WY) “os SS A
HV i BD. ap -
| Qe Burda Ne es AA
\ > / r in AG : eZ
iS — g id
= Mie

ByRD LIBRARY
Virginia Shiftory ane Literature
Founded in Memory of

ALFRED H. BYRD.M.A (1887)eee eee eee eee eeeThe

Truth of History

a“Ohe
Truth of History

A Study in
Political Development

Cw,

By

St. GEORGE R. FITZHUGH

THE OLD DOMINION PRESS
PUBLISHERS
RICHMOND, VA.

1926

TPheee.

vEeee.

eee.)

veer

eo ee

Teen es!Copyrighted 1926
Old Dominion Press, Inc.

Richmond. Virginia

r} 1 7 Tre at Paategye eee
PET T TTC TCL Le 1 RTT eee ; ae i ,
ae. eee eee eee PSS SORES eee ee esCONTENTS

FOREWORD |... ole eee ae Bae hs a Sees eee 9

EDITOR: SEIN OTE 22 ie SE ae ee On ee II

CHAPTER I.
INNGIENT +CIVILIZATION) 2222523 5 seats Tete eee ee 13

CHAPTER II.
LINGEISE JGIBERTY: 22-2 oe ee eoeee ee 26

CHAPTER III.
aE yAMERICAN REVOLURION == se sees soe eee 56

CHAPTER IV.
iimE AMERICAN, CONSTIDUDIONG = s==s seen 69

CHAPTER V.
JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION................ 75

CHAPTER VI.
DEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION 202s) aes nena 98

CHAPTER VII.
DAVISHAND CHE CONFEDERACY. eee 120

CHAPTER VIII.
RESULE AND REMEDV: 2-3 oe Cs: se eee Pe

PPerr

wPPee.

peer.

per.

eee

aoe e eyRECT AL

CPS SSS SERS R AEP ee ea ee,FOREWORD

As one comes face to face with the sunset
of life, he realizes that service and not ex-
ploitation is the highest duty and the loftiest
aspiration. It is then, when the things of
self are a little past, that he seeks to leave
some labor of good to others as a monument.

Our Civil War, with the complicated events
that led up to it, was, after the American
Revolution, the most remarkable drama of
modern history. Naturally, many mistakes
have been made in writing about it. If the
author of this study shall succeed in correct-
ing some of the current errors and delusions
about the Civil War, overlooked by the his-
torians, and, by a truthful presentation of the
issues involved, teach vital lessons, both
moral and political, he will be fully com-
pensated for the labor his search after truth
has occasioned him. There is a satisfaction
in the reflection that, by reason of the lapse
of time, his revelations cannot wound the
feelings of the living, though they may lay
just condemnation on the graves of some
who are dead.

veprprr

Pee.
fi c

¥
Poe ne |

Pepahaey

  

IO THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

lhe author has constructed his thesis of
the meaning of English and American history
by a laborious study of the works of the great
historians, from whom he freely quotes in
support of his positions. How American
democracy “derived”, in the language of
genealogists, how it grew to fruition, how it
was imperilled by the Civil War, how it is
still endangered by the results of that war—
this is his story.

The author, though an obscure actor in the
Civil War, had admirable opportunities for
understanding it, as he was on the firing line
of the Army of Northern Virginia in every
battle it fought after the First Bull Run, shed
his blood lavishly at Petersburg in Septem-
ber, 1864, and was assured by nine cocksure
surgeons that he could not survive more than
a few hours a wound inflicted by a slug in
passing through his body. This prognosis
he repudiated, recovered in time to take part
in the retreat from Petersburg on April 2,
1865, and was a prisoner in the Old Capitol in
Washington on the night of Lincoln’s assas-
sination.

He would greatly prefer that his own per-
sonality should be invisible, but he finds it
necessary on some occasions to bear testi-
mony to events that came under his personal
observation.

LTS CSTV ETT Cece ereTHE TRUTH OF HISTORY

‘eee,

Editor’s Note

St. George R. Fitzhugh, the author, died
in February, 1925, leaving his manuscript in-
complete. It has been the editor’s task to
cut down the very long quotations, insert the
narrative left by Mr. Fitzhugh, and construct
from rough notes some additions.

q
een
i.

PeeralSU Ree ee Cee Ce ee ‘
‘

SiS CePA Pee ee eee eee eee Poe eee ekCHAPTER I.

Ancient Civilization

IHEN we look on history as a whole,
we perceive that mankind has climbed
far in the five thousand years of its

recorded life on the globe, but if we
/ examine the record in detail we find
that it is almost as much a story of back-
sliding as of progress, of failure as of success.

Particularly is this the case in the political

history of man. Time and again communi-
ties have attained liberty and have stood on
the threshold of achievements, only to lose
that liberty and to fall back into sloth and
nothingness. Indeed, it would almost seem
that liberty is not the natural state of man,
that autocracy is his inevitable government.
Yet running through the long list of failures,
of lost causes and vanished nations that make
up history, there is a distinct line of develop-
ment that continues from the earliest civili-
zation of earth to the America of our day.
Through multitudinous setbacks and crises
progress has been maintained. Time and
again the weakness and folly of the multi-
tude would seem to have frustrated it, put
back the clock, brought in another day of

 

 

 

 

Seer.

Tere,

ToReEe

wP?

Pees.yeas

      
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
   
  
   
  
 
 
   
   

IA THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

autocracy ; but each time some great man has
arisen, as if by the sending of Providence,

and saved the precious progress of humanity
toward better things.

Civilization began in Egypt. It was here
that man first emerged from the darkness
of barbarism and began the conquest of na-
ture, and so remarkable was this flowering
of the human mind in ancient Egypt, thou-
sands of years ago, that we today are much
indebted to those first discoverers and in-
ventors of hoary antiquity. Charles W.
Gould, in America—A Family Matter, tells of
the birth of civilization:

Perhaps the greatest historic triumph of scientific
scholarship has been the untolding and development of
the story of Egypt.

The story begins about three thousand five hun-
dred years before Christ and ends three thousand years
later in the conquest of Cambyses the Persian. No
other race or nation can exhibit such a long continuity
of political life. It is unparalleled. But this is not
all, for all scientists concur in suggesting a still more
remote past for the origin of this strange people. The
end we know, but the beginnings are not yet discovered.

Ihe same creative mental power which constructed
the calendar which we now use, and which lay behind
its other attainments, fitted Egypt for artistic and in-
dustrial life.

Of all our earthly tasks thinking is probably the
hardest work, and yet the splendid temples which now
arose with their art and ritual are at once the resultANCIENT CIVILIZATION 15

and the indication of concentrated mental effort. This,
the most arduous toil known to man, was continuously
involved in the production of the multifarious improve-
ments and growing wealth which made the temples
possible. Intelligent exertion constantly increased full-
ness of life, and this in turn increased the needs and
necessities which fuller life demanded. These increased
needs and necessities were met by ever increasing in-
tlligence which was not the result of accident or chance,
but of birth and breeding.

Already another one of the evils which destroy
Egypt appears. Captives in war become slaves and in-
termingle and intermarry with the people, and as their
number increases so does the evil. The stock de-
teriorates.

What were the sources of that virile political life
that had sprung up with the Hyksos? It would seem
that these sources were not far to seek. For over
two thousand years Egypt in her isolation had retained
and multiplied her original population, and for a great
portion of the time her people had acted as a united
race. First the broils of anarchy destroy many of the
best, and in the loss of unity of action the kingdom sac-
rifices much of its momentum. Later the inroads of
the foreigners, whether by hostile or peaceful intrusion,
still further weaken the original blood. Her career of
empire, foreign war, and conquest sweeps away thous-
ands of her strongest and best, introduce foreigners by
the thousands as slaves.

The Egyptian intelligence was one of the most won-
derful faculties which ever animated and inspired man.
Their statutes, which wasteful war has overturned ;
their masonry, which broils have attempted to root
out, still stand in their battered fragments to testify
that the poet was right, nor Mars his sword nor wat’s
quick fire shall burn the living record of their masonry.

eeeieeee

16 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

Can you think of such a race as this, a vital, breath-
ing and inspiring force in the whole of our civilization,
as dead and gone. It is well for us to pause and re-
call our deep debt.

Greece learned from Egypt, and when
Egypt fell by reason of weight of years and
the mixture of races, the Greek cities were
ready to take up the burden of progress. The
Greeks, in many respects, were the most re-
markable race that has appeared on earth.
Art and literature may be said to have orig-
inated with them; scientific they hardly were,
though their intelligence was such that in the
last ages of Greek civilization scientific
knowledge made many advances. In politics
the Greeks were the first innovators and, in
the governments of their cities, kings were
set aside for oligarchic and, in a few cases,
democratic governments. In Athens, four
hundred years before Christ, there existed
the purest democracy the world has ever
seen. It soon fell, for it was too good to be
true, but its shining example lighted the ages
of despotism that followed and inspired man-
kind to hope for free government once more.
Greece failed because the mutual jealousies of
the cities was so great, their insistence on
local independence so strong, that no national
eovernment could be erected. These divisionsANCIENT CIVILIZATION 17;

were a warning to the founders of the Amer-
ican nation against localism and sectionalism.

Gould thus speaks of Athens:

After the Persian wars Athens relaxed her rules and
thereafter for about thirty years strangers were freely
admitted as Athenian citizens. It is reckoned that
thirty thousand at least were in this way added to
the population, and, granting that the population of
Athens numbered one hundred thousand, one authority
states that out of every ten such inhabitants four were
slaves, one or two were strangers, and four or five
of the old stock.

It is conceded, nevertheless, that the average in-
telligence in Athens at this time was very high—
so high that in the period of a hundred years after
the Persian wars Athens alone produced more great
men than the whole of Europe has since brought
forth. Notwithstanding this, democracy in Athens
was just as apt to be carried away by its emotions,
just as incapable of pursuing for years a determined
and fixed policy, as the population of a democratic
state today. The able leader in Athens wasted the
greater part of his force first in inciting his people to
adopt a proper line of action, and second in constant
effort to keep them resolute and staunch, and then in
addition he had to have sufficient energy left to con-
duct state affairs. This implied a man of great physical
as well as intellectual power.

The fall of Athens is a sad story. Immediately
on the death of Pericles, power was sought by various
demagogues. Cleon the tanner misled Athens for
years. The average Athenian preferred the mistakes
of mediocrity, which he could understand and with
which he could sympathize, to the achievements of

Perey.

Deere. oe

18 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

genius, which were to him incomprehensible and with
whose patient anticipation of benefits far in the future
and to be obtained by long time and persistent effort
he had no sympathy whatever.

Able men there were, born leaders of men, but these
the Athenians in great measure murdered or banished.
Even a partial list is appalling.

The percentage of talent in Athens was larger than
in England or America today, but yet it was unable
to leaven the mass and was lost in the ignorant vote.
The government was literally mob rule with few or
none of the safeguards which our forefathers placed
about the function of authority, and it was a signal
failure.

