 269.




NORPTHERNJEALOUSY NOT A SUFFICIENT SAFE GUARD. 139
available for slave colonization, little less extensive than the
whole area of the present Slave States.* Under an arrangement
which professes to provide for the extinction of slavery a new
field would be thus secured for its extension, equal to that
which now employs 4,000,000 slaves.
But, it will perhaps be said that, whatever might be the
immediate effects of Southern independence establlished upon
these terms, still, the bounds of slavery being absolutely fixed,
provision would be made for its ultimate extinction. Those
opponents of slavery who find comfort in this view of the case
must possess more far-reaching sympathies than I can pretend
to. It may be worth their while, however, to consider whether
even their longanimity may not in the end be balked of its
reward. For, ere the time would arrive when the Slave Power,
having occupied the vast regions thus secured for it, would
begin to feel the restraints of its spacious prison, at least a
quarter of a century would have elapsed, and at least two million slaves would be added to the present number. With this
increase in the area of its dominion and in the numnber of its
slave population, and with the time thus allowed it for consolidating its strength and maturing its plans, it cannot be doubted
that the power of the South would have become indefinitely
more formidable than it has ever yet shown itself. And as
little, I tlink, can it be doubted that its audacity would have
grown with its strength; for it would now, by actual trial, have
proved its prowess against the only antagonist whom it has
really to dread, and it would enter on its career of independence amid all the eclat of victory. In the mood of mind
produced by the contemplation of its achievements and the
sense of its supremacy, is it likely that the South would be content to bridle its ambition,-much less to accept a lot, acquiescence in which would be tantamount to signing its own doom?
It will be said that the Slave Power, severed fiom the Union,
would find itself on all sides surrounded by watchful and jealous
neighbours, whose office it would be to counteract its intrigues
and to hold its ambition in check; and that, in discharging this
office, the free communities of America would be sustained by
the moral, and, if need were, by the physical, support of the
Great Powers of Europe. It cannot be denied that there is much
weight in this consideration; yet its importance may easily be
over-rated. The Northern States, once shut out from Mexico
* That is to say, the whole of those of them which are actually settled under
slavery-a description which would exclude nearly the whole of Texas, Florida,
and Arkansas, of which three states the aggregate slave population is less than
150,000.




140            EUR OPEAN INTER VENTION
and Central America by the vast racnge of territory wliicll, under
this determination of the quarrel, would be alienated firom their
confederacy, would have little object in staying the progress of
the South in that direction. It is, moreover, inmportant to observe that one of the most popular projects among all sections
of the Northern people, for some years past, has been the
providing of railway communication between the Atlantic and
the Pacific States- a project which, so soon as the re-establishment of peace shall allow time for the prosecution of industrial schemes, will doubtless be restiued. Now, this idea once
carried into effect, the chief reason with the Northern people for
desiring influence in the Gulf of Mexico would be removed.
Again, it is not impossible that, before the time should arrive
when intervention might be required, the position of affairs
among the Northern States might be considerally altered.
Althoug!h I am quite unable to see the ground for the apprehension now so prevalent, and apparently so influential,
in the North, that, a severance of the Union once effected,
the process of disintegration would go forward till society
should be reduced to its primary elements; still I think it
cannot be doubted that the example would be contagious;
and thus it is no violent supposition, that, as in course of
time a difference of external conditions among several groups
of the Northern States resulted in the growth of different
interests and different modes of regarding political questions,
the present would be followed by future secessions, until, in
the end, several communities should take the place of the
existing Confederation.  Now  it is obvious to reflect that,
were such an order of political relations once established, the
Northern States would find, in the clashing interests and
mutual jealousies developed among themselves, more tempting matter for diplomatic activity than in counteracting the
designs of Southern ambition in a part of the world from
which their connexion, alike commercial and political, had
been almost wholly cut off.
And still less is European intervention to be relied upon.
The powers of Europe have doubtless strong reasons that
Central America should be held by hands which they can
trust; and they would naturally be disposed to offer obstacles to the progress of a Slave Power.  But Europe is far
removed from the scene of Mexican intrigue; and a European war, or even a serious complication in European politics, might easily relax their vigilance.  Taking into consi* On this point at least the Republican and Democratic parties are one. See
their respective platforms.




NOT TO BE RELED ON0.                            141
deration   all the circumstances of the case-the period which
would elapse before the new lands could be occupied, a period
during   which the Slave Power would have time to organize
its forces and     to  study   the weakness of its opponents-tile
chances that in the interval disunion in the            North, or complications of policy in Europe, would produce contingencies
favourable to its designs-the persistency            of aristocracies in
pushing schemes on which they have once entered-the eminent examples of this quality which the              South has already
furnished-the passion, amounting to fanaticism, with                which
it has long cherished       this particular scheme-above all, the
absolute necessity under which it would in the end find itself
of extending its domain-who, I say, with all these circumstances in    view,   can feel assured      that, once established      on
the broad basis of an empire reaching from              the Potomac to
the Rio Grande, the Slave Power would not hold out a serious
menace of realizing the vast projects of its ambition; and that
the world might not one day be appalled                by the spectacle
of a great slaveholding confederacy          erecting itself in Central
America, encircling the Gulf of Mexico, absorbing the West
Indies, and finally including under its sway the whole tropical region of the New World 2?
If there be any force in these speculations, it will be seen
that Mlr. Jefferson Davis and his associates were not so widely
* " Vers le milieu de l'ann6e 1859, il se forma dans les ta.ts qui cultivent le
coton, et specialement dans la Louisiane et le Mississipi, une association myst6rieuse, dont les statuts etaient couvert d'un secret inviolable, et dont les membres
s'intitulaient lec chevaliers du, cercle d'or. Ces chevaliers appartenaient exclusivement aux classes aisees; ils avaient une organisation toute militaire et devaient 6tro
pourvus d'armes. Les progres rapides de cette association attirerent cquelque attention; mais comme Walker parcourait a ce moment le sud et commengait les preparatifs de l'exp6dition dans laquelle il devait perdre la vie, on crut qu'il se meditait un
nouveau coup,de main contre le Nicaragua on contre quelqu'une des provinces du
Mexique, que lobjet de l'association etait de recueillir de largent et de recruter des
hommes pour le compte du celebre flibustier. D'autres penserent que le succes qui
avait couronno les tentatives faites pour introduire des negres d'Afrique par les
bouches du Mississipi avait donne naissance a de vastes operations de traite. Comme
il s'agissait, dans les deux cas, de violer les lois et de dejouer la surveillance des
autorites fiderales, le mystere dont s'entourait l'association s'expliquait tout naturellement. Les projets des chevaliers etaient beaucoup plus ambitieux cependant: ils
tendaient h detacher de la confederation les etats qui cultivent le coton pour en
former une republique nouvelle, dont l'esclavage serait l'institution fondamentale, et
qui puiserait dans le r6tablissement de la traite les elemens d'une rapide prosperite.
Des que sa force d'expansion ne serait plus arretee par la cherte de la main-d'ceuvre,
la nouvelle republique no pouvait manquer d'absorber en quelques annies le Mexique, le Nicaragua et la Bolivie; elle acquerrait de gr6 ou de force toutes les Antilles, et fonderait au centre du continent americain l'6tat le plus riche et le plus
puissant du monde.  Le cercle d'or, c'etaient donc les pays et leas les qui forment
autour du golfe du Mexique une ceinture d'une incomparable f6condite." —Annuaire
des deux Mondes, 1860, p. 602.




142      REFVIVAL OF THE AFRICAN SLA YE TRADE.
mistaken in the selection of their means as has been commonly
supposed, and that they may contemplate with considerable
complacency the " eutlanasia" whicll has been predicted for
their favourite institution.' That the establishment of Southern independence upon equal terms will " modify the character" of slavery, I am far fiom denying. But it is important to
dotermine in what direction tlhe modification will take place,
and, in connexion with this subject, I shall revert to a topic to
which I have already more than once referred, but the ilnportance of which deserves a somewhat fuller consideration than
has yet been given to it-I mean the possibility of a revival of
the African slave trade.
The audacity of this conception and its incongruity with the
prevailing modes of thought in Europe, and especially in England, have on this side of the Atlantic caused general incredulity as to the fact that such a project has been really entertained. It seems almost too monstrous that a party, claiming
admission as an equal member into the community of Christian
nations, should deliberately conceive the plan of reviving in
the full light of modern civilization a scandal which has long
lain under its ban. It is not then strange that the disclaimers
by Southern agents of any intention on the part of the South
to revive the trade have, for the most part, obtained an easy
acceptance in Europe. But those who are thus easily satisfied
can scarcely have attended to the prevailing tendencies of
Southern politics, or be aware of the steps which, previous to
the outbreak of the civil war, had been actually taken in this
direction by the party now dominant in the Soith. Of the
strong interest of the Slave Power in the revival of the trade,
in the event of its independence being established on any terms
which give it a chance of maintaining itself in the Territories,
there cannot I think be a doubt. It has been already shown
that, on one supposition, the question would become absolutely
vital. It would be only a choice between the reopening of the
trade and acquiescence in a condition of things which would
be tantamount to early extinction.  On the hypothesis last
considered, there would not, indeed, be the same vital necessity
for the measure; nevertheless, the temptation to it would be
strong. The labour force of the South has long been unequal
to the requirements of the planters. Of this the steady rise in
the price of slaves during half a century is a sufficient proof.
* "This euthanasia of slavery [the consummation of Southern independence, as
conceived by the writer] we admit to be slow and distant; but we solemnly believe
it to be both safe and certain. And, at least, it is a euthanasia-a natural and not
a violent death." —IN7orth British Review for February, 1862, p. 272.