But against the gloom of this dark background
Greek genius glows effulgent. Supreme in art, in
literature great, in philosophy immortal, Athens amazes
at once in her dignity and in her baseness. The stock
was splendid and could it have been conserved, the
world might have told another and a better tale.

The glory of Athens was followed by a
long, slow decline in the mental power of the
human race. The world now came under
the sway of a different type of man. Both
Egyptians and Greeks were idealists—the
Egyptians scientific and religious investiga-
tors, the Greeks artistic and literary creators:
even the Macedonians, who followed the
Greeks, were imbued with the ideals of
Grecian culture. Indeed, Greek civilization
was so burned into human consciousness that
it was never entirely lost even in the darknessANCIENT CIVILIZATION I9

of succeeding ages. However, the Romans,
the masters of the European world for cen-
turies, were rough materialists. They cre-
ated little except improvements in the art of
war. They borrowed something from the
Greeks, but they repaid the debt by enslaving
Greece.

Rome inherited its form of government
from Greece; it was a city republic, at first
embracing little more than the land within
the walls, at length extending its power until
it swayed Italy, Spain, Gaul, northern Africa,
and western Asia. But in the very height of
its power it decayed; its government by
senate and popular assembly became corrupt
and rotted onward toward its end. Finally
came the great struggle for power between
Pompey and Julius Caesar that ended in the
victory of the latter. A half century before
the birth of Christ, the Roman republic, as it
still nominally continued to be, became the
Roman empire.

Gould thus speaks of the Rome of Caesar’s
day:

Caesar’s Rome was the vilest spot on earth. The
vilest houses were multiplied everywhere. The vilest
inhabited them, the vilest thronged them. These abom-
inations were the clubs, the social and civic centres. In
them public offices were sold, murders planned, law

Pee...aaa a

‘i
Taeea

20 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

suits decided, jurors bought, voters bribed. They were
the headquarters of every kind of villainy. Suddenly
the sale of public offices ceased. There was but one
man who could appoint. Murder, for the first time in
a generation or two, began to be a dangerous occu-
pation. A past master in that art was recognized. The
judges suddenly began to wash their hands. The jurors
began to weigh evidence, and not gold pieces, and many
choice spots of real estate rapidly declined in value.
Thus far could one man go. But no man could cleanse
Rome—at least not while its then inhabitants lived.

Women were thoroughly enfranchised. The word
“wife” to a great extent meant a thing which slipped
on and off like an old shoe. The women had educated
the men to a curious mental attitude.

Let us turn from this revolting picture of im-
morality and consider intellectual matters. What was
the mental capacity of the Romans at this time? We
know Caesar was a man of rare ability. What of
the rest? All admit he left no Caesar surviving him.
He was the last man of genius for nearly a thousand
years which the Mediterranean coasts produced. For
eighteen hundred years darkling stood the varying
shore of the ancient world. Did he leave to succeed
him any man approaching him in brain power? No,
not one. He left nothing but little men with little
brains. True, they differed in capacity. Men were
no more “born equal” in Rome than in any other
place, but intelligence, while some had more and some
had less, never rose above rank mediocrity, and was
even in the best a poor commodity.

No man then living in Rome had ever known it as
a republic. No man then living in Rome knew what a
republic was. A republic is a state of mind. So soon
as Rome’s military power put aside all fear of national
calamity, and corruption of blood and individual self-ANCIENT CIVILIZATION 21

seeking replaced common self-abnegation for common
exaltation of the commonwealth, the state of mind
which alone makes possible a republic ceased to exist.
While that state of mind endured a republic only was
possible. When it ceased, tyranny by the many or
by the one, only was possible. For one hundred and
fifty years Rome, retaining many of the old names,
had been governed by an oligarchy incredibly base. It
merely meant, when it said “republic”, the plunder of
the provinces for the benefit of the few, abject misery
for the many.

The Roman Senate in a full session numbered at
this time between four and five hundred present. These
were selected men—the very best. For weeks before
Caesar’s death plans were being matured to murder
him. Of the carefully selected Senate, sixty men,
the bravest, the boldest, the most capable, had been
discussed, backward and forward.

On the fatal morning, every detail had been at-
tended to. Antony, whom Caesar had associated with
him as consul for that year, was, as had been arranged,
detained in conversation by one of the conspirators,
but Caesar did not come. Time dragged on. Not
one of the sixty had had sixty minutes’ sleep the might
before. They were all distinctly frightened. What
was to be done? One of the many close, obliged,
personal friends of Caesar among them was deputed
to go to his house and fetch him to the slaughter.
He went, found him indisposed and his attendance
at the Senate House given up, rallied him, encouraged
him, and having gotten him into good spirits brought
him to another Aceldama, another field of blood. The
band fell on him. Armed only with a stylus, he fought
them all to the last and fell covered with jagged
wounds.

hiaide j

‘eee

‘weere.

a
eRe a: |
’THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

What did Rome do for the intellectual betterment
of mankind? In her early days she gave many splendid
examples of courage, fortitude and character ; examples
not winning but nevertheless commanding; examples
marked by sturdy common sense. In her whole career,
however, she never produced a single man distinguished
for purely intellectual force. In later years she paraded
her rich men with tedious iteration and tedious mo-
notony, and they in turn ostentatiously and with tire-
some sameness paraded their wealth. Her generals
she worshipped. Her great and unique gift was law.
To the cohesion imparted by its administration Finlay
attributes the longevity of the Empire.

Rome’s influence on the world she conquered was,
from the point of view of study, knowledge, mental
improvement, a hindrance, not a help. She did not
elevate, she abased. This course she remorselessly
followed for two centuries. Nearly every one of the
Eastern courts upon which she laid her heavy hand
was a center of Hellenistic culture. Nearly every
Eastern city nurtured and honored Greek tradition.
One after another, these sacred fires were extinguished.
“The dominion of the Romans degraded the human
species.”

The Roman empire was fully established
by Augustus, the heir and successor of Julius
Caesar. The Roman senate, which had once
possessed legislative and executive power,
remained, but it no longer had any real
authority. The government of Rome was an
autocracy, with the emperor as the head: the
religion of Rome degenerated into a worship
of the emperor as the head of the state.ANCIENT CIVILIZATION 23

Not for many generations did the emperor
remain the real ruler. Rome was a military
despotism after the fall of the senate under
Julius Caesar, and the legions now took a
part in the game of empire. Political revolu-
tion was suceeded by military revolution, and
Nero, the last emperor of the line of Caesar,
perished in a revolt of Galba’s legions. For
senerations the troops garrisoning Rome, and
later distant legions, held the power and
made and killed emperors at pleasure.

The Roman empire, divided into an empire
of the East and one of the West, degenerated.
It was ruled by a bureaucracy after the army
was overthrown and the head of the bureau-
cracy was the emperor. The people were
crushed by taxes, progress came to an end,
art and literature deteriorated. It was a far
cry to the old days when the Roman people
had made laws in the popular assembly.

And now an enemy from without put an
end to the decaying body of ancient civiliza-
tion. The barbarians of northern Europe
had been beating against the frontiers of the
empire for centuries. At length one of these
barbarians in the service of Rome dethroned
the last emperor of the West, Romulus
Augustulus, in 476 A. D. and the empire, as
it had existed in Italy, Gaul (France) and

babes

weer

‘Pee24. THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

Spain, came to an end. There was another
Roman empire with a capital at Constanti-
nople, but this became more and more Greek
and at length abandoned the Latin language.
This was the Byzantine empire, which lasted,
with many a peril, until its overthrow by the
Turks in 1453, just forty years before the dis-
covery of America.

After the fall of the Roman empire in 476
A. D., all of western Europe was a prey to
invasion and conquest for centuries. Nation
after nation of invaders swept down through
the passes of the Alps into Italy; war was so
chronic that men hardly knew that there had
ever been peace. Ancient civilization per-
ished almost entirely ; Europe was plunged in
brutal ignorance. The great Roman empire
was replaced by the feudal system, which
was the rule of thousands of petty lords.
Commerce and literature vanished. The
blackness of this darkness was lighted, how-
ever, by Christianity; and at length, out of
the welter of the feudal system, emerged
what were to be the Italian, Spanish, French,
German and English nations. In other words,
modern nations were about to arise, and those
nations were to be guided not by the corrupt
ethics of antiquity, but by the pure light of
the religion of Christ. Many of the arts ofANCIENT CIVILIZATION 25

Greece had come down, and to them were
added the inventions of gunpowder and the
printing press. Humanity, after centuries of
failure, was again ready for an attempt to
realize freedom and good government.CHAPTER II.
English Liberty

 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
   
   
 
   

@A®|LL the peoples of western Europe
| evolved some idea of representative
government in the Middle Ages; in
all of them there were councils to help
the ruler and to vote taxes, but in all
but one nation these early representative
bodies were doomed to failure. In Spain
they were overthrown by the Emperor
Charles V. early in the sixteenth century. In
France, the States General maintained its
checkered existence until 1614 and then with-
ered before the absolutism of the Bourbon
kings. In England, Parliament survived its
perils and has lived on to this day, to serve as
a model of a representative assembly in every
nation on earth that has representative gov-
ernment.

 

 

 

The famous English historian, Lord
Macaulay, thus describes the rise of the Eng-
lish nation:

Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated
the greatness which she was destined to attain. Her
inhabitants when first they became known to the Tyrian
mariners were little superior to the natives of theENGLISH LIBERTY 27

Sandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman
arms but she received only a faint tincture of Roman
arts and letters. In our island the Latin appears never
to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not
hold its ground against the German. The scanty and
superficial civilization which the Britons had derived
from their Southern masters was effaced by the ca-
lamities of the fifth century.

At length the darkness begins to break; and the
country which had been lost to view as Britain re-
appears as England. The conversion of the Saxon
colonists to Christianity was the first of a long series
of salutary revolutions.

The church had many times been compared by
divines to the ark of which we read in the Book of
Genesis: but never was the resemblance more perfect
than during that evil time when she alone rode, amidst
darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all
the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay
entombed, bearing within her that feeble germ from
which a second and more glorious civilization was to
spring.

During many years Denmark and Scandinavia con-
tinued to pour forth innumerable pirates, distinguished
by strength, by valour, by merciless ferocity, and by
hatred of the Christian name. Her coast lay near to
the ports whence they sailed; nor was any shore so
far distant from the sea as to be secure from attack.
The same atrocities which had attended the victory of
the Saxon over the Celt were now, after the lapse of
ages, suffered by the Saxon at the hand of the Dane.
Civilization, just as it began to rise, was met by this
blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of
adventurers from the Baltic established themselves
on the eastern shores of our island, spread gradually
westward, and, supported ky constant reinforcements28 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

trom beyond the sea, aspired to the dominion of the
whole realm. At length the North ceased to send forth
a constant stream of fresh depredators; and from that
time the mutual aversion of the races began to sub-
side.

The Normans were then the foremost race of the
Christendom. Their valour and ferocity had made
them conspicuous among the rovers whom Scandi-
navia had sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their
sails were long the terror of both coasts of the Channel.
Their arms were repeatedly carried into the heart of
the Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under
the walls of Maestricht and Paris. At length one
of the feeble heirs of Charlemagne ceded to the
strangers a fertile province watered by a noble river,
and contiguous to the sea which was their favourite
element. In that province they founded a mighty
state, which gradually extended its influence over the
neighbouring principalities of Brittany and Maine.

The battle of Hastings, and the events which fol-
lowed it, not only placed a Duke of Normandy on the
English throne, but gave up the whole population of
England to the tyranny of the Norman race. The sub-
jugation of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in
Asia, been more complete. The country was por-
tioned out among the captains of the invaders. Strong
military institutions, closely connected with the insti-
tutions of property, enabled the foreign conquerers to
oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal code,
cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even
the sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race,
though beaten down and trodden under foot, still
made its sting felt.

During the century and a half which followed the
Conquest, there is, to speak strictly, no English history.
The French Kings of England rose, indeed, to an emi-ENGLISH LIBERTY

 

29

nence which was the wonder and dread of all the
neighboring nations. They conquered Ireland and
Scotland.

Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely,
succeeded in uniting all France under their govern-
ment, it 1s probable that England would never have
had an independent existence. Her princes, her lords,
her prelates, would have been men differing in race and
language from the artisans and the tillers of the earth.

England owes her escape from such calamities to
an event which her historians have generally repre-
sented as disastrous. Her interest was so directly op-
posed to the interests of her rulers that she had no
hope but in their errors and misfortune. The talents
and even the virtues of her first six French Kings
were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the
seventh were her salvation. Had John inherited the
great qualities of his father, and had the King of
France at the same time been as incapable as all the
other successors of Hugh Capet had been, the House
of Plantagenet must have risen to unrivalled ascendency
in Europe. But, just at this conjuncture, France, for
the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was
governed by a prince of great firmness and ability.
On the other hand England, which, since the battle
of Hastings, had been ruled generally by wise states-
men, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion
of a trifler and a coward. From that moment her pros-
pects brightened. John was driven from Normandy.
The Norman nobles were compelled to make their
election between the island and the continent. Shut
up by the sea with the people whom they had hitherto
oppressed and despised, they gradually came to regard
England as their country, and the English as their
countrymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon
found that they had common interests and common

    
 
   
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   

rit

where

PPPrERS |30 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

enemies. The great-grandsons of those who had
fought under William and the great-grandsons of those
who had fought under Harold began to draw near to
each other in friendship; and the first pledge of their
reconciliation was the Great Charter, won by their
united exertions and framed for their common benefit.

In the time of Richard the First, the ordinary i1m-
precation of a Norman gentlemen was “May I be-
come an Englishman!” His ordinary form of indig-
nant denial was “Do you take me for an Englishman?’
The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred years
later was proud of the English name.

Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation
of the races was all but complete; and it was soon
made manifest, by signs not to be mistaken, that a
people inferior to none existing in the world had been
formed by the mixture of three branches of the great
Teutonic family with each other, and with the abo-
riginal Britons.

The mediaeval English monarchy attempt-
ed to conquer France in the Hundred Years’
War, which ended about 1450. The war led
to the end of the ancient monarchy, for the
warlike nobles, on being expelled from
France, burst out into the War of the Roses.
This civil war did not really terminate until
1485, when Henry VII., the first Tudor sov-
ereign, became king.

In the Middle Ages, the English Parlia-
ment had come into existence and developed.
In some parts of Europe the representative
assembly consisted of three or even fourENGLISH LIBERTY 3!

bodies, or “estates.”’ Thus in France there
were the three estates of nobles, clergy, and
commons. In England, however, there were
only two—the House of Lords, which in-
cluded peers and bishops, and the House of
Commons, which included all the representa-
tives elected by vote. At certain times in
the Middle Ages, the English Parliament ex-
erted a considerable influence on affairs.

Its power came to an end on the accession
of Henry VII, or, rather, had come to an end
before. This was due to the fact that in the
Middle Ages the House of Lords was the
stronger body of the two. In the War of
the Roses, however, the English peerage was
ruined, and new nobles, appointed by the
Tudor kings and controlled by them, replaced
the old barons. The result was that Parlia-
ment during the long reigns of Henry VIL.,
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth was completely
under the influence of the sovereign. The im-
portant point, however, is that Parliament
continued to exist and to function, even if it
did nothing more than register the ruler’s
will; it was not abolished as was the French
States General in 1614.

England under the Tudor kings was a
despotism as absolute as any in Europe. This
is evident from the fact that Henry VIII. was
able to separate the Church of England from

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   

ere

eer

werner.

weUPe,dea

Ttaat

THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

 

32

the Roman See and yet maintain the old
religion without further change. It was
Catholicism without a Pope, or, rather, with
Henry VIII. as a local Pope. However, there
were two strong bodies of dissenters in Eng-
land—Roman Catholics and Protestants—
and under the pressure from Catholic Spain
England tended more and more toward
Protestantism in Elizabeth’s reign, until it
gradually changed from the religion imposed
by Henry VIII.

In the last years of Elizabeth’s reign there
was a strong feeling of dissatisfaction in Eng-
land with the government. Parliament was
beginning to become powerful again, and in
a different way. In the sixteenth century
English commerce made great strides; the
members elected to the House of Commons
from the towns were no longer the cringing
creatures of the time of Henry VIII., eager
to do anything the monarch ordered. The
town representatives united with the coun-
try gentlemen in the House of Commons to
make that body the more important house
of Parliament. Indeed, after this, the his-
tory of Parliament was to be that of the
House of Commons.

On the death of Elizabeth, a Scotchman
came to the throne of England, a ruler who
had been practically absolute in his originalENGLISH LIBERTY 33

kingdom. James I. had a dislike for the Eng-
lish Parliament and a taste for absolute mon-
archy. At the same time he lacked the tact
and personal popularity that had made the
Tudor monarchs so strong; they were abso-
lute, in a way, with the consent of the people.
James I. was not. He was a new type of
sovereign in England and anything but be-
loved by his subjects; in fact, he seems to be
one of the very few kings of England that
have excited contempt.

James I. brought into being a kind of gov-
ernment new in England, that of favorites.
He was a passionate admirer of handsome
men, and all through his reign some good-
looking profligate wielded the chief power.

James I. did not convene Parliament often,
as he wished to be absolute, but he took no
definite steps in the direction of absolutism.
Perhaps his indolent and cowardly nature
kept him from dethroning himself and left
his son to be overthrown in the effort to as-
sert the divine right of kings.

In the Europe of the seventeenth century,
this doctrine of the divine right of kings was
very strong. Nearly everywhere kings or
princes had put down popular rights and
established absolute governments. ‘he case
of France, the largest and strongest country
of Europe, stood as an example, for in France

eee

peere.34 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

Louis XIII. had been made absolute by the
genius of Richelieu. Charles [. had this ex-
ample before his mind; moreover he married
a French princess. It is not to be wondered
at, then, that he should attempt to turn the
ancient English monarchy, which under the
Tudors had been an absolutism, though with
a Parliament, into an absolutism without a
Parliameiit, after the French model. The
House of Commons, however, had become a
power in the land; and the English people
understood perfectly well what Charles I.
wished to accomplish. From 1629 to 1640 he
summoned no Parliament and thus advertised
his intention to govern alone. He would never
have called a Parliament again but for the
fact that, in his zeal to be an absolute mon-
arch, he attempted to overthrow the Presby-
terian church in Scotland, an act that no one
but a potential madman would have attempt-
ed. The Scots rebelled, and the king was
obliged to call a Parliament in England in
order to get money to raise an army to sub-
due them. And so the stage was set for a
struggle between king and _ Parliament.

Macaulay thus describes it:

The government had long wished to extend the
Anglican system over the whole island, and had
already, with this view, made several changes highly
distasteful to every Presbyterian. One innovation,ENGLISH LIBERTY 35

however, the most hazardous of all, because it was
directly cognisable by the senses of the common people,
had not yet been attempted. The public worship of
God was still conducted in the manner acceptable to
the nation. Now, however, Charles and Laud de-
termined to force on the Scots the English liturgy, or
rather a liturgy which, wherever it differed from that
of England, differed, in the judgment of all rigid
Protestants, for the worse.

To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of
tyranny, and in criminal ignorance or more criminal
contempt of public feeling, our country owes her free-
dom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies
produced a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution.
Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one
headlong torrent. The whole nation was in arms. The
power of England was indeed, as appeared some years
later, sufficient to coerce Scotland: but a large part
of the English people sympathised with the religious
feelings of the insurgents; and many Englishmen who
had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions,
altars and surplices, saw with pleasure the progress
of a rebellion which seemed likely to confound the
arbitrary projects of the court, and to make the calling
of a Parliament necessary.

In November, 1640, met that renowned Parliament
which, in spite of many errors and disasters, is justly
entitled to the reverence and gratitude of all who, in
any part of the world, enjoy the blessings of con-
stitutional government.

The House of Commons brought to the
block the king’s chief agent, Thomas Went-
worth, Earl of Strafford. It thus showed
that a subordinate could not plead the royal

oe eeee

ern)

wearer.

‘Tan

PoPe36 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

pleasure for illegal methods of government.

Macaulay continues:

But under their apparent concord a great schism
was latent ; and when, in October, 1641, the Parliament
reassembled after a short recess, two hostile parties,
essentially the same with those which, under different
names, have ever since contended, and are still con-
tending, for the direction of public affairs, appeared
confronting each other. During some years they were
designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were
subsequently called Tories and Whigs.

When the rival parties first appeared in a distant
form, they seemed to be not unequally matched. On
the side of the government was a large majority of the
nobles, and of those opulent and well descended gentle-
men to whom nothing was wanting of nobility but the
name. These, with the dependents whose support
they could command, were no small power in the
state.

The main strength of the opposition lay among the
small freeholders in the country, and among the mer-
chants and shopkeepers of the towns. But these were
headed by a formidable minority of the aristocracy.
In the same ranks was found the whole body of Prot-
estant Nonconformists, and most of these members of
the Established Church who still adhered to the Cal-
vinistic opinions which, forty years before, had been
generally held by the prelates and clergy.

The truth seems to be that Charles I. detested both
the parties into which the House of Commons was
divided; nor is this strange, for in both those parties
the love of liberty and the love of order were mingled,
though in different proportions.