REVIVAL OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.                      143
But, with the whole Southern Territory secured for exclusive
slave settlement, the insufficiency of the home supply to meet
the necessities of the case would be more manifest than ever.
With the advance in price breeding would no doubt be stimulated in the older states; but the process of augmentation by
natural increase would be slow, while on the other hand, the
high price of labour would greatly curtail the profits of cultivation.   Under these circumstances, it is difficult to believe
that the planters of the South would long tolerate an impediment which stood between        them   and the realization of vast
schemes of aggrandizement, more especially when the maintenance   of the obstacle could      only   be justified   on  grounds
of morality which      the whole South would        reject with disdain.   The    continued   prohibition   of the trade     would    be
denounced as an       unworthy subserviency to       the  fanaticism
of foreign governments-as (to quote language which has
already been employed in this cause) " branding every slaveholder in the     land   with   the   mark   of   guilt and    dishonour."'    Slaveholders would be called upon as before, but in
tones rendered more authoritative by the increased           prestige
which the cause of slavery would have acquired, to remove
"the degrading stigma" from         "their most essential political
institution," and, as the means at once of filling their pockets
and clearing their fame, to repeal a law jarring alike with their
moral and material susceptibilities. As opposed to these considerations, the only counter-motive of the slightest weightt
* Mr. John Forsyth, late Minister to Mexico, in the Iobile Register.
i For I do not think that the provision in the Montgomery Constitution prohibiting the African slave trade will, by any one acquainted with the history of the party
who framed it, or with the circumstances of the particular case, be so considered.
The motives which dictated the provision are very clearly set forth by Mr. Everett
in the following passage of a speech delivered some months ago:-" Now, to meet
this state of things and this interest, supposed to be vital in Virginia, the skilful men
that were employed in drawing up a new constitution for the Confederate States
South introduced in the first place a clause prohibiting the African slave trade. This
was intended to have the further effect of conciliating foreign influence; but then the
next clause was that it should always be competent for a Southern Congress to prohibit the domestic slave trade, and in the debates at Montgomery on this clause no
secret was made of the intention of these provisions. It was openly said that they
meant to say to Virginia:' The other border states join the Confederacy, and we
allow the domestic slave trade to go on. Stand aloof from us, and we will amend
that feature in the constitution which prohibits the African slave trade; we will supply ourselves from that quarter.' Thus you see there was at once in the same breath
a bribe and a menace to Virginia, but for the time, and as far as we can judge, not
with much effect. The'Ancient Dominion' had a character in the world. She was
not willing at home or abroad to assume the position of an ancient powerful state
standing aloof from such a movement as this on the causes for which its authors inaugurated it, and then, months after joining it that she might secure to herself the




144             UNANIMITY OF SLA VYFOLD3ERS.
which can come into play, is the interest of the breeding states
in maintaining their monopoly. That they would have this
interest in a pecuniary sense is, indeed, abundantly evident.
But would this circumstance be allowed permanently to prevail
against not merely the equal pecuniary interests of other states
in the opposite policy, but against the requirements, in the
largest sense, of the whole Slave Republic? A      consideration of
the course pursued under analogous circumstances on former
occasions will show the extreme improbability of such a supposition.
There is perhaps nothing more remarkable in the past career
of the Slave Power than the unanimity with which the whole
body of slaveholders have concurred in supporting           a given
policy, so soon as it was clearly understood that the public interests of slavery prescribed its adoption; yet with the line of
policy which, in view    of this necessity, has been actually followed, the interests of the Slave States have been far from
being equally identified.    The slave-breeding states of Virginia
and Kentucky had a very distinct and palpable advantage in
opening new ground for slave cultivation across the Mississippi.
They thereby     created   a new   market for their slaves, and
directly enhanced the value of their principal property. But
the slave-working States of Alabama and Mississippi, which
were buyers, not sellers, of slaves, which were producers, not
consumers, of cotton, had       a precisely   opposite   interest as
regards this enterprise.    The effect of the policy of territorial
extension in relation to them, was to raise the price of slavesthe productive instrument which they employed; and, on the
other hand, to reduce the price of cotton-the commodity in
which   they   dealt.  It at once increased      their  outlay   and
melancholy privilege of continuing to stock the plantations of Alabama, Mississippi,
and Louisiana."
The party which enacted this prohibition is the party which passed and repealed
the Missouri Compromise; which accepted and repudiated the principle of the Nebraska Bill. In the former case the bargain was adhered to till the Southern party
had appropriated its share of it; in the latter till it was proved unequal to what was
required of it. In both cases solemn engagements were set aside the moment they
became inconvenient. Considering the circumstances under which the prohibition
of the African slave trade has been passed, is it likely that it will be regarded as
more sacred than the Missouri Compromise, or than the Nebraska Bill? The following passage from a Florida paper, the Southern Confederacy, will show that the validity of the enactment has been already called into question, and on precisely the
same grounds as those on which the former engagements were challenged. " For God's
sake, and the sake of consistency, do not let us form a Union for the express purpose
of maintaining and propagating African slavery; and then, as the Southern Congress
has done, confess our error by enacting a constitutional provision abolishing the
African slave trade.  he opening of the trade is a mere question of expediency, to be
determined by legislative enactment hereafter, but not by a constitutional provision "




DESIRE TO APPROPRIATE CUBA.              145
diminished their returns. Yet this did not prevent the whole
body of Slave States firom working steadily together in promoting that policy whlich the maintenance of the Slave Power,
as a political system, demanded. A still more striking instance
of the readiness to sacrifice particular interests to the political
ascendancy of the body is furnished by the conduct of the South
in its dealings with Cuba. The annexation of this island has
long been, as all the world knows, a darling project of Southern
ambition. The bearing of the acquisition on the general interests of the South is very obvious. It would add to its domain a district of incomparable fertility. It would give it a
commanding position in the Gulf of Mexico. It would increase
its political weight in the Union. But there is one state in the
South which could not fail to be injured in a pecuniary sense
by the acquisition. The principal industry of the State of
Louisiana is the same as that of Cuba-the cultivation of
sugar. B3ut. the soils of Louisiana are far inferior to those of
Cuba-so much so that the planters of that State are only able
to hold their ground against the competition of their Cuban
rivals by the assistance of a high protective duty. Now the
immediate consequence of the annexation of Cuba to the South
would be the abolition of the protection which the planters of
Louisiana now enjoy-an event which could not fail to be followed by the disappearance, in great part, of the artificial ploduction which it sustains. Nevertheless, Louisiana has formed
no exception to the general eagerness of the South to appropriate Cuba; so far from this, it has curiously enough happened that the man who has been most prominent among the
piratical party who have advocated this step is MVr. Slidell,*
the senator in Congress for the State of Louisiana. Thle sympathies which bind slaveholders together have thus always
proved more powerful than the particular interests which would
sunder them; and whatever course tle necessities of slavery,
as a system, have prescribed, that the whole array of slaveholders, with a disregard for private ends, which, in a good
cause, would be the highest virtue, has never hesitated to pursue.
The precedents, therefore, afforded by the past history of the
South would lead us to expect that, so soon as the expediency
of the African slave trade, in promoting the political interests
of the Slave Power, became clear, the private advantage of particular states would be waived in deference to the requirements
of the whole Confederacy. But, though this should not be so
* This was the gentleman selected by Southern tact to recommend the cause of
the South to Europe.
10




146             FREE TRADE IN SLA VES.
-though the border states, when the trial came, should prove
deficient in that public spirit which the working states in siinilar circumstances have never failed to exhibit-it is still quite
inconceivable that what the public interests required should be
permanently postponed to an opposition resting on such a basis.
The men who now guide the councils of the Confederacy, from
the moment of their accession to power to the present time,
have never shrunk from any act essential to their ends: such
men, having triumphantly carried their party through a bloody
civil war, would hardly allow themselves to be baffled by the
selfish obstinacy of a few of their number. Indeed already the
particular expedient to which, in the event of protracted obstinacy, recourse might be had, has been hinted at in no obscure
terms. Mir. De Bow has advocated the reopening of the African slave trade upon the distinct ground that it is necessary to
extend the basis of slavery by bringing slaves within the reach
of a larger number than, at their present price, are able to purchase them.  By this means, he argues, increased stability
would be given to the institution in proportion as the numbers
interested in maintaining it should be increased. Of the
soundness of this policy from the stand-point of the Slave Power
there can, I think, be no question; and for the means of carrying it out in the last resort the extreme party could be at no
loss. Let the reader observe the purpose to which this argument might be turned in the event of a schism between the
breeding and the working states on the point in question. It
is well known that the possession of a slave is the great object
of the poor white's ambition, and the most effectual means of
gratifying this ambition would be to make slaves cheap. To
rally, then, to the cause of free trade in slaves this numerous
class would be, indeed, an easy task. Nothing more would be
needed than to appeal to their most obvious interest, to give
play to their most cherished passion. Everywhere-in Virginia and Kentucky no less than in the states of the extreme
South-the opening of the African slave trade would be hailed
with enthusiasm by the great bulk of the people; and thus,
whenever convenience demanded it, the resistance of an interested section might be overborne by the almost universal voice
of the rest of the community.
To sum up the results of this part of the discussion:-on
every hypothesis of Southern independence, save that which
would be equivalent to the early extinction of the Slave Power,
the reopening of the Afiican slave trade would be recommended to the South by almost irresistible inducements-in one contingency by considerations which appeal to interests that are