He, accordingly, a few days after he had promised
the chiefs of the constitutional Royalists that no stepENGLISH LIBERTY 37

of importance should be taken without their knowledge,
formed a resolution the most momentous of his whole
life, carefully concealed that resolution from them, and
executed it in a manner which overwhelmed them with
shame and dismay. He sent the Attorney General to
impeach Pym, Hollis, Hampden, and other members
of the House of Commons of high treason at the bar
of the House of Lords. Not content with this flagrant
violation of the Great Charter and of the uninterrupted
practice of centuries, he went in person, accompanied
by armed men, to seize the leaders of the opposition
within the walls of Parliament.

The attempt failed. The accused members had left
the House a short time before Charles entered it. A
sudden and violent revulsion of feeling, both in the
Parliament and in the country, followed. The most
favourable view that has ever been taken of the King’s
conduct on this occasion by his most partial advocates
is that he had weakly suffered himself to be hurried
into a gross indiscretion by the evil counsels of his
wife and of his courtiers. ... Those who had the chief
sway in the Lower House now felt that not only their
power and popularity, but their lands and their necks,
were staked on the event of the struggle in which they
were engaged. The flagging zeal of the party opposed
to the court revived in an instant. During the night
which followed the outrage the whole city of London
was in arms. In a few hours the roads leading to the
capital were covered with multitudes of yeomen spur-
ring hard to Westminster with the badges of the parlia-
mentary. cause in their hats. Had Charles remained
much longer in his stormy capital, it is probable that
the Commons would have found a plea for making him,
under outward forms of respect, a state prisoner.

He quitted London, never to return till the day of
a terrible and memorable reckoning had arrived.

Peeen

aTHE TRUTH OF HISTORY

In August, 1642, the sword was at length drawn;
and soon, in almost every shire of the kingdom, two
hostile factions appeared in arms against each other.
It is not easy to say which of the contending parties
was at first the more formidable. The Houses com-
manded London and the counties round London, the
fleet, the navigation of the Thames, and most of the
large towns and seaports. They had at their disposal
almost all the military stores of the kingdom, and were
able to raise duties, both on goods imported from for-
eign countries, and on some important products of
domestic industry. The King was ill provided with
artillery and ammunition. The taxes which he laid on
the rural districts occupied by his troops produced, it
is probable, a sum far less than that which the Parlia-
ment drew from the city of London alone. Charles,
however, had one advantage, which, if he had used it
well, would have more than compensated for the want
of stores and money, and which, notwithstanding his
mismanagement, gave him, during some months, a
superiority in the war. His troops at first fought
much better than those of the Parliament. Both
armies, it is true, were almost entirely composed of
men who had never seen a field of battle. Neverthe-
less, the difference was great. The Parliamentary
ranks were filled with hirelings whom want and idleness
had induced to enlist. The royal army, on the other
hand, consisted in great part of gentlemen, high spirited,
ardent, accustomed to consider dishonor as more terri-
ble than death, accustomed to fencing, to the use of
fire arms, to bold riding, and to manly and perilous
sport, which had been well called the image of war.

When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was
decidedly with the Royalists. They were victorious,
both in the western and in the northern counties. In
succeeding years, however, the tide turned, mainlyENGLISH LIBERTY 39

through the genius of Oliver Cromwell. This Parlia-
mentary general won the victories of Marston Moor
and Naseby, which broke the king’s power. Cromwell
found himself the strongest man in England and yet
dependent on the good will of the army. His problem
was to bring about peace and restore constitutional
government in England.

Cromwell at one time, meant to mediate between the
throne and the Parliament, and to reorganize the dis-
tracted State by the power of the sword, under the
sanction of the royal name. In this design he persisted
till he was compelled to abandon it by the refractory
temper of the soldiers, and by the incurable duplicity
of the King.... The vices of Charles had grown upon
him. Charles was not only a most unscrupulous but a
most unlucky dissembler. There never was a politician
to whom so many frauds and falsehoods were brought
home by undeniable evidence. Never was he more un-
fortunate than when he attempted at once to cajole and
to undermine Cromwell.

Cromwell had to determine whether he would put
to hazard the attachment of his party, the attachment
of his army, his own greatness, nay his own life, in an
attempt which would probably have been vain, to save
a prince whom no engagement could bind. With many
struggles and misgivings, and probably not without
many prayers, the decision was made. Charles was
left to his fate. The Commons passed a vote tending
to accommodation with the King. The soldiers excluded
the majority by force. The Lords unanimously re-
jected the proposition that the King should be brought
to trial. Their house was instantly closed. No court,
known to the law, would take on itself the office of
judging the fountain of justice. A revolutionary
tribunal was created. That tribunal pronounced
Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public

Pees pe!

Ee!

eee.

‘wears:

eee40 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

enemy; and his head was severed from his shoulders,
before thousands of spectators, in front of the banquet-
ing hall of his own palace.

In no time it became manifest that those political
and religious zealots, to whom this deed is to be
ascribed, had committed, not only a crime, but an
error.

His long misgovernment, his innumerable perfidies,
were forgotten. His memory was, in the minds of the
great majority of his subjects, associated with those
free institutions which he had, during many years,
laboured to destroy: for those free institutions had
perished with him, and, amidst the mournful silence of
a community kept down by arms, had been defended
by his voice alone. From that day began a reaction
which never ceased till the throne had again been set
up in all its old dignity.

The object of the warlike saints who surrounded
Cromwell was the settlement of a free and pious com-
monwealth. For that end they were ready to employ,
without scruple any means, however violent and law-
less. It was not impossible, therefore, to establish by
their aid a dictatorship such as no King had ever exer-
cised: but it was probable that their aid would be at
once withdrawn from a ruler who, even under strict
constitutional restraints, should venture to assume the
kingly name and dignity.

The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different.
He was not what he had been; nor would it be just to
consider the change which his views had undergone as
the effect merely of selfish ambition. He had, when he
came up to the Long Parliament, brought with him
from his rural retreat little knowledge of books, no
experience of great affairs, and a temper galled by the
long tyranny of the government and of the hierarchy.
He had, during the thirteen years which followed, goneENGLISH LIBERTY AI

through a political education of no common kind... .
He therefore wished to restore, in all essentials, that
ancient constitution which the majority of the people
had always loved, and for which they now pined. The
course afterwards taken by Monk was not open to
Cromwell. The memory of one terrible day separated
the great regicide forever from the House of Stuart.
What remained was that he should mount the ancient
English throne, and reign according to the ancient Eng-
lish polity. If he could effect this, he might hope that
the wounds of the lacerated state would heal fast.

That his elevation to power might not seem to be
merely his own act, he convoked a council, composed
partly of persons on whose support he could depend,
and partly of persons whose opposition he might
sately defy. This assembly, which he called a Parlia-
ment, and which the populace nicknamed, from one of
the most conspicuous members, Barebones’s Parliament,
aiter exposing itself during a short time to the public
contempt, surrendered back to the general the powers
which it had received from him, and left him at liberty
to frame a plan of government.

His plan bore, from the first, a considerable re-
semblance to the old English constitution: but, in a few
years, he thought it safe to proceed further, and to
restore almost every part of the ancient system under
new names and forms. The title of King was not re-
vived; but the kingly prerogatives were intrusted to a
Lord High Protector.

While he lived his power stood firm, an object of
mingled aversion, admiration, and dread to his sub-
jects. Few indeed loved his government; but those
who hated it most hated it less than they feared it.

It has often been affirmed, but with little reason,
that Oliver died at a time fortunate for his renown,
and that, if his life had been prolonged, it would prob-

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
   

peeee

Peer.42 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

ably have closed amidst disgraces and disasters. It is
certain that he was to the last honoured by his soldiers,
obeyed by the whole population of the British Islands,
and dreaded by all foreign powers.

During five months, the administration of Richard
Cromwell went on so tranquilly and regularly that all
Europe believed him to be firmly established on the
chair of state. In truth his situation was in some re-
spects much more advantageous than that of his father.
The young man had made no enemy. His hands were
unstained by civil blood.

For a time it seemed highly probable that he would,
under the direction of able advisers, effect what his
father had attempted in vain. A Parliament was called,
and the writs were directed after the old fashion.

But there was in the state a power more than suf-
ficient to deal with Protector and Parliament together.
Over the soldiers Richard had no authority except that
which he derived from the great name which he had
inherited. He had never led them to victory. He had
never even borne arms. All his tastes and habits were
pacific. Nor were his opinions and feelings on re-
ligious subjects approved by the military saints.

On the very day of Richard’s accession the officers
began to conspire against their new master. The good
understanding which existed between him and his
Parliament hastened the crisis. Alarm and resentment
spread through the camp. Both the religious and the
professional feelings of the army were deeply wounded.
A coalition was formed between the military malcon-
tents and the republican minority of the House of
Commons. He fell ingloriously, and without a strug-
gle. He was used by the army as an instrument for
the purpose of dissolving the Parliament, and was then
contemptuously thrown aside.ENGLISH LIBERTY A3

The soldiers called the remnant of the
Long Parliament and then expelled it. An-
archy seemed near at hand. At this juncture
a Scotch army of seven thousand soldiers,
under George Monk, its leader, commenced
a march on London from Scotland.

The declaration of Monk when he reached
London that he favored the restoration of the
Stuart dynasty removed all apprehension,
and Macaulay thus describes the delight pro-
duced by the contemplated restoration to
sovereignty of the despicable Charles II.:

During a short time the dissimulation or irresolu-
tion of Monk kept all parties in a state of painful
suspense. At length he broke silence, and declared for
a free Parliament.

As soon as his declaration was known, the whole
nation was wild with delight. Wherever he appeared
thousands thronged round him, shouting and blessing
his name. The bells of all England rang joyously: the
gutters ran with ale; and, night after night, the sky
five miles round London was reddened by innumerable
bonfires.

The result of the elections was much as might have
been expected from the temper of the nation. The new
House of Commons consisted, with few exceptions, of
persons friendly to the royal family.

The new Parliament, which, having been called
without the royal writ, is more accurately described as
a Convention, met at Westminster. The Lords re-
paired to the hall, from which they had, during more
than eleven years, been excluded by force. Both

POLED.

Tees

pea.44 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

Houses instantly invited the King to return to his
country. He was proclaimed with pomp never before
known. A gallant fleet convoyed him from Holland
to the coast of Kent. When he landed, the cliffs of
Dover were covered by thousands of gazers, among
whom scarcely one could be found who was not weep-
ing with delight. The journey to London was a con-
tinued triumph. The whole road from Rochester was
bordered by booths and tents, and looked like an in-
terminable fair. Everywhere flags were flying, bells
and music sounding, wine and ale flowing in rivers to
the health of him whose return was the return of peace,
of law, and of freedom.

That the Puritan Revolution ended in the
restoration of the Stuarts is one of the
saddest reversions in human history. Yet one
can see the reasons for it. The English were
essentially conservative; the educated classes
were devoted to the ancient constitution of
king and Parliament. Cromwell might have
restored the monarchy in his person, but the
army would not permit it. No alternative
really remained but the establishment of the
eldest son of Charles I. on the throne, which
came to pass in 1660. There was to be an-
other period of Stuart levity and tyranny,
and another protest, but no new war of king
and Parliament. Kings had at least learned
to respect the prerogatives of the House of
Commons. Parliament was to be _ under-
minded, not defied.ENGLISH LIBERTY 45

It is difficult to understand the passion for
royalty displayed by the English nation in the
seventeenth century, a passion that led to
the toleration on the throne of the vilest of
men provided they had a hereditary claim to
it. All four of the Stuart kings were de-
testable and two of them wholly false and
perfidious. What a picture they make oi
seventeenth century folly: James I., slobber-
ing, shambling, weeping at the sight of a
naked sword, governed by the infamous Duke
of Buckingham because of his personal pul-
chritude; Charles I., dominated by his in-
triguing wife and by the Earl of Strafford
and Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, two
bad men who met a proper fate on the scatf-
fold: Charles II., who bartered away the
liberty of England to obtain French money to
pamper his concubines and debauch Parlia-
ment; James II., who sought to overthrow
the religion of England and linked his name
with the immortal infamy of Justice Jeffries,
his instrument for murdering his enemies!

From 1660 to 1685 the history of England
is a story of darkness in which there are some
gleams of light. Parliament was for years
subservient to Charles II.; it was almost as
if there never had been a revolution. But
Parliament continued to sit; it was not sus-
pended as in the reign of Charles I., and at

were.

phija

pibee

Peree,

eee)

vee.46 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

length it asserted itself. It began to come
into opposition to the king, though not open-
ly. The next great political struggle in Eng-
lish history centered in the effort to keep the
kine’s brother from the throne.

James, Duke of York, was openly a Cath-
olic, as Charles II. was in secret. The great
majority of Englishmen were strongly Prot-
estant. The majority of them belonged to
the Church of England, which persecuted the
large minority of dissenters. Anglicans and
dissenters, however, had one thing in com-
mon, and that was hatred of Popery. When,
therefore, it became evident that Charles II.
was nearing the end of his life and that the
crown would descend to his brother James,
the forces of opposition gathered to prevent
this. A popular demand arose for a “Prot-
estant Succession.” The opponents of the
Duke of York gained a majority in the House
of Commons; and, when there came a great
public scare in the famous Popish Plot, which
the people believed was an effort to subvert
the Protestant religion, these opponents per-
secuted the Catholics and almost passed a
bill through Parliament changing the succes-
sion to the crown. Their purpose was to put
on the throne the Duke of Monmouth, an
illegitimate son of the king. Many of the
aristocracy balked, however, at the idea of soENGLISH LIBERTY 47

elevating a bastard, and the movement failed.
Charles II. took a cruel revenge on his broth-
er’s enemies, and the Duke of York became
James II. in 1685.

James was mad enough to defy the power
that really controlled England, which had be-
come an aristocracy in which the king’s place
was the head. When the king struck at an
integral part of that aristocracy, the bishops
of the Church of England, the strongest sec-
tion of the aristocracy resolved to be rid of
him.

There was to be no radical revolution, how-
ever. The ruling class in England dreaded
beyond words the memory of the Puritan
Revolution and the reign of the army under
Cromwell; their intention was to overthrow
the individual, James II., but to keep mon-
archy and the Stuart family. James’s elder
daughter, Mary, had married William, Prince
of Orange. William and Mary were now in-
vited to come over from Holland and occupy
the English throne. William came with a
small force of troops, but the lords opposed to
James II. were so powerful that there was
no need of fighting. James fled to Ireland,
and William III. and Mary ruled in England.

This revolution would have been almost
bloodless if Louis XIV., king of France, had
not taken up the cause of James II. As itMite

48 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

was, a long war followed in which the Eng-
lish found it necessary to reconquer Ireland,
which had broken away. Protestantism was
completely triumphant; the Catholics were a
crushed faction, both in England and Ire-
land.

On the death of William III., the second
daughter of James II., Anne, became queen.
The principal issue in English politics was
now dynastic, between the supporters of the
Stuart family, who wished to put on the
throne the son of James II., an exile like his
father, and the majority of the aristocracy,
who wished a Protestant ruler. When Queen
Anne died in 1714, she was succeeded by a
descendant of James I., the son of the Elec-
tress of Hanover, who became George I.
George was a German, unable to speak Eng-
lish, but he represented the principle of here-
ditary descent and he suited well the purposes
of the ruling faction in England, which did
not wish a Stuart and a Catholic to mount the
throne.

As George I. was a foreigner and had no
strong personal supporters, he was driven to
depend on Parliament, which wielded large
powers until nearly the third quarter of the
eighteenth century. It was not such a
Parliament as sits in England today, how-
ever. Its membership was practically re-ENGLISH LIBERTY 49

stricted to the Church of England; it was
elected by owners of real estate, who at that
time formed a small minority, and repre-
sentation was neither by population nor by
the number of voters; certain places elected
members of the House of Commons because
they had done so in the Middle Ages and little
or no provision was made for the changes
wrought by centuries. ‘The result was that
in some towns that had decayed a handful of
voters—sometimes ten or fifteen—elected a
member, while cities which had grown up in
more recent times were unrepresented. In
other words, England theoretically had a
representative government, but that govern-
ment was not in the least degree representa-
tive of the masses of the nation. They had
no more power than the people of the con-
tinent of Europe. The people who were real-
ly represented in the House of Commons
were the rural gentry, the farmers who
owned farms, and the merchants in the
towns. ‘The merchants were gaining power
all through the eighteenth century because
the business of England was increasing by
leaps and bounds, and thus we see the rise to
power of a class that was to challenge the
ruling aristocracy and at length to overthrow
it.

weaee.Liaee

Trane

Petdane

50 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

In one respect this period of Queen Anne
and the first two Georges was important in
the history of freedom, for it witnessed the
rise of party government. Whigs and lories
battled for the supremacy, and the chiefs of
the triumphant party became the king’s min-
isters. Through most of the period the
Whigs were predominant; the most illus-
trious politician of the period was William
Pitt, prime minister under George II.

In the middle of the eighteenth century
came a king who wished more power than
George I. and George II. had wielded; this
was George III., who mounted the throne in
1760. It was his ambition to make himself,
if not the absolute ruler of England, at least
the dominating power. The historian May
thus describes his effort to gain control of
the government:

The young king, George III, on succeeding to the
throne, regarded with settled jealously the power of
his ministers, as an encroachment on his own, and re-
solved to break it down. His personal popularity was
such as to facilitate the execution of this design. Well
knowing that the foreign extraction of his predecessors
had repressed the affections of their people, he added,
with his own hand, to the draft of his first speech to
Parliament, the winning phrase, “Born and educated
in this country, I glory in the name of Briton.” The
Stuarts were now the aliens, and not the Hanoverian
king. No party was now in disgrace at court; butENGLISH LIBERTY 5I

Whigs, Tories, and Jacobites thronged to St. James’s,
and vied with each other in demonstrations of loyalty
and devotion.

The king was naturally ambitious, and fond of the
active exercise of power; and his education, if other-
wise neglected, had raised his estimate of the personal
rights of a king, in the government of his country. So
far back as 1752, complaints had been made that the
prince was surrounded by preceptors who were training
him in arbitrary principles of government. At that
time these complaints were discredited as factious
calumnies; but the political views of the king, on his
accession to the throne, appeared to confirm the suspi-
cions entertained concerning his early education.

The ministry whom the king found in possession of
power at his accession, had been formed by a coalition
between the Duke of Newcastle and William Pitt. The
former had long been the acknowledged leader of the
great Whig connection, and enjoyed extended parlia-
mentary interest: the latter, by his eloquence and states-
manship, had become the most popular and powerful
of the king’s subjects. The ministry also comprised
the Grenville and Bedford sections of the Whig party.
It was so strong in Parliament that for some years the
voice of opposition had been scarcely heard; and so
long as it continued united, its position was impreg-
nable.

But, strong as were the ministers, the king was
resolved to wrest all power from their hands, and to
exercise it himself. For this purpose he called to his
aid the Earl of Bute, and other secret counsellors,
drawn from all parties. It was the king’s object not
merely to supplant one party, and establish another in
its place; but to create a new party, faithful to himself,
regarding his personal wishes, carrying out his policy,

eee

ppieuview

eee

52 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

and dependent on his will. This party was soon dis-
tinguished as “the king’s men,” or “the king’s friends.”

Lord Bute, the originator of the new policy, was
not personally well qualified for its successful promo-
tion. He was not connected with the great families
who had acquired a preponderance of political influence ;
he was no parliamentary debater: his manners were
unpopular: he was a courtier rather than a politician:
his intimate relations with the Princess of Wales were
an object of scandal; and, above all, he was a Scotch-
man. Immediately after the king’s accession he had
been made a privy councillor, and admitted into the
cabinet.

It was now the object of the court to break up the
existing ministry, and to replace it with another formed
from among the king’s friends. Had the ministry been
united, and had the chiefs reposed confidence in one
another, it would have been difficult to overthrow them.
But there were already jealousies amongst them, which
the court lost no opportunity of fomenting. A breach
soon arose between Mr. Pitt, the most powerful and
popular of the ministers, and his colleagues. He bore
himself haughtily at the council, declared that he had
been called to the ministry by the voice of the people,
and that he could not be responsible for measures which
he was no longer allowed to guide. Being met with
equal loftiness in the cabinet, he was forced to tender
his resignation.

The king overpowered the retiring minister with
kindness and condescension. He offered the barony of
Chatham to his wife, and to himself an annuity of
£3000 a year for three lives. The minister had de-
served these royal favors, and he accepted them, but
at the cost of his popularity. It was an artful stroke
of policy, thus at once to conciliate and weaken theENGLISH LIBERTY 53

popular statesman, whose opposition was to be dreaded
—and it succeeded.

On the retirement of Mr. Pitt, Lord Bute became
the most influential of the ministers. He undertook
the chief management of public affairs in the cabinet,
and the sole direction of the House of Lords. Huis
ascendency provoked the jealousy and resentment of
the King’s veteran minister, the Duke of Newcastle,
who had hitherto distributed all the patronage of the
Crown, but now was never consulted. At length, in
May 1762, his grace, after frequent disagreements in
the cabinet and numerous affronts, was obliged to re-
sign.

And now, the object of the court being at length
attained, Lord Bute was immediately placed at the head
of affairs, as First Lord of the Treasury. Rapid had
been the rise of the king’s favorite. But the confidence
of his royal master served to aggravate the jealousies
by which the new minister was surrounded, to widen
the breach between himself and the leaders of the
Whig party, and to afford occasion for popular re-
proaches.

The king and his minister were resolved to carry
matters with a high hand, and their arbitrary attempts
to coerce and intimidate opponents disclosed their 1m-
perious view of the prerogative. Preliminaries of a
treaty of peace with France having been agreed upon,
against which a strong popular feeling was aroused,
the king’s vengeance was directed against all who ven-
tured to disapprove them.