DUTY OF EUROPE-NEUTRALITY.              147
vital. The only source of opposition would be the private
interests of the breeding states; but private interests in the
history of the South have always yielded to the demands of
public policy, and would probably do so in this case. In the
event, however, of the breeding states proving refractory, the
leaders of the extreme party would have the remedy in their
own hands. The protest of a narrow minority would be wholly
powerless to stein the tide of popular feeling which they have
it in their power at any moment to evoke.
CHAPTER IX.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.
WHAT is the duty of European nations towards North America
in the present crisis of its history? I answer-to observe a
strict neutrality between the contending parties, giving their
moral support to that settlement of the question which is most
in accordance with the general interest of the world.  What
ground is there for European interference in the quarrel? In
the present aspect of affairs absolutely none-none, that is to
say, which would not equally justify interference in every war
which ever occurred.  I say, in the present aspect of affairs,
for in a different aspect of affairs I can well imagine that a
different course would be justifiable, and might even become a
duty. Supposing free society in North America in danger of
being overborne by the Slave Power, would not the threatened
predominance in the new world of a confederacy resting on
slavery as its corner stone, and proclaiming the propagandism
of slavery as its mission, be an occasion for the interference of
civilized nations  If there be reason that civilized nations
should combine to resist the aggressions of Russia-a country
containing the germs of a vigorous and progressive civilization
-would there be none for opposing the establishment of " a
barbarous and barbarizing Power"-a Power of whose existence slavery is the final cause? But that contingency is happily not now probable; and in the present position of the American contest there is not even a plausible pretext for intervention. It is ulhappily true that our trade is suffering, that much
distress prevails in our manufacturing districts, and that we are
threatened with even more serious consequences than have yet
been felt.  But is tlis a plausible pretext for interfering in a
foreign war? HIow can a great war be carried on without dis



148           IMPOLICY OF INTEiR TVENTION.
turbing the commerce of the world?' For what purpose are
blockades instituted and permitted? To say that, because we
are injuriously affected by a blockade we will not recognize it,
is simply to say that we do not choose to be bound by laws
longer than it suits our convenience-is to throw away even
the pretence of justice. But interference in the present case
would be not merely immoral, it would be futile-nay, if the
relief of distress be really the object of those who urge it, it
would, we can scarce doubt, aggravate a hundred-fold the evils
it was intended to cure.  For, supposing the blockade of the
Southern ports to be raised, to what purpose would be this resuit if the war continued? It would, doubtless, carry comfort
to the Slave Confederacy; it might possibly bring a few hundred thousand bales of cotton to Europe; but, in the present
condition of the South, with Northern armies encamped on its
soil, it would not cause cotton to be grown, and still less would
t open Northern markets to our manufactures. A fleet may
raise a blockade, but it cannot compel people to buy goods who
do not want them. Intervention in America would, therefore,
fail to restore trade to its normal channels; and it is admittedly
to a disturbance in the normal channels of trade far more than
to scarcity of any single commodity-to a cessation of Northern
demand far more than to an interruption of Southern supplythat the distress now experienced in England is due.*  Now
the cessation of Northern demand will continue as long as the
war continues; so that the effect of intervention on manufacturing distress would depend on its effect on the duration of the
war. And what would be this effect? On such a subject it
would be absurd to speak with confidence; but there is one
historical parallel which comes so close to the present case that
we should do well to ponder it. In 1792 an armed intervention
of European Powers took place in France. The allied sovereigns were not less confident of their ability to impose conditions on the French people, than are those who now urge intervention in America of the ability of France and England to settle the affairs of that continent. But we know how the intervention of 1792 ended. The spirit of democracy, allying itself
with the spirit of patriotism, kindled in the people of France an
energy which not merely drove back the invaders from their
soil, but which carried the invaded people as conquerors over
the length and breadth of continental Europe. Such was the
effect of a policy of intervention in the affairs of a great European nation. What reason have we to expect a different result
from a similar policy pursued in America? Has democracy in
* See the Economist, 26th April, 1862.




OBLIGATION TO RENDER MORAL SUPPORT.          149
America shown less energy than in Europe? Is its organization
less effective? Is the spirit of its patriotism less powerful?
Are the resources which it commands for war less extensive?
Or will the adversaries of democracy fight it with greater
advantage across the reach of the Atlantic? I am assuming
that an intervention, if attempted, would be resolutely carried
out: that a mere interference by our navies would only exacerbate and prolong the quarrel is so obvious as to disentitle such
a proposition to a moment's serious regard. The duty of neutrality is, therefore, in the present case as plainly marked out
by the dictates of selfish policy as by the maxims of morality
and law. While intervention would fail to alleviate the evils
under which we suffer, it would almost certainly add to those
evils the calamity of a great war-a war which would bequeath
to the posterity of the combatants a legacy of mutual hatred,
destined to embitter their relations for centuries to come.
But the duty of neutrality is not incompatible with the rendering of moral support. We may be required to abstain from
giving effect to our convictions by force, but we can never be
justly required to abstain from  advancing them by moral
means. Nay, so long as the conflict between good and evil
lasts, the obligation to sustain the right cause by sympathy and
counsel is one from which we cannot relieve ourselves. It
becomes, therefore, of extreme importance to consider what is
that settlement of the American contest which deserves the
moral support of Europe.
There are two modes of terminating the present war, either
of which must, it seems to me, be almost equally deprecated
by every fiiend of freedom and of the American people:-such
a triumph of the Southern party as would give to it the command of the unsettled districts to the south and west; and such
a reconstruction of the Union as would restore slavery to its
former footing in the Republic. It is, I think, difficult to say
which of these results would be the more extensively disastrous.
The one would establish, amid all the eclat of victory, a slave
empire, commanding the resources of half a continent, fired
with an ardent ambition, and cherishing vast designs of aggression and conquest. The other would once more commit a
moral and freedom-loving people-the main hope of civilization
in the New World-to complicity with the damning guilt of
slavery. The Union, restored on the principle of restricting
slavery, would not indeed be the same Union as that in which
the Slave Power was predominant. But fortune is capricious
in politics as in war. A few years might bring a change in the
position of parties; and a revolution of the wheel might once




150         BEG CONSTRUCTION OF THE UNION.
again commit the central government to the propagandists of
slavery. Even should this worst result not happen, the corrupting influence of the alliance would remain; the continued connivance at the perpetration of a great wrong would again force
the Republic into degrading compliances, and the progress of
political degeneracy, arrested for a moment by the shock of a
violent reaction, would proceed as before. Between the evils
of such a termination of tile contest and the absolute triumph
of the Slave Power, it would, perhaps, not be easy to decide.
A year ago either of these results, almost equally to be
deplored, seemed almost equally probable. The Northern people, taken by surprise, its leaders unaccustomed to power, its
arsenals in the hands of its enemies, with traitors in its public
offices, divided into parties holding discordant views and recornmending different courses, unanimous only in one strong wish
-a desire at all events to uphold the Union-seemed for a time
prepared to make almost any concession which promised to
secure this end. On the other hand, no vacillation marked the
South. With the directness of men, who, fixed in their ends,
have little scruple in their choice of means, its leaders were
urgent to precipitate the catastrophe. Theirskilfully contrived
treason had secured for them the principal forts and almost the
whole military stores of the Republic. The most experienced
officers in the United States army were their trusted agents, and
were rapidly passing over to their side. Elated by success and
confident in their resources, it seemed, at the outset of the contest, that they had all but accomplished their daring schemethat little remained for them but to seize upon Washington, and
dictate from the capitol the terms of separation.
Such was the position of affairs when the contest opened.
A year has passed, and contingencies which then appeared
imminent seem no longer within the range of possible events.
In presence of the searching test which real danger applies to
political theories, and amid the enthusiasm kindled by war, the
political education of the North has made rapid progress. The
true source of disaffection to the Union, so long concealed by
the arts of temporizing politicians, has been laid bare, and is
no longer doubted. The impossibility of bringing free and
slave societies into harmonious co-operation under the same
political system begins to be understood. The absolute necessities of, at all hazards, breaking the strength of the Slave
Power, as the first step towards re-establishing political society
in Nortlh America, is rapidly becoming the accepted creed.
Meanwhile, the advance of the Northern armies in the field
has kept pace with that of opinion in the public assemblies




RECONSTRUCTION OF THE UNION.             151
and, by an almost unbroken series of fruitful victories, the
military superiority of the North seems now to be definitively
established. In this aspect of affairs-with anti-slavery opinions making rapid way in the North, and Northern armies
steadily advancing on the Southern States-the reconstruction
of the Union, with slavery retained on its former footing, and
still more the complete triumph of the Slave Power, may, it
seems to me, be fairly discharged from our consideration.
Nay, I think, the actual state of facts, taken in connexion
with the resources of the contending parties, warrants us in
going a step further, and holding that, in the absence of foreign
intervention, the South must in the end succumb to its opponent. If this be so, what remains to be decided is this: on what
terms shall the submission of the South be made?-shall it return
to the Union to be ruled by the North, or secede under conditions to be prescribed by its conqueror? Assuming these to be
the practical issues involved in the struggle at the stage to which
it has now attained, I shall proceed to consider to what determination of it the moral support of Europe should be given.
It seems impossible to doubt that, at the present time, the
prevailing purpose of the Northern people aims at no less than
a complete reconstruction of the Union in its original proportions. The project admits of being regarded under several
aspects:-how far is it justified?-how far is it practicable?how faris it expedient? On each of these points some remarks
suggest themselves.
The forcible imposition on some millions of human beings
of a form of government at variance with their wishes, is an
act which undoubtedly demands special grounds for its justification. Whether the South be regarded as a portion of the
same nation with the North, or as a distinct people, it seems,
on either view of the case, impossible that an attempt to subjugate, for the purpose of ruling it, can be reconciled with the
maxims of political morality which we regard in this country
as applicable to the ordinary practice of civilized nations. If,
then, these maxims admit of no exception, this branch of the
argument is resolved, and the justification of the present views
of the North must be given up. But, writing in a nation which
holds in subjection under despotic rule two hundred millions
of another race, it is scarcely necessary to say that maxims
which condemn, without regard to circumstances, the imposition on a people of a foreign and despotic yoke are no portion
of the moral code of this country. The people of India may or
may not desire to be governed by Great Britain; but assuredly
the wishes of the people of India are not the grounds on which




152               SUBJUGATION OF THE~ SOUTH:
an English statesman would justify Great Britain in holding
that country in subjection. It folldws, tlien, that it is consistent
with political morality, as conceived in this country, that in
certain cases the principles of constitutional governm ent and
those of non-intervention should be set aside, and that a government should compel a portion of its subjects, or a people should
intervene to compel another people, to accept a formr of governmernt at variance with the wishes of those on whom              it is inposed.*    Now, if it be admitted that circumstances can in any
case create an exception to the ordinary rules of political and
international practice regarded as binding upon civilized nations,
we need have little hesitation in asserting that the present case
is exceptional.
What is the fact with which we have to deal?             A  few hun* "There are few questions which more require to be taken in hand by ethical
and political philosophers, with a view to establish some rule or criterion whereby
the justifiableness of intervening in the affairs of other countries, and (what is sometimes fully as questionable) the justifiableness of refraining from intervention, may
be brought to a definite and rational test. Whoever attempts this will be led to
recognize more than one fundamental distinction. not yet by any means familiar to
the public mind, and in general quite lost sight of by those who write in strains
of indignant morality on the subject. There is a great difference (for example)
between the case in which the nations concerned are of the same, or something
like the same, degree of civilization, and that in which one of the parties to the
situation is of a high, and the other of a very low, grade of social improvement.
To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between
civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error, and one which no statesman
can fall into, however it may be with those who, from a safe and unresponsible
position, criticize statesmen. Among many reasons why the same rules cannot
be applicable to situations so different, the two following are among the most important.  In the first place, the rules of ordinary international morality imply
reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They cannot be depended on for
observing any rules. Their minds are not capable of so great an effort, nor their
will sufficiently under the influence of distinct motives. In the next place, nations
which are still barbarous have not got beyond the period during which it is likely
to be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by
foreigners. Independence and nationality, so essential to the due growth and development of a people further advanced in improvement, are generally impediments to
theirs. The sacred duties which civilized nations owe to the independence and
nationality of each other, are not binding towards those to whom nationality and
independence are either a certain evil, or at best a questionable good. The Romans
were not the most clean-handed of conquerors, yet would it have been better for
Gaul and Spain, Numidia and Dacia, never to have formed part of the Roman Empire? To characterize any conduct whatever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered
the subject. A violation of great principles of morality it may easily be; but barbarians have no rights as a nation except a right to such treatment as may, at the
earliest possible period, fit them for becoming one. The only moral laws for the
relation between a civilized and a barbarous government, are the universal rules of
morality between man and man."-A Few Words on Non-Intervention, by J. S. Mill.
Fraser's Magazine, December, 1859.




HO W F AR JUSTIFIABLE.                      153
dred thousand slaveholders break loose from the political system
with which    they were connected, and erect a confederacy on
the avowed basis of slavery.     From   the past history of these
men, and from     the condition of society presented in the country which they govern, we have the clearest proofs as to what
this scheme involves.      We know that it involves the maintenance of a social system    at once retrograde and aggressiveretrograde towards those on whom it is imposed, and aggressive
towards the communities with which it comes into contact.
We know that it involves the design of extending the power of
this confederation, and, with its power, the worst form          of
human servitude which mankind has ever seen, over the fairest portions of the New World.      We know that in all probability-with a probability approaching to certainty-it involves
an attempt to revive a great scandal, the African slave tradea scandal which all Christian nations have agreed to stigmatize,
and which Great Britain in particular has for half a century
devoted her best influence, and a vast outlay of treasure, to
suppress.   We know that this body aims at political independence, not for that lawful purpose which makes political independence the first of national rights-the purpose of working
out a people's proper destiny-but for a purpose which makes
it the greatest of national crimes-the purpose of riveting
dependence upon another race-the purpose of extending and
consolidating a barbarous tyranny.     Now, these being the ends
for which the Southern Confederacy seeks to establish itself, is
its subjuogation by the North justifiable?   I hold that the right
is as clear as the right to put down murder or piracy.         As a
nation, we, in common with civilized Europe, have proscribed
as piracy the African slave trade. In the opinion of competent
judges the inter-state slave trade in the South involves enormities as great as any that have been enacted on the coast of
Guinea or in the middle passage;* and it is certain that the
* "I affirm that there exists in the United States a slave trade, not less odious
or demoralizing, nay, I do in my conscience believe, more odious and more demoralizing than that which is carried on between Africa and Brazil. North Carolina
and Virginia are to Louisiana and Alabama what Congo is to Rio Janeiro... God
forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slave trade in any form! But I
do think this its worst form. Bad enough it is that civilized men should sail to an
uncivilized quarter of the world where slavery exists, should there buy wretched
barbarians, and should carry them away to labour in a distant land: bad enough I
But that a civilized man, a baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of a free
state, a man frequenting a Christian church, should breed slaves for exportation,
and, if the whole horrible truth must be told, should even beget slaves for exportation, should see children, sometimes his own children, gambolling around him from
infancy, should watch their growth, should become familiar with their faces, and
should then sell them for four or five hundred dollars a head, and send them to lead




154           SUBJUGATION OF THE SOUTH:
purpose for which the Confederacy is established-the appropriation of the Territories for slave cultivation —cannot be
carried into effect without giving a powerful impulse certainly
to one, and probably to both, of those crimes. UnIless, therefore, we are prepared to retreat fiom the position wlic:h, as a
nation, we have deliberately taken up and consistently held
for half a century, we cannot deny that the overthrow of th3
Southern Confederacy would be a public benefit; and, even
though we should question the perfect purity of the motives of
those who undertake it, the act itself must be acknowledged as
a service to the civilized world.
That the overthrow of the Soutlern Confederacy is justifiable-so far as the duties of the North to that community are
concerned-appears to me, therefore, as clear as any doctrine
in the code of political ethics. But, being justifiable, is it
practicable?  Into the general merits of this branch of the
argument it would not become mne to enter; but, without pretending to pronounce an opinion on the ability of the North to
subdue the revolted states, it may be permitted me to advert
to some considerations bearing upon this'part of the case which
do not appear to have received fiom those who hlave undertaken to discuss it that degree of attention to which their importance would seem to entitle them.
The argument of those who deny the ability of the North to
effect its purpose of reconstructing the Union rests, for the
most part, on historical analogies, and, more particularly, on
the successful resistance made by the ancestors of the present
belligerents to the authority of Great Britain.  Now  a brief
consideration will show that the present case differs fiom all
previous examples of successful revolt in some important
respects, and we shall find that, in every instance in which the
analogy fails, the difference points in the same direction-it
indicates greater facility of conquest in the present struggle.
In the parallel furnished by the revolutionary war of the last
century it is an obvious point of difference that Great Britain,
in that case, carried on the contest under the enormous disadvantage of being separated from her enemy by an intervening
ocean-a disadvantage of such magnitude as, in the opinion of
De Tocqueville, to detract indefinitely from the prowess of the
in a remote country a life which is a lingering death, a life about which the best
thing that can be said is that it is sure to be short; this does, I own, excite a horror exceeding even the horror excited by that slave trade which is the curse of the
African coast. And mark: I am not speaking of any rare case, of any instance of
eccentric depravity. I am speaking of a trade as regular as the trade in pigs
between Dublin and Liverpool, or as the trade in coals between the Tyne and the
Thames."-Lord Macaulay's Speech on the Sugar Duties.