The preliminaries of peace were approved by Parlia-
ment; and the Princess of Wales, exulting in the suc-
cess of the court, exclaimed, “Now my son is king of
England.”

The king continued personally to direct the measures
of the ministers, more particularly in the disputes with

were

prere.

oes54. THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

the American colonies, which, in his opinion, involved
the rights and honor of his crown. He was resolutely
opposed to the repeal of the Stamp Act, which the
ministers had thought necessary for the conciliation of
the colonies. He resisted this measure in council; but
finding the ministers resolved to carry it, he opposed
them in Parliament by the authority of his name, and
by his personal influence over a considerable body of
his parliamentary adherents.

What was the state of England in 1775,
when the American Revolution began? Ina
certain sense it was a declining state. The
great Whig families, which for the most part
ruled England from 1689 to 1760, were losing
power because the landowner was giving
place to the merchant and the manufacturer.
England was in transition: agriculture was
being dethroned as the economic power by
industrialism. As yet, however, traders and
manufacturers wielded little political power,
no matter how strong they might be economi-
cally. George III. took advantage of this
period of change to endeavor to assert the
royal supremacy and he gained control of the
House of Lords and the House of Commons.
Yet he could not put the clock back to the
seventeenth century; a hundred years of
party government had strengthened repre-
sentative institutions, and the king found his
new policy opposed by the Whigs. In otherENGLISH LIBERTY 55

words, the king, in attempting to put an end
to party government, succeeded in making
the issue between the party of the “people”
and the royal party.

It is interesting to surmise what would
have been the result of the conflict if the
American Revolution had not occurred. Per-
haps the king would have temporarily
triumphed; possibly he would have failed and
have been obliged to keep from meddling with
the government. As it was, however, the
unexpected resistance of the American colon-
ists gave the struggle between royal author-
ity and popular rights an international aspect
that was destined profoundly to influence the
future of the world.

Tere.

Pe

vee.

pibaede

eewrrtiel

 

 

CHAPTER III.

The American Revolution

Gta HUS far had humanity by 1775 come
from those distant beginnings in
Egypt. Political development had
moved onward from the primitive
'despotisms, in which the monarch was
the descendant of the gods, gave the laws by
word of mouth, and had power of life and
death; past the early city governments of the
Mediterranean, ruled by obligarchies or
democracies and without a monarch, on to
the Roman empire, which was a bureaucracy
with the emperor as head; then through the
anarchy of the Middle Ages, in which thou-
sands of petty lords ruled Europe. It had
witnessed the rise of modern monarchies in
Western Europe, at first limited by rude
representative institutions but becoming ab-
solute in Spain and France; it had moved
rapidly in the struggle between the king and
the representative body in England, lasting
trom James I. to George III.; and at length
it had led to the conflict between the repre-
sentative body itself, controlled by the king,
and the colonies across the sea. For to this
had political theory progressed, that theTHE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 57

colonists thought they had the right to re-
sist Parliament itself.

Why the struggle that we call the Amer-
ican Revolution? Because England and the
English colonies in America had not moved
along parallel lines; they had diverged until
the moment of conflict between them had ar-
rived.

Virginia was first settled in 1607 and
Massachusetts in 1620, when James I. was
king of England. At that time there were
certain things fixed in the English conscious-
ness that were sometimes known as “the
rights of Englishmen,” partly descended from
the Magna Charta, partly the fruit of the
practice of ages. These were, briefly, that
Englishmen had the right to jury trial, to
habeas corpus in case of imprisonment, to a
certain vague representation in the passing
of tax laws, to immunity in their homes from
searches made by soldiers and officers of the
law without specific warrants. Such were the
ideas of freedom that the colonists brought
within them across the briny; but these ideas
were not well-defined and were challenged in
England by the Stuart kings in such institu-
tions as the arbitrary court known as the
Star Chamber, which tried without juries and
did not bother with the process of habeas
corpus.

ere

wee).

Desa[cee e

58 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

It was difficult to tell what would be the
development in the English colonies. In the
Spanish colonies to the south the development
was from autocracy to more autocracy;
would popular institutions survive in the
English colonies or wither? The question
was settled in Virginia in the establishment
of the assembly in 16019, one of the most 1m-
portant political steps ever taken on earth.
This assembly was a miniature Parliament
that passed laws and levied taxes for the little
colony; its members were elected by the peo-
ple.

With the Virginia assembly, the principle
of representative government was estab-
lished in America. Each colony as it was
organized had such an assembly; the principle
became recognized that it was the sole power
in the colony capable of levying direct taxes
on the people. Taxes on importations were
collected by the British government in the
ports, and the colonists could not escape from
the fact of them, much as they disliked them;
but they made a distinction between these
“external” taxes, levied by England, and the
“internal” taxes, levied by colonial as-
semblies.

The colonial assemblies, it should be noted,
were far more representative that was the
English Parliament. In England the mem-THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 59

bers of the House of Commons were elected,
as the members of the assemblies in the
colonies were, by the owners of real estate,
but the owners of real estate in the colonies
were relatively ten times more numerous
than in England. Thus suffrage in England
was very limited; in America it was almost
manhood suffrage as far as white men were
concerned. In other words, nearly every
colonist owned his own farm and voted, so
that the House of Burgesses in Virginia was
representative of the body of the people,while
the House of Commons in England was con-
trolled by a few men; because the latter was
so controlled, it fell under the influence of
George III. The Virginia House of Bur-
gesses came to be one of the greatest repre-
sentative bodies the world has ever known;
within the space of a few years George
Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jeffer-
son, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee,
James Madison, James Monroe, John Mar-
shalland Daniel Boone sat in it.

Besides the almost universal suffrage in
the colonies, there were other influences mak-
ing for a divergence between England and
America. In England the body of the people
were overawed by the great nobles, who
were also the principal landowners; the body
of the people were not only politically and

vren

‘pene |

yriree

Pore

TT eeeeeiti

60 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

socially subservient but economically  de-
pendent. This was not the case in America.
It 1s true that the planters in the colonies
made an effort to imitate the English land-
owners, but they could not reduce the body
of small farmers to the position of tenants,
for land was too cheap. It was this plentiful-
ness of land, wedded to certain primary ideas
of the “rights of Englishmen,” that brought
American liberty into being. Thus the small
farmers in the colonies, owning their own
land and voting in elections, were on an en-
tirely different plane of existence from the
tenant farmers in England, at the landlord’s
mercy and having no voice in public affairs.
On the frontier, where there were no plant-
ers, the settlers were much more democratic
than were the farmers on the coast; the fron-
tiersmen supported the American cause with
peculiar warmth in the struggle with the
British government.

A definite feeling of “American freedom”’
had grown up in the colonies by the middle
of the eighteenth century. When, therefore,
the king of England conceived the idea of
extending the sphere of British taxation in
America from the duties collected in the
ports, there was resistance. In the first place,
the duties levied by the British customs of-
ficers in American ports were largely nom1-THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 61

nal, for the colonials had become a race of
smugglers and the officials winked at the
offense. The British government now in-
sisted on a strict enforcement of the laws,
which produced intense discontent in New
England. In addition, Parliament greatly ex-
tended the sphere of taxation by passing the
ever-memorable Stamp Act of 1765, which
made newspapers and legal documents bear
stamps.

For the moment the colonials were non-
plussed. Attached to England by all the ties
of sentiment, they hesitated to inaugurate a
conflict the end of which no man could see.
However, the firebrand Patrick Henry rose
in the Virginia House of Burgesses in the ses-
sion of May, 1765, and, by branding the
Stamp Act as tyranny in one of the greatest
speeches ever delivered on earth, gave the
Americans their key-note. For a decade every
new assertion of authority by the British
Parliament met with the resistance of the
colonials, until political resistance ended in
War.

The British government was unmoved by
the addresses and petitions of the colonials,
which were designed to bring it to reason.
It continued its efforts to tax the colonies,
abandoning, however, its policy of “internal”
taxation, as in the case of the Stamp Act, and

‘aeTL hae

62 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

resorting to new import duties—on glass,
lead, tea and some other articles. ‘The col-
onials, thoroughly resentful of every move of
the government toward taxation, refused to
pay these new duties. The resistance cen-
tered at Boston, which, by way of punish-
ment, was closed as a port by the British gov-
ernment.

The other colonies immediately took steps
to show their sympathy with the Bostonians.
On May 24, 1774, the Virginia House of
Burgesses at Williamsburg adopted the fol-
lowing resolution prepared by Thomas Jefter-
son:

This House, being deeply impressed with apprehen-
sion of the great dangers to be derived to British
America, from the hostile invasion of the city of
Boston, in our Sister Colony of Massachusetts bay,
whose commerce and harbour are, on the first day of
June next, to be stopped by an armed force—deem it
highly necessary that the said first day of June be set
apart, by the Members of this House, as a day of
Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer, devoutly to implore
the divine interposition, for averting the heavy Calamity
which threatens destruction to our Civil Rights, and
the Evils of civil war; to give us one heart and one
mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means,
every injury to American Rights; and that the Minds
of his Majesty and his Parliament, may be inspired
from above with Wisdom, Moderation, and Justice, to
remove from the loyal people of America all cause ofTHE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 63

danger, from a continued pursuit of Measures, preg-
nant with their ruin.

It is thus evident that the American Revo-
lution, in its inception, was a conservative
protest against the radical measures of Par-
liament in attempting to tax colonies that for
generations had taxed themselves. It was
not marked by any outburst against authority
and was notable tor the strong religious feel-
ing displayed.

As a matter of fact, when the Revolution
actually began in 1775 and the British officials
were deposed from their offices in the col-
onies, the Virginia House of Burgesses re-
solved itself into a convention and governed
the colony, thus reducing change to the
minimum. ‘Lhe American colonists, in their
revolt against England, were not animated
by social or political discontent: all they asked
was to be let alone to enjoy the liberty that
had grown up in the wilds across the sea from
Europe, and it was with great reluctance that
they took up arms.