HO W FAR PRA CTICABLE.              155
victors-whereas now the North stands close to its foe. Such
a difference is almost enough to deprive of all force arguments
drawn from the analogy of the two cases; yet the circumstance hlas been scarcely adverted to by those who have most
strenuously pressed the analogy.  But, passing by a point
which is peculiar to the comparison with the war of independence, there are others in which the present is distinguished
from all previous examples of insurrectionary success.
And, first, while the South is in the present war liable to an
absolute interruption of its external trade, it is of all countries
which ever existed the least capable of encountering such
a crisis. I say, the South is liable to an absolute interruption
of its external trade, for, notwithstanding the exploits of the
Merrirnac, it is quite inconceivable-having regard to the
mercantile marine and the mechanical resources of the contending parties-that the North should not be able in the long
run to maintain a permanent superiority at sea. It may, therefore, be assumed that the new Confederacy will be absolutely
cut off from commercial intercourse with foreign nations; and
this being so, it is obvious further to remark that of all communities in the world it is the one least prepared to meet such an
emergency-the least capable of supplying its own wants. To
feel convinced of this we have but to recall its industrial system-a system composed of slaves brutalized by ignorance
and tyranny, accustomed to perform a few routine operations,
and utterly inefficient if taken from their ordinary tasks. It is
true, indeed, the crisis has compelled a certain deviation from
the old routine; the cultivation of corn has already in some
places been substituted for that of cotton. But it cannot be
doubted that the change has been effected at a great loss of
industrial power, and, however slaves may be turned from one
kind of agricultural pursuit to another, beyond the range of
agriculture they must be absolutely useless. The plantation
slave of the South can never be converted into a skilled artisan:
consequently all those commodities for the supply of which the
South has been accustomed to rely on the industrial skill of
foreign countries it must now be content to dispense with altogether. Now amongst such commodities are many which are
absolutely essential for the conduct of war. The consideration,
therefore, is one which touches a vital point in the ability of
the South to maintain a prolonged resistance. Hitherto, by its
plunder of the military stores of the United States while its
leaders were in possession of the government, and by the fruits
of its early victories, it has been enabled to maintain itself;
but, as its present supplies become exhausted and cease to be




156       RAIL WAYS AN ELEMENT OF WARFARE.
replenished by successes in the field, it is not easy to see how
this necessity can be met.
Another circumstance which has been almost lwhlly overlooked in this argument, is the change which railways may
effect in the facilities for aggressive warfare.  In none of those
cases in which a war of independence lias been maintained
with success against the superior forces of an invader has this
resource been available.   This consideration applies directly to
a point on which great stress has been laid by the partisans of
the South-the difficulties offered to conquest by mere vastness of extent.   There can, I suppose, be no doubt that this
circumstance gives a great advantage to the party which is on
the defensive; but a country traversed by railways is, for
practical purposes, reduced to a tenth of its real size.     That
the novel conditions thus imported into military tactics have
not been overlooked by the commanders on either side is fully
proved by the nature of their plans, which have been conceived
chiefly with a view to utilizing this new arm of warfare.    Thus
the expeditions to Hatteras, to Roanoke Island, and to Port
Royal, appear now to have been dictated       by a consideration
of the command conferred by these positions over the railways which connect the Carolinas with Virginia on the
one hand, and with Georgia on the other.          Again, the importance of Nashville, as a strategical point, consists in its
being the central terminus of three grand lines, proceeding
respectively from   Washington, fromn     Richmond, and      fiom
Charleston to the West; and the possession of Corinth was
rendered important by an analogous reason.        Railways have
thus  introduced   a new    element into   warfare of sufficient
importance to modify the whole plan of a campaign; and
railways apply directly to overcoming the impediment of distance-the circumstance which has beenr urged as the most
insuperable obstacle to the conquest of the South.*
* "This is the first great war, if we except the Italian campaign, in which railways, on any large scale, have figured in warlike operations. How greatly they
may modify the ordinary canons of strategy it is yet impossible to tell. Already
many movements have taken place, and positions been occupied and abandoned,
which, except upon the supposition of the new element introduced by railways,
would have been utterly irreconcilable with the old principles of securing the base
and protecting the flanks of an army.  Where there is a railway, troops may be
moved through a hundred miles in the time required to march over twenty. And,
vice versd, twenty miles to be marched over may chance to neutralize the benefits
of a hundred miles'of rail. But not only is a new and indefinite element introduced into the calculations of military distances by the unequal means of locomotion
available at different points, but in America the vastness itself of the different lines
of railway gives rise to a distinct and special class of problems. It is easy to
destroy twenty miles of railway, and even a hundred.  A hundred miles were




IS RECONST5i UCTION EXPEDIENT?              157
Again, in no war of independence wlich has been successfully waged has the invaded nation included among its inhabitants a multitude, one-third of its whole number, who were
either positively hostile, or at least absolutely indifferent to the
cause.  Such a multitude exists in the midst of the Southern
population; and by this hostile or indifferent multitude the
whole productive industry of the country is carried on. Now,
as the Federal armies advance into the Southern States, what
will be the behaviour of the negro population      They will
probably do as they have done hitherto: they will fly to the
Federal lines; and though they should not rise in insurrection,
they will at least cease to work. Now when the negroes cease
to work, how is the South to maintain an army? The " white
trash" may be made to fight, but they will scarcely be made
to work-at all events they will be unable to do both. It would
seem, therefore, that, so soon as the South is once thoroughly
penetrated by the Northern armies, a collapse of its productive
system is inevitable.
These are some of the circumstances in which the present
contest in America differs from those successful wars of defence
with which it is usual to compare it. I am far from intending
to say that the considerations which have been adduced prove
the possibility of accomplishing the object which the North has
now in view; but they seem to me to show that the facilities
for that purpose are greater than is commonly supposed, and
they at least suggest caution against building hasty conclusions
upon inapplicable precedents.
But, thirdly, assuming the reconstruction of the Union to be
practicable, is it expedient?  And here we are met at once by
the consideration-how is the conquered South to be governed?
I can see but one way in which this can be effected-by the
overthrow of representative institutions in the Southern States,
and the substitution of a centralized despotism wielded by the
Federal government. I cannot imagine that there could be
any escape from this course; for, granting that in certain districts of the South there might be a considerable element of
population favourable to the Union, it is impossible to doubt
that in the main the people would be thoroughly disaffected;
and how are popular institutions to be worked through the
lately destroyed by the Confederates. But it would be very difficult to destroy
several thousand. Moreover, the extent of the country must always make it doubtful at what point it becomes expedient to destroy so useful an auxiliary until it is
found too late to do so. It follows, we think, pretty conclusively, the cardinal
maxim in any American war involving large tracts of country must be to take possession of the railroads."-.iAational Review, April, 1862, p. 496.




158      RECOURSE TO DESPOTIC EXPEDIENTS.
agency of a disaffected people? A recourse to despotic expedients would, therefore, so far as we can judge, be forced upon
the North.  Now, it is evident that such a step involves con
siderations of the greatest gravity-considerations before Mwhich
the citizens of the Union may well pause and ponder. If,
indeed, the consequences of this policy could be certainly confined within the designed limits, there would, perhaps, be little
need for hesitation.  At the worst, it would be no more than
the substitution of one form of arbitrary power for anotller —
of a civilized for a barbarous despotism-and if the new government were only equal to its task of reconstructing Southern
society, its advent would be wholly a blessing.  But despotic
principles once introduced into the system of the Federal government, is it conceivable that their influence would end in
the attainment of the object for the accomplishment of which
they were at the first invoked? Is it likely that the same men,
who should be exercising arbitrary authority over the whole of
the Southern States, would be content, in governing the Northern, to confine themselves within constitutional bounds? Would
there not be the danger that habits acquired in ruling one division of the republic would affect modes of action in the other,
and that, so soon as popular institutions became troublesome in
the working, they would be superseded in favour of the more
direct and obvious expedients of despotism? Besides it must
be remembered that something more would be required to govern a disaffected South than a staff of officials. The bureaucracy would need to be supported by an army, and the army
would of necessity be at the disposal of the central government.
It would be easy, of course, to prescribe constitutional rules,
to define with precision the limits of administrative authority;
but when the temper of arbitrary sway had been formed, when
the example of an arbitrary system was constantly present to
the eye and familiar to the thoughts, when the means of giving
effect to arbitrary tastes were at hand, it is difficult to believe
that the barrier of forms and definitions would be long respected,
and that sooner or later the attempt would not be made to give
to the principles of arbitrary government a more extended application.  The task of holding the South in subjection would
thus, as it seems to me, inevitably imperil the cause of popular
institutions in North America.  Now, the loss of popular
government would be a heavy price to pay for the subjugation
of the South, even though that subjugation involved the overthrow of the Slave Power.
It is satisfactory to find that there are politicians in America
who are alive to the momentous interests which this aspect of




REFORMING SO UTHERN SO CIETY.            159
the question involves. In a remarkable speech lately delivered
in New York, the danger to which I have adverted was very
fairly and with much courage exposed. The speaker, however,
contended that, by boldly following out a policy of emancipation-by striking at the root of disaffection through its causethe danger in question might be evaded. The views expressed
are so important, and, looking at the recent course of events,
give so much promise of becoming fruitful, that I think it right
to state them in the eloquent words of their author.
"Is this government, in struggling against rebellion, in re-establishing its authority, reduced to a policy which would nearly
obliterate the line separating democracy from absolutism 2 Is it
really unable to stand this test of its character? For this is the
true test of the experiment. If our democratic institutions pass
this crisis unimpaired, they will be stronger than ever; if not,
the decline will be rapid and irremediable. But can they pass
it unimpaired? Yes. This republic has her destiny in her
hands. She may transform her greatest danger and distress
into the greatest triumph of her principles. There would have
been no rebellion, had there not been a despotic interest incompatible with the spirit of her democratic institutions; and she
has the glorious and inestimable privilege of suppressing this
rebellion, by enlarging liberty instead of restraining it, by granting rights instead of violating them.... How can you
rely upon the Southern people unless they are sincerely loyal,
and how can they be sincerely loyal as long as their circumstances are such as to make disloyalty the natural condition of
their desires and aspirations? They cannot be faithful unless
their desires and aspirations change. And how can you
change them? By opening before them new prospects and a
new future. Look at the other side of the picture. Imagine
slavery were destroyed in consequence of this rebellion. Slavery, once destroyed, can never be restored.... Southern
society being, with all its habits and interests, no longer identified with slavery, that element of the population will rise to
prominent influence which most easily identifies itself with
free labour-I mean the non-slaveholding people of the South.
They have been held in a sort of moral subjection by the great
slave-lords. Not for themselves but for them they were disloyal. The destruction of slavery will wipe out the prestige of
their former rulers; it will lift the yoke from their necks; they
will soon think for themselves, and thinking freely they will not
fail to understand their true interests. They will find in free
labour society their natural element; and fiee labour society is
naturally loyal to the Union. Let the old political leaders fret




1 G0       THE CONDITION OF TIME IGNORED.
as they please, it is the free labour majority that will give to
society its character and tone. Tlis is what I mean by so
reforming Southern society as to make loyalty to the Union its
natural temper and disposition. This done, the necessity of a
military occupation, the rule of force, will cease; our political
life will soon return to the beaten track of self-government,
and the restored Union may safely trust itself to the good faith
of a reformed people. The antagonistic element which continually struggled against the vital principles of our system of
government once removed, we shall be a trnly united people,
with common principles, common interests, common hopes, and
a common future."*
Such is the spirit in which the question of reconstructing the
Union is now approached by some of the leading minds of the
North, and such are the views which are now rapidly gaining
ground through the country. While, however, readily acknowledging the proof which these speculations afford at once of a
full appreciation of the real difficulties to be encountered and
of philosophic boldness in meeting them, I am unable to see that
the remedy suggested would obviate the danger which, it is
admitted, would exist. In the reasoning which I have quoted
no account appears to be taken of the element of time, so allimportant to a realization of the results anticipated. The abolition of slavery, it is truly said, would strike directly at the
authority of the slave-lords. The stigma at present affixed to
industry being removed, the industrial classes would quickly
rise in social importance, and a free labouring population would
doubtless in the end predominate in the South. But these
results could not be accomplished in a moment. A disloyal
people would not be rendered loyal by a single stroke of the
manumitter's wandrerum imperiis hominumque
Tot tantisque minor, quem ter vindicta quaterque
Imposita haud unquam misera formidine privet.
The habits of obedience are not easily broken through, traditional feelings are powerful, and the influence of the slave-lords
would probably long outlive the institution from which it derives its strength. A considerable period would, therefore, of
necessity, elapse before that pervading sentiment of loyalty
could be established, under the guidance of which alone, as all
admit, the rule of the Union could be safely entrusted to popular institutions.
But there is another result which might follow from the con* Speech of the Hon. Carl Schurz, delivered in the Cooper Institute, New York,
6th March, 1862.




TRUE POLICY FOR THE NORTH.             161
quest of the South and the overthrow of slavery, the probable
effects of which on the settlement of Southern society it may be
worth while for a moment to consider. Is it not probable that,
in the case we now contemplate, there would be an extensive
immigration into the Southern States of free settlers from the
North? And what would be the effect of this new ingredient
on the society of the South a I imagine it would in the main
be a wholesome one. The new settlers would carry with them
the ideas, the enterprise, the progressive spirit of free society,
and would act as a leaven of loyalty on the disaffection of the
South; but I think it is equally plain they would introduce into:
Southern society, at all events for some time, a new element of
disturbance. They would appear there as intruders, as the
missionaries of a new social and political faith-a faith hateful
to the old dominion, as living monuments of the humiliation of
the Southern people. Is it not inevitable that between them
and the old aristocracy a bitter feud would spring up-a feud
which would soon be exasperated by mutual injuries, and might
not impossibly be transmitted, as a heritage of hatred, to future
generations? Now such a condition of society would be little
favourable to the sudden conversion of the South to sentiments
of loyalty; and, pending this happy consummation, how is the
South to be governed a? We are thus forced back upon our original difficulty-the difficulty of governing a disaffected South,
from which it seems to me the path of despotism offers the only
escape.
For these reasons, I cannot think that the North is well advised
in its attempt to reconstruct the Union in its original proportions..
At the same time I am far from thinking that the time for
peace has yet arrived. What, it seems to me, the occasion demands, and what, I think, the moral feeling of Europe should
support the North in striving for, is a degree of success which
shall compel the South to accept terms of separation, such as
the progress of civilization in America and the advancement of
human interests throughout the world imperatively require..
To determine the exact amount of concession on the part of
the South which would satisfy these conditions is no part of my
purpose. The attempt would be futile. It will suffice that I
indicate as distinctly as I can that settlement of the controversy
which would, in my judgment, adequately secure the ends
proposed, and which on the whole is most to be desired.
Any scheme for the readjustment of political society in North
America ought, it seems to me, to embrace two leading objects:.
— st, the greatest practical curtailment of the domain of the
Slave Power; and 2nd, the reabsorption into the sphere of free
11




162    PECULIAR POSITION OF THE BORDER STATES.
society of as much of the present population of the Slave States
as can be reabsorbed without detriment to the interests of freedom. On the assumption which I have made of the ability of
the Northern people to subdue the South, these two conditions
resolve themselves into one. The only obstacle to a complete
reconstruction of the Union lies, on this assumption, in the difficulty of combining in the same political system forms of
society so different as those presented by the Northern and
Southern States. We may then, for the purpose of our discussion, confine our attention to the latter of the. two conditions
which have been laid down.
It will be remembered that, in considering, in a former chapter, the consequences of confining the Southern Confederacy
within the area already settled under slavery, it was pointed
out that slavery, thus restricted, would be at once arrested in
its development, and that the check given to the system would
be first felt in the older or breeding states. In these states the
profits fromn slavery being derived chiefly from the sale, not
from the employment, of slaves, so soon as the creation of new
markets for the human stock was precluded, the reasons for
maintaining the institution would cease.  The slaveholders,
obliged henceforward to look to the soil as the sole source of
their profits, would be forced upon improved methods of cultivation; and before the necessity for improved methods slavery
would perforce disappear. Now, this being the position of
slavery in the breeding states, it is evident that, so soon as the
progress of the Northern armies shall have made it clear that
the Slave Power must fail in its original design-still more
when the South is menaced with positive curtailment of its
dominions-the slaveholders of these states will understand that,
so far as their interests are concerned, the institution is doomed.
But this conviction will be brought home to them by still more
cogent reasons than those which reflection on their economic
condition would furnish. The breeding states are also the border states, and they are therefore the states on which the evils
of invasion must in the first instance fall. Already near the
whole of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, is in
possession of the Northern armies. Observe, then, the light
in which in the present aspect of affairs, the question of secession
must present itself to a border slaveholder. He sees that for
him the extinction of slavery is rendered certain in an early
future.  His slaves are flying to the Federal armies. His
country is suffering all the evils of invasion. The tie which
bound him to the Slave Power is hopelessly severed. In this
position of affairs is it not probable that, were the opportunity




.MR. LINCOLENS PROPOSAL; ITS OPPORTUINENESS.         163
of re-establishing social oider upon a new basis presented to
him, he would seize it, atd, the old system  of society having
irrevocably passed away, that he would in good faith cast in
his lot with a new order of things.
Such an opportunity has been created for the border states
by the adoption by Congress of Mr. Lincoln's recent message,
recommending a co-operation on the part of the Federal Government with such states as are willing to accept a policy of
emancipation. The scheme, indeed, has been pronounced in
this country to be chimerical-framed less with a view to the
actual exigencies of the case than to catch the applause of
Europe. I venture to say that never was criticism less appropriate, or censure more unjust. Practicality and unaffected
earnestness of purpose are written in every line of the message. In the full knowledge evinced of the actual circumstances of the border states, combined with the adroitness with
which advantage is taken of their peculiar position as affected
by passing events, there is displayed a rare political sagacity,
which is not more creditable to its author than is the genuine
sincerity which shines through his simple and weighty words.
Had the scheme indeed been propounded at the outset of the
contest (as so many well-meaning empirics among us were forward to advise)-while the Slave Power was yet unbroken,
and the prospects of a future more prosperous than it had yet
known seemed to be opening before it, there would have been
nome point in the strictures which have been indulged in, some
ground for invidious comment; but, proposed at the present
time, it is, as I venture to think, a suggestion than which few
more wise or more important have ever been submitted to a
legislative body.
Returning to our argument, it has been seen that, in the event
of the tide of war being decisively turned against the South,
the position, alike industrial and geographical, of the border
states would greatly favour a reconstruction of society in them
upon principles of freedom. Now, this result would be powerfully helped forward by another circumstance in respect to
which they differ from the more southern states of the Confederacy-the presence in their population of a large element of
free cultivators. This interest, already in some of the border
states* almost balancing that of slavery, would, it is evident, in
* For example in Missouri. The position of slavery in that state in 1856 is thus
described by Mr. Weston:-" In large portions of Missouri slavery has never existed
to any important extent. The counties adjoining Iowa, ten in number, contained in
1856 57,255 whites and only 871 slaves. Of the one hundred and seven counties
ninety five, occupying four-fifths of the area of the state, contained in 1856 669,921
whites, and only 57,471 slaves, or nearly twelve to one. In twenty-five of these