The military struggle began in April, 1775,
when the British troops, marching out of
Boston to destroy colonial military stores at
Concord, fired on a body of militiamen at
Lexington and were, in turn, driven back
from Concord to Boston by the enraged farm-
ers. A Congress of the colonies had met in

Pree.

were.

ee
ar04 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

1774 and a second came together in Phila-
delphia in 1775. This Continental Congress,
composed of delegates of only advisory pow-
ers, now became the government that di-
rected the war. Woodrow Wilson, in his
George Washington, gives a striking account
of the election of Washington to the com-
mand of the colonial army:

On the roth of May, 1775, the second Continental
Congress met in Philadelphia. . . . Active war had be-
gun; an army was set down before Boston—a rude
army that had grown to be 16,000 strong within the first
week of its rally; the country was united in a general
resistance and looked to the Congress to give it or-
ganization and guidance. ... The irregular army swarm-
ing before Boston was without standing or government.
It had run hastily together out of four colonies; was
subject to no common authority; hardly knew what
allegiance it bore; might fall to pieces unless it were
adequately commanded. The Congress in Philadelphia
was called upon to recognize and adopt it, give it leave
and authority to act for all the colonies, give it a com-
mander and summon the whole country to recruit it.
There was an obvious political necessity that the thing
should be done and done promptly. Massachusetts did
not stand alone; New England wanted the active as-
sistance of the other colonies; something must be at-
tempted to secure common action. The first thing to
do was to choose an acceptable and efficient leader and
to chose him outside of New England. To John Adams
the choice seemed simple enough. There was no soldier
in America, outside New England—nor inside either—
to be compared, whether in experience or distinction,THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 65

with Washington, the gallant, straightforward, earnest
Virginian he had learned so to esteem and trust there
in Philadelphia. He accordingly moved that Congress
“adopt the army at Cambridge,” and declared that he
had “but one gentleman in mind” for its command—“a
gentleman from Virginia, who was among us,’ he
said, “and very well known to all of us; a gentleman
whose skill and experience as an officer, whose inde-
pendent fortune, great talents, and excellent universal
character, would command the approbation of all
America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the
colonies better than any other person in the union.”
Washington, taken unawares, rose and slipped in con-
fusion from the room. Some of his own friends
doubted the expediency of putting a Virginian at the
head of a New England army, but the more clear-
sighted among the New Englanders did not, and the
selection was made, after a little hesitation, unani-
mously.

The selection of Washington to command
the colonial army was one of those happy
events that may only be called providential.
It is hardly possible that the American cause
could have triumphed without him. If an-
other general had been chosen, he must have
been either a colonial without experience and
without prestige or a military adventurer
such as Gates or Charles Lee, without bal-
ance and without principle.

The Americans of that day were distinctly
in advance of the Europeans in the liberty
they enjoyed and the theories of liberty they

rlitiasa

‘ePeer

Teer...

aPREE.

wae,

Pe)

Pores

Be.
:66 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

believed in. But they had thirteen separate
sovernments, not one, and small military ex-
perience and few military resources. They
were called on to face the leading military
power in the world and the ruler of the seas.
It is evident, then, that the Americans must
have lost if they had not enjoyed certain com-
pensations that outweighed the _ disad-
vantages. The first of these was the divided
state of the public mind in England. While
the public mind in the colonies was also
divided, many persons siding with the British
government in the conflict, it was not so badly
divided asin England. ‘There the body of the
Whig party was strongly opposed to the tax-
ing measures of the government and to the
coercion of the colonies. The great Charles
James Fox, the leader of the Whigs in Parlia-
ment, was outspoken in his condemnation of
the government, as was William Pitt, Ear!
of Chatham, himself in the early stages of
the war.

In 1776, the Continental Congress, on the
motion of Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia,
drafted a Declaration of Independence, which
was passed on the fourth of July. This was
a radical step and one not contemplated the
year before. It was the judgment of the co-
lonials, however, that the colonies could never
again enjoy peace and happiness under theTHE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 67

British government, that the hour had come
for separation. This act temporarily injured
the American cause; it alienated most of the
Whigs in England and the great Chatham
himself, and drove many colonials who had
hitherto sided with the colonies over to the
British camp. Miuilitary disaster came at the
same time. Washington, in attempting to
defend New York against a British fleet and
army, was defeated at Long Island and forced
to retreat across New Jersey. It was the
darkest hour of the whole long struggle.
With his army melting away, Washington
fell back behind the Delaware River in De-
cember, 1776. A lesser man would have
given up the struggle or have struggled
futilely. Washington made opportunity out
of despair; crossing the Delaware, he won
the brilliant victories of Trenton and Prince-
ton and restored the failing courage of the
colonials.

He later suffered defeats, but he retrieved
them by his steadiness and valor. At Valley
Forge his army starved a whole winter long
because the Continental Congress had so
little power that it could not compel the
states to feed the troops, but in the follow-
ing spring Washington took the field again.
Then came the French alliance in 1778, the
evacuation of Philadelphia by the British, and

eee

‘were,

eae,68 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

the brightening of American prospects.
These, however, were again clouded by Brit-
ish successes in the South, where it seemed
in 1780 and 1781 that the patriot cause must
fail. In this new crisis Washington once
more rose to the occasion. By a daring feat
of strategy, he dropped down with his army
from New York to the Virginia Capes, met
there the French fleet from the West Indies,
and cooped up and forced to surrender the
British field army in the South. This bril-
liant victory won the war. Peace came in
1783, and the Americans were masters of
their destiny.CHAPTER IV.

The American Constitution

[eA] lI the close of the Revolution, the de-

Yu) fects in the government of the United
States soon became apparent. ‘The
existing constitution of the United
States was known as the Articles of
Confederation. It was but a loose legislative
league without an executive, and for most
practical purposes the states were separate
republics. The Continental Congress had no
power to levy taxes; it depended on the
charity of the states, which began a tariff
war with each other.

 

 

 

Madison thus describes the infirmities of
the Articles of Confederation:

But the radical infirmity of the “Articles of Con-
federation” was the dependence of Congress on the
voluntary and simultaneous compliance with its re-
quisitions by so many independent communities, each
consulting more or less its particular interests and con-
venience, and distrusting the compliance of the others.
Whilst the paper emissions of Congress continued to
circulate, they were employed as a sinew of war, like
gold and silver. When that ceased to be the case, and
the fatal defect of the political system was felt in its
alarming force, the war was merely kept alive and

eae.

pyhary

ween...

Teer.

Dene.

perenne?7O THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

brought to a successful conclusion, by such foreign aids
and temporary expedients as could be applied; a hope
prevailing with many, and a wish with all, that a
state of peace, and the sources of prosperity opened by
it, would give to the Confederacy, in practice, the ef-
ficiency which had been inferred from its theory.

The close of the war, however, brought no cure for
the public embarrassments. The States, relieved from
the pressure of foreign danger, and flushed with the
enjoyment of independent and sovereign power, instead
of a diminished disposition to part with it, persevered
in Omissions and in measures incompatible with their
relations to the Federal Government, and with those
among themselves.

The league seemed about to go to pieces.
After all that the Americans had suffered in
the Revolution for the cause of liberty, after
Washington’s heroic leadership, the Revolu-
tion appeared to be a failure. It was so re-
garded in Europe.

James Madison states that the Virginia
legislature was induced to issue a call to the
states to appoint deputies to meet to con-
sider the critical condition of the United
States financially and commercially. The con-
vention thus called by Virginia met at Anna-
polis in Maryland with only five states repre-
sented. Maryland was not among these.

Virginia’s delegates were Madison, Ed-
mund Randolph, and St. George Tucker. The
convention convened on September 11, 1786.THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 71

New York was represented by Alexander
Hamilton, who by agreement drew up an ap-
peal urging a meeting of representatives from
all the states at Philadelphia on the second
Monday in May, 1787, to take such measures
as they might deem wise in the existing
emergency.

The legislature of Virginia was the first to
approve this action taken at Annapolis. Madi-
son says:

The Legislature were unanimous, or very nearly so,
on the occasion. As a proof of the magnitude and
solemnity attached to it, they placed General Washing-
ton at the head of the deputation from the State; and
as a proof of the deep interest he felt in the case, he
overstepped the obstacles to his acceptance of the ap-
pointment.

Madison drew the act endorsing the pro-
posed plan, which on December 4, 1786, was
adopted.

Madison further says:

As a natural consequence of this distracted and dis-
heartening condition of the Union, the Federal authority
had ceased to be respected abroad, and dispositions were
shown there, particularly in Great Britain, to take ad-
vantage of its imbecility, and to speculate on its ap-
proaching downfall. At home it had lost all confidence
and credit; the unstable and unjust career of the States
had also forfeited the respect and confidence essential

oy eee.

pepaaee

blajiu

erry72 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

to order and good government, involving a general
decay of confidence and credit between man and man.

When the Constitutional Convention met
in Philadelphia on May 25, 1787, to frame a
new constitution, there were but seven states
represented, as follows:

NEW YORK:

Alexander Hamilton,

Robert Yates.

NEW JERSEY :
Wiliam Churchill
Houston,

William Patterson.

PENNSYLVANIA:
Robert Morris,
Thomas Fitzsimons,
James Wilson,
Gouverneur Morris.

DELAWARE:
George Read,
Richard Bassett,
Jacob Broom.

VIRGINIA:
George Washington,
Edmund Randolph,
George Wythe,
George Mason,
James Madison,
John Blair,
James M’Clurg.

NORTH CAROLINA:
Alexander Martin,
Wm. Richardson Davie,
Richard Dobbs Spaight,
Hugh Williamson.

SOUTH CAROLINA:
John Rutledge,
Charles Pinckney,
Pierce Butler.

Chas. Cotesworth
Pinckney,

A motion by R. Morris, and seconded, that General
Washington take the chair—unanimously agreed to.

The Convention
through the summer of 1787.
the greatest share in framing the new instru-

met in secret sessions

Madison hadTHE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 73

ment of government, though others con-
tributed notably. The government of the
United States as it has existed ever since,
with President and Vice President, Senate
and House of Representatives, emerged from
the Convention. The loose league of states
already falling to pieces was replaced by a
strong contederacy, which, in turn, developed
into a genuinely national government.

The Virginia delegates, Edmund Randolph,
Richard Henry Lee and George Mason re-
fused to sign the Constitution as it came from
the Convention in September, 1787, but Ran-
dolph subsequently approved it. The other
two and Patrick Henry violently opposed it
in the Virginia convention, which endorsed it
by only ten majority.

Madison wrote these wise words to Ed-
mund Randolph on January 10, 1788:

. . . Whatever respect may be due to the rights of
private judgment, and no man feels more of it than I
do, there can be no doubt that there are subjects to
which the capacities of the bulk of mankind are un-
equal, and on which they must and will be governed by
those with whom they happen to have acquaintance and
confidence. The proposed Constitution is of this de-
scription. The great body of those who are both for
and against it must follow the judgment of others, not
their own. Had the Constitution been framed and
recommended by an obscure individual, instead of a
body possessing public respect and confidence, there

    
   
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
   
  
    
 

vere

Err.

eee

Denne.

vee.

pebadSane

74 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

cannot be a doubt, that although it would have stood in
the identical words, it would have commanded little
attention from most of those who now admire its
wisdom. Had yourself, Colonel Mason, Colonel R. H.
Lee, Mr. Henry, and a few others, seen the Constitu-
tion in the same light, with those who subscribed it, I
have no doubt that Virginia would have been as zealous
and unanimous, as she is now divided, on the subject.

Madison further says after the Convention
that framed the Federal Constitution had
completed its work and submitted it to the
people of each colony:

But whatever may be the judgment pronounced on
the competency of the architects of the Constitution, or
whatever may be the destiny of the edifice prepared by
them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and
solemn conviction, derived from my intimate opportun-
ity of observing and appreciating and views of the Con-
vention, collectively and individually, that there never
was an assembly of men, charged with a great and
arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or
more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object
committed to them, than were the members of the
Federal Convention of 1787, to the object of devising
and propos‘ng a constitutional system which should best
supply the defects of that which st was to replace, and
best secure the permanent liberty and happiness of their
country.

A sound government was thus established
in the United States. The most critical hour
in American history passed without disaster,
and the republic prepared to enter on its
career as the model and hope of mankind.CHAPTER V.

Jefferson and the French Revolution

[=e-IHE new government was an experi-

‘@| ment, but it had many things in its
favor—the ability and ‘character of
Washington, the influence of Chris-
tianity, the experience of English in-
stitutions. Now, for the first time in history,
there was an opportunity for republican gov-
ernment under the best auspices. Unfortu-
nately, however, opposed to the conserva-
tive methods instituted by Washington and
his great lieutenant, Alexander Hamilton,
stood Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson was a product of Virginia. Al-
though vouchsafed many advantages, he was
a malcontent from the first and entered en-
thusiastically on revolution. He was never
satisfied with separation from England—in-
dependence; he was the advocate of social
revolution as well as political.

Virginia was his first field of action, and
here he did away with the connection of
church and state, and abolished primogeni-
ture. In full sympathy with the spirit of the
age, he became progressively more demo-

 

 

 

wre,

eee76 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

cratic. As a war governor in Virginia he
failed, and then went as the American repre-
sentative to France. Here he imbibed much
heady revolutionary philosophy and, when
the French revolution broke out not long
after his return to America, he became an
apologist for it.

It was inevitable that Jefferson would come
into conflict with Washington’s conservative
eovernment, though he accepted a place in it.
Not only his own radical views but his dis-
like and jealousy of Hamilton urged him on in
the path of opposition. Seizing upon the mis-
takes of the Federalists with the penetration
of genius, he succeeded in overthrowing that
party and establishing himself as President
of the United States—much more, in estab-
lishing his own party and his own philosophy
as the ruling party of the country for a long
period and as the democratic philosophy of
government to which most of us yield alle-
giance to this day. He was a genius, but his
influence was unfortunate, particularly in set-
ting up states’ rights against nationalism.

Jefferson was no poor man, driven to radi-
calism by need. Randall furnishes his land
roll for 1794, showing that at that time he
owned 10,647 acres of land and 154 slaves.
The census of his domestic animals taken the
month after his resignation as Secretary ofJEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Sif,

State comprised 34 horses, eight of them sad-
dle horses, five mules, 249 cattle, 390 hogs,
and three sheep.

In the establishment of the government,
Hamilton outwitted Jefferson by swapping
the location of the capital at Washington for
the assumption of the state debts by the na-
tional government. Hamilton later acquired
an ascendency 1n Washington’s cabinet. Jef-
ferson felt that he had been tricked and, more
than tricked—outwitted—in the race for
leadership. Woodrow Wilson speaks thus of
Washington’s cabinet:

He had chosen Hamilton because he knew his views,
Jefferson only because he knew his influence, ability,
and experience in affairs. When he did test Jefferson’s
views he found them less to his liking than he had ex-
pected. He had taken Jefferson direct from France,
where for five years he had been watching a revolution
come on apace, hurried from stage to stage, not by
statesmen who were masters in the art and practice of
freedom, like those who had presided in the counsels of
America, but by demagogues and philosophers rather ;
and the subtle air of that age of change had crept into
the man’s thought. He had come back a philosophical
radical rather than a statesman. He had yet to learn in
the practical air of America, what plain and steady
policy must serve him to win hard-headed men to his
following; and Washington found him a guide who
needed watching.

Jefferson was the Secretary of State dur-
ing the whole of Washington’s first term and

weeea.cae

 

78 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

a part of his second term. During the same
period Alexander Hamilton was Secretary of
the Treasury. For some time there was no
open rupture between Jefferson and the con-
servatives. But Jefferson was already ac-
cusing some members of the government,
especially Vice President Adams, of “‘aristoc-
racy.”

In April, 1791, Washington visited the
Southern States. On May 8, 1791, Jefferson
wrote as follows to Washington:

The last week does not furnish one single public
event worthy communicating to you; so that I have only
to say “all is well,’ Paine’s answer to Burke’s pamphlet
begins to produce some squibs in our public papers. |
am afraid the indiscretion of a printer has committed
me with my friend, Mr. Adams, for whom, as one of
the most honest and disinterested men alive, I have a
cordial esteem, increased by long habits of concurrence
in opinion in the days of his republicanism; and even
since his apostasy to hereditary monarchy and nobility,
though we differ, we differ as friends should do.

On July 17, 1791, Jefferson wrote as fol-
lows to John Adams:

I have a dozen times taken up my pen to write to
you, and as often laid it down again, suspended be-
tween opposing considerations. I determine, however,
to write from a conviction that truth, between candid
minds, can never do harm. The first of Paine’s pam-
phlets on the Rights of Man, which came to hand here,
belonged to Mr. Beckley. He lent it to Mr. Madison,JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 79

who lent it to me; and while I was reading it, Mr.
Beckley called on me for it, and, as I had not finished
it, he desired me, as soon as I should have done so, to
send it to Mr. Jonathan B. Smith, whose brother meant
to reprint it. I finished reading it, and, as I had no ac-
quaintance with Mr. Jonathan B. Smith, propriety re-
quired that I should explain to him why I, a stranger to
him, sent him the pamphlet. I accordingly wrote a
note of compliment, informing him that I did it at the
desire of Mr. Beckley, and, to take off a little of the
dryness of the note, I added that I was glad that it was
to be reprinted here, and that something was to be
publicly said against the political heresies which had
sprung up among us, etc. I thought so little of this
note, that I did not even keep a copy of it: nor ever
heard a tittle more of it, till, the week following, I was
thunderstruck with seeing it come out at the head of
the pamphlet. I hoped, however, it would not attract
notice. But I found, on my return from a journey of
a month, that a writer came forward, under the signa-
ture of Publicola, attacking not only the author and
principles of the pamphlet, but myself as its sponsor,
by name. Soon after came hosts of other writers,
defending the pamphlet, and attacking you, by name,
as the writer of Publicola. Thus were our names
thrown on the public stage as public antagonists. That
you and I differ in our ideas of the best form of gov-
ernment, is well known to us both; but we have differed
as friends should do, respecting the purity of each
other’s motives, and confining our difference of opinion
to private conversation.

On July 29, 1791, Vice-President Adams
answered the above letter in part as follows:

were,

PPrrr

LE EPD..‘Tee

i.

SO THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

You observe: “that you and I differ in our ideas
of the best form of government, is well known to us
both.” But, my dear, sir, you will give me leave to
say that I do not know this. I know not what your
idea is of the best form of government. You and |
have never had a serious conversation together, that I
can recollect, concerning the nature of government. The
very transient hints that have ever passed between us
have been jocular and superficial, without ever coming
to an explanation. If you suppose that I have, or ever
had, a design or desire of attempting to introduce a
government of King, Lords, and Commons, or in other
words, an hereditary Executive, or an hereditary Sen-
ate, either into the Government of the United States, or
that of any individual State, you are wholly mistaken.
There is not such a thought expressed or intimated in
any public writing or private letter, and I may safely
challenge all mankind to produce such a passage, and
quote the chapter and verse. If you have ever put such
a construction on anything of mine, I beg you would
mention it to me, and I will undertake to convince you
that it has no such meaning.

On February 29, 1792, Washington and
Jefferson had a conversation in which the
latter, for the first time, openly expressed his
political views.

Randall, in his Life of Jefferson, says:

General Washington had intentionally selected a
cabinet balanced between the earlier friends of popular
and strong government. He had done so, hoping they
would fuse in principle and act cordially together. He
had long since been undeceived by the constant opposi-
tion to each other’s views of Jefferson and Hamilton inJEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SI

the Cabinet, and the constantly widening breach be-
tween the Republicans and Federalists in Congress. We
cannot suppose that the above recorded conversation of
February 29th, really gave the President any new in-
sight into the political views of the Secretary of State.
But if we were to adopt that hypothesis, it cannot be
urged, at least, that thenceforth he did not fully under-
stand them—that he did not understand they were
permanent views, and parts of a settled system, and
that they cardinally conflicted at nearly every point
with those of the Secretary of the Treasury.

By 1792, the French Revolution was in full
blast. The United States was profoundly af-
fected, and a party arose in sympathy with
the revolutionists.

Jefferson wrote Lafayette on June 16,
1792:

Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of
a great army establishing the liberties of your country
against a foreign enemy. May Heaven favor your
cause, and make you the channel through which it may
pour its favors! While you are exterminating the mon-
ster Aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of
its associate, Monarchy, a contrary tendency is discov-
ered in some here. A sect has shown itself among us,
who declare they espoused our new Constitution only
as a step to an English Constitution, the only thing
good and sufficient in itself, in their eye. It is happy
for us that these are preachers without followers, and
that our people are firm and constant in their republican
purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the
eastward chiefly that these champions for a King,
Lords, and Commons come.

weeera

Pena.

eee

eee82 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

Randall proceeds as follows:

The flames of partisan feeling now burned brightly
throughout the whole length and breadth of the United
States. There was not probably a neighborhood so re-
mote from the centers of population, so isolated by
surrounding wildernesses, that the people were not
arrayed, or were not arraying themselves, on the side
of the Federalists or Republicans. In the eastern States
the former had almost exclusive control—in the south-
ern, the latter. The middle States were the debatable
ground. The Federalists, led by the Secretary of the
Treasury, had hitherto maintained undisputed ascen-
dency in Congress. The Treasury schemes had con-
tinued to receive new “‘props,” and an attempt to pre-
vent this department from assuming the origination of
nearly all the improvement and management of the
revenue, and for the support of the public credit—had
been defeated. Hamilton’s influence, supported by the
overwhelming popularity of the President’s name, was
completely paramount in Congress.

In July, 1792, a series of published attacks was com-
menced on Mr. Jefferson in the Gazette of the United
States, the leading Federal paper in Philadelphia. The
first was a short article over the signature of T. L.,
asking whether the editor of the National Gazette
(Philip Freneau—Translating Clerk in the office of the
Secretary of State) recived a salary for translations, or
for publications, “the design of which was to vilify
those to whom the voice of the people had committed
the administration of our public affairs—to oppose the
measures of Government, and, by false insinuations, to
disturb the public peace?” The article further re-
marked, that “in common life it was thought ungrateful
for a man to bite the hand that put bread in his mouth;
but if the man was hired to do it, the case was altered