164        FA CILITIES FOR INYCORPORA TIOi.
the altered condition of affairs, rise rapidly into importance.
Occupying that place in the social arrangements towards which
the whole community was obviously tending, constantly increasing in numbers as the progress of emancipation brought new
recruits to its ranks-a nucleus of loyalty around which all the
best elements of society might gather-this section of the population would easily take the lead in the politics of their several
states, would give tone to the whole community, and determine
its march.
It would thus seem that, the might of the Slave Power once
effectually broken, the incorporation of the border states into a
social system based on industrial freedom would not present
any insuperable difficulties. It would be only necessary to give
support to tendencies which the actual state of things would
call at once into operation. Now, what might be done in the
border states, where a slave society actually exists, might, it is
evident, be accomplished with much greater facility in those
districts of the South which, though enrolled as slave states,
have in reality yet to be colonized-for example, in Texas and
Arkansas. In Texas population is represented by considerably
less than one person to the square mile; in Arkansas, by four;
and of this sprinkling of people three-fourths in both states are
composed of free persons. To the recovery of these states to
the dominion of freedom there would at least be no social or
political obstacles which might not be easily overcome. Arkansas and Texas recovered, Louisiana alone of the states on the
west of the Mississippi would remain to the Slave Power; and
is it not possible that Louisiana also might be recovered to freedom? Doubtless its pro-slavery tendencies are intensely strong;
its slave population almost equals the free; but the state is a
small one, and the prize would be worth an extraordinary effort.
Louisiana conquered, Arkansas and Texas recovered to freedom,
the whole course of the Mississippi would be opened to the
Western States; and the Slave Power-shut up within its narrowed domain, bounded on one side by the Gulf of MTexico and
the ocean, on the other by the line of the Alleghanies and the
Mississippi,-might with some confidence be left to that process of natural decay which slave institutions, arrested in their
expansion, inevitably entail.
I have hitherto discussed this question with reference to the
counties there was an absolute decrease of the number of slaves from 1850 to 1856,
In the whole ninety-five counties the increase of slaves in that period was only
2,264. Slavery is not strong, and has never been so, except in twelve counties in
the centre of the state, embracing about one-fifth of its area, and lying principally
upon the Missouri river."-Progress of Slavery, p. 14.




THE NEGRO Q UESTIO 0               165
interests of the Northern people on the one hand, and to those
of civilization, as identified with the overthrow of the Slave
Power, on the other. But there is another interest involved in
the settlement of the American quarrel which may not seem at
once to be identical with either of these-the interest of the
present race of negro slaves. The mode of terminating the
struggle which I have indicated as that which seems to me on
the whole most desirable, though, if realized, it would probably
bring fieedom to a million of slaves, would yet, it is not to be
denied, leave some three millions still in bondage; and there
are those who will probably think that this after all would be
but a sorry result from the great opportunities of the present
conjuncture, and from the great sacrifices which it has already
cost. Far wiser, it will be said, as well as more generous
would it be, now that the hand has been put to the plough, not
to look back till the work has been effectually accomplished,
and the great wrong once for all rased out. With the aspirations of those who hold this language I trust I can sympathize;
but it seems to me that they fail to appreciate the magnitude
of the problem which the policy they recommend involves.
No solution of that problem would be complete, or would be
worthiy of the enlightened views of the present time, which
did not include, besides the mere manumission of the negro
population, their protection against the efforts of their former
masters to recover their lost power, and no less, the provision for them of a career in the future.  Now, let us suppose the first of these ends to be accomplished-emancipation to be decreed-and overlooking the objection to what
would be the necessary condition of an attempt to give effect
to the second-the establishment in the South of a despotic
rule wielded by the central government-how, let us ask,
is it proposed to provide a career for four millions of emancipated slaves?  It will be said, the land still remains to be
cultivated; and the labour of the negroes will be as necessary for its cultivation after they have been emancipated as
before. The career for the emancipated negro would, therefore, be plain: he would, as a free labourer, hire his services to
those who now take them by force. In a word, a population
of four million slaves might be converted into a population of
four million free labourers. This is, in truth, the only mode of
solving the question that deserves serious attention; for I do
not think that the plans, of which we have lately heard something, of a wholesale removal of negroes from the American
continent-even where they are not advanced for the purpose
simply of discrediting the cause of emancipation-can be so




166               WHOLESALE EMAANCIPATIONJ.
regarded.    But, taking the policy of immediate and wholesale
emancipation in its best form, and judging it in a spirit of candour, is it a reasonable expectation that, looking at all the conditions of the case, the result which is contemplated would be
realized,-that the negro, on the one hand, and the planter, on
the other, would lend themselves to the scheme?             I am certainly not going to oppose to the proposal the exploded calumny
of the incorrigible indolence of the negro.       I am   quite ready
to admit, what nothing but the pernicious influence of slavery
on the negro would ever have given a pretext for denying, and
what our West Indian experiment has now           conclusively   established,@ that the negro in freedom is amenable to the same
influences as the white man-that he can appreciate as keenly
independence, comfort, and affluence, and that, like him, he
will work and save and speculate to obtain these blessings:
nevertheless, while conceding all this, I confess I am      unable to
see my way to the result that is here expected.
The grand difficulty to be encountered in any scheme of emancipation which proposes to convert suddenly a regime of forced
into one of hired labour, is the state of feeling which slavery
leaves behind it in the minds of those who have taken part in
its working. With the master there is a feeling of exasperation
which leads him    to thwart the operation of a system     which has
been forced upon him       and which is odious to him, combined
with   a desire to re-establish under some new          form  his old
tyranny; while the emancipated bondman naturally desires to
* A very important contribution to our knowledge on the working of emancipation in the West Indies has just appeared from the pen of Mr. Edward Bean
Underhill, from whose work, " The West Indies, their Social and Religious Condition," I extract the following testimony of Captain Darling, the present governor of
Jamaica, to the capacity of the negro for freedom:-" The proportion of those who
are settling themselves industriously on their holdings, and rapidly rising in the
social scale, while commanding the respect of all classes of the community, and some
of whom are, to a limited extent, themselves the employers of hired labour, paid for
either in money or in kind, is, I am happy to think, not only steadily increasing,
but at the present moment is far more extensive than was anticipated by those who
are cognizant of all that took place in this colony in the earlier days of negro freedom. There can be no doubt, in fact, that an independent, respectable, and, I
believe, trustworthy middle class is rapidly forming.  If the real object of emancipation was to place the freed man in such a position that he might work out his
own advancement in the social scale, and prove his capacity for the full and rational
enjoyment of personal independence secured by constitutional liberty, Jamaica will
afford more instances, even in proportion to its large population, of such gratifying
results, than any other land in which African slavery once existed. Jamaica at
this moment presents, as I believe, at once the strongest proof of the complete success of the great measure of emancipation as relates to the capacity of the emancipated race for freedom, and the most unfortunate instance of a descent in the scale'of agricultural and commercial importance as a colonial community."-The West
Indies, their Social and Religious Condition, pp. 458, 459.




THE WEST INDIAN EXPERIMENT.                            167
break for ever with a mode of life which is associated with his
degradation.     These    principles   of disturbance     were    brought
fully into play in the West Indian experiment;* but they were
in that case largely controlled by the condition of things in the
West Indian islands.       The strong arm       of the British    Government put an effectual restraint on the tyrannical temper of the
masters;t while in somne of the islands the preoccupation of the
land closed against the slave the one refuge from a hated lot.
This, for example, was the case in Barbadoes, and in this island,
accordingly, a system      of hired industry was easily introduced.
But the case of Barbadoes was exceptional, and, in the main,
emancipation in the West Indies has issued, not in the conversion  of a population of slaves into a population           of labourers
working for hire, but in the creation          of a numerous class of
snall negro proprietors, each cultivating in independence his
* "The House of Assembly at the time of emancipation possessed the fullest powers to remedy any defect in that great measure. But it abused its powers. Instead
of enacting laws calculated to elevate and benefit the people, it pursued the contrary
course. By an Ejectment Act it gave to the planters the right to turn out the
enfranchised peasantry,- without regard to sex or age, at a week's notice, from tho
homes in which they had been born and bred; to root up their provision grounds,
and to cut down the fruit trees which gave them both shelter and food; in order
that, through dread of the consequences of refusal, the negroes might be driven to
work on the planters' own terms.... Driven from his cabin on the estate by the
harsh or unjust treatment of his former master, the free labourer had to build a cottage for himself. Immediately the customs on shingles for the roof to shelter his
family from the seasons were more than doubled; while the duty on the staves and
hoops for sugar hogsheads, the planters' property, was greatly reduced. And when
the houses were built, they were assessed at a rate which, in some parishes, bore so
heavily on the occupants, as to lead to the abandonment of their dwellings for shanties of mud and boughs."-Ther West Indies, &c, pp. 216-218.
" Some proprietors at emancipation drove their labourers from the estates, and one
was mentioned who was living at the time on the north side of the island. Ho
swore that he would not allow a' nigger' to live within three miles of his house; of
course the man was speedily ruined."-Ibid. pp. 268, 269.
t " If the House of Assembly has had any policy at all in its treatment of the
labouring classes, it has been a'policy of alienation.' Only the perpetual interposition of the British government has prevented the enfranchised negro from being
reduced to the condition of a serf by the selfish partizan legislation of the Jamaica
planters... As slaves, the people were never instructed in husbandry, or in the
general cultivation of the soil; as free men, the legislature has utterly neglected
them, and they have had to learn as they could the commonest processes of agriculture. No attempt has been made to provide a fitting education for them; for the
paltry grant of some ~2,500 a year cannot in any sense be said to be a provision for
their instruction....  Speaking of this feature of Jamaica legislation, Earl Grey,
writing in 1853, says:-' The Statute Book of the island for the last six years presents nearly a blank, as regards laws calculated to improve the condition of the population, and to raise them in the scale of civilization.'.... Happily the present
governor, following in the steps of many of his predecessors, deals impartially with
every class, strives to prevent as far as possible the mischievous effects of the selfish
policy that has been pursued, and exerts himself to rescue the government from the
grasp of personal interest and ambition."-Ibid. pp. 222, 223.




168       NAITURAL DIFFICULTIES OF EMANCIPA TION.:own patch of ground.        This result, however, is not that which
is contenplated by those who desire wholesale emancipation in
the S(outhern States, and indeed-owing to influences wlhich had
little existence in the West Indies, but which would be brought
to bear upon the American negro-is not to be expected.              But,
passing by this, the thing at present to be attended to is that,
wherever the waste land was abundant, the experiment, so far
as the point at present under consideration is concerned, broke
down.    The   plantations were      extensively    deserted, and    the
negroes, instead of becoming hired labourers, became peasant
farmers on the vacant land.        Such has been the resultof emancipation in the West Ilndies.        Those principles of disturbance
which slavery leaves after it, though largely controlled, have
yet been sufficiently powerful to prevent the general establishment of a system     of hired labour.*
Now    what would be the chance of replacing negro slavery
with   hired labour in the Southern States?         If we look to the
condition of society there, we find that the usual disturbing
causes   exist in   exaggerated     force, while    there   is little  to
counteract them    in the other conditions of the case.        Nowhere
else has pro-slavery fanaticism       been so strong; the belief in
the moral soundness of the institution has been nowhere so
implicit; nowhere, therefore, would the introduction of a system
of free industry have to encounter on the part of the masters
* The following is Mr. Underhill's conclusion as to the general results of the experiment in Jamaica:-" Emancipation did not, indeed, bring wealth to the planter;
it did not restore fortunes already trembling in the grasp of mortgagees and usurers;
it did not bring back the palmy days of foreign commerce to Kingston, nor assist in
the maintenance of protective privileges in the markets of Great Britain; it did not
give wisdom to planters, nor skill to agriculturists and manufacturers; but it has
brought an amount of happiness, of improvement, of material wealth and prospective
elevation to the enfranchised slave in which every lover of man must rejoice. Social
order everywhere prevails. Breaches of the peace are rare. Crimes, especially in
their darker and more sanguinary forms, are few. Persons and property are perfectly
safe. The planter sleeps in security, dreads no insurrection, fears not the torch of
the incendiary, travels day or night in the loneliest solitudes without anxiety or care.
Tile people are not drunkards, even if they be impure; and this sad feature in the
moral life of the people is meeting its check in the growing respect for the marriage
tie, and the improved life of the white community in their midst... The general
prospects of the island are improving. Estates are now but rarely abandoned, while
in many places portions of old estates are being brought again under cultivation. It is
admitted by all parties that sugar cultivation is profitable. At the same time, it is
very doubtful whether any large proportion of the emancipated population will ever
be induced to return to the estates, or, at least, in sufficient numbers to secure the
enlargement of the area of cultivation to the extent of former days. Higher wages
will do somewhat to obtain labourers, and they can be afforded, and the return of
confidence will bring capital; but the taste and habit of independence will continue
to operate, and induce the agricultural classes to cling to the little holdings which
they so industriously occupy."-The West Indies, pp. 455, 457.




IMPOSSIBILITY OF PROTECTING THE NElGRO.                  169
such violent prejudices.    Again, the desire of the emancipated
negro to break with his former mode of life could scarce fail to
be here extremely strong; for, although the treatment of the
slaves was perhaps harsher in the West Indies than it has for
the most part been in the Confederate States,. the degradation
of the race had neither there nor elsewhere reached so low a
point; and, as a principle of repulsion, the feeling of shame
would probably be not less powerful than that of hatred.        On
the other hand, who can suppose,-bearing in mind the unworthy antipathy to the negro which still animates the great
majority of the American people, and which perhaps emancipation would do little to remove; bearing in mind the effects
of a long complicity with slavery on the traditions of the
Federal government-who, I say, impressed with these facts,
can suppose that the negro of the Southern States would in
that people and government find efficient protectors?       Would
there be no fear that the protector might have less sympathy
with the victim   than even the tyrant against whom      protection
was claimed?     But even on the assumption that the spirit of
the Federal government and         of the Northern     people was
excellent, would the task of protecting the negro be feasible in
the South? Throughout the whole slave domain, but especially
in the more southern of the Slave States, there are, as we know,
vast regions of wilderness. Over these wanders a miserable
white population, idle, lawless, and cherishing for the negro. a
contempt, which, on his being raised to their level by emancipation, would be quickly converted into hatred.      Now, remembering what has happened in those West Indian Islands which
offer the nearest analogy to the present case-remembering
what has occurred, for example, in Trinidad* —is it not almost
certain that, so soon as emancipation was decreed, the negroes
* "Three years after emancipation, in 1841, the condition of the island [Trinidad]
was most deplorable: the labourers had for the most part abandoned the estates,
and taken possession of plots of vacant land, especially in the vicinity of the towns,
without purchase or lawful right. Vagrancy had become an alarming habit of great
numbers; every attempt to take a census of the population was baffled by the. frequent migrations which took place. Criminals easily evaded justice by absconding
to places where they were unknown, or by hiding themselves in the dense forests
which in all parts edged so closely on the cleared lands. Drunkenness increased to
an enormous degree, assisted by planters who freely supplied rum to the labourers to
induce them to remain as cultivators on their estates. High wages were obtained
only to be squandered in amusement, revelry, and dissipation: at the same time,
these high wages induced a diminished cultivation of food, and a corresponding
increase in price and in the importation of provisions from the neighbouring islands
and continent. The labourers steadily refused to enter into any contracts which
would oblige them to remain in the service of a master; this would too much have
resembled the state of slavery from which they had but just emerged."-The Wes
Indies, &c., pp. 68-69.




170   PROGRESSSIVE ELVANCIPATION MOSE HOPEFUL.
would betake themselves to these wilds? and, dispersed over
this vast region, what would be their fate 1 How could they
be protected? How could they be trained to a higher mode
of life? They would, there encounter the white man in a condition as wretched as their own. His example could not fail
to influence them. They would acquire his vagabond tastes,
and emulate his idleness. They would be wholly at his mercy.
Efficient protection would be impossible over so vast a region.
The growth of regular industry would be hopeless; and the too
probable result would be that the whole South would be abandoned to the dominion of nature, and negro and white man go
to ruin together.
On the other hand, looking at the problem of emancipation,
as it would present itself under that settlement of the American
question which I have ventured to indicate as desirable, I am
unable to see that it would involve any difficulty which a government, really bent on accomplishing its object, might not be
fairly expected to overcome. In the first place, it would, as
thus presented, at once assume more manageable proportions.
The evil might be dealt with in detail, and the experience
acquired in the earlier efforts might be made available at the
further stages of the process. The attack would in the first
instance be directed against the weakest parts of the systemthe institution in the border states. In those states, not only is
slavery less strongly established than in the states further
south, it is also milder in its character. The relation subsisting
between master and slave being less embittered, the obstacles
to a re-establishment of their connexion upon a new footing
would be less formidable. The wilderness, indeed-the greatest difficulty of the case-would not be wholly absent even in
the border states; but its dimensions would here be less vast,
and these, as the abolition of slavery drew a fresh immigration
from the adjoining states of the North, would in all probability
be rapidly reduced. Even should the negroes repair to the
wilds in considerable numbers, the case would not be so hopeless.  They would meet here in many districts, not the'"mean whites," but a population of free cultivators, whose
example, it is not to be doubted, would exercise on their character and pursuits an influence as wholesome as that of the others
would be baneful. In these peasant cultivators the free negro
would behold industry in its most respectable and most prosperous form; and, with their example before him, he would
probably settle down into the same condition of life with them.
But while in the reannexed states a career would be provided for the emancipated negro, his brother, still left in bond



ULTIiATfE EXTINOTION OF SLA VERY.        171
age in the South, would ere long find that for him also a new
era was opening. Cut off from the rich virgin soils of the
south-west, the older states of the Confederacy would quickly
reach the condition of Virginia and Maryland. The inevitable
goal would soon come in sight, and the foreseen necessity of a
change would gradually reconcile the minds of the planters to
a policy of emancipation. The spirit in which the task would
be undertaken, when prescribed to them as it were by Nature
herself, would, it may be fairly expected, be far different from
that with which it would be encountered, if enforced at the
bayonet's point by hostile and hated Northerners. Self-interest, no longer overborne by passion or pride, would teach the
necessity of calmly considering a position of which the urgency
could no longer be concealed or evaded; and the full knowledge and large experience of the planters might be expected to
conduct them to that solution which would be in most accordance
with the welfare of the negro and their own. Meanwhile, the
policy of emancipation once commenced, its effects would not
be confined to the states which adopted it. The working
states, deprived of their supply of labour from the North,
would be compelled to adopt new maxims of management.
The life of the slave would become for his master an object of
increased consideration; his comfort would be more attended
to, and his condition would rapidly improve. With the progress of time the destiny of the older States would overtake
these also, and thus, by a gradual but sure process, the greatest
blot on modern civilization would be expunged from American
soil.
THE END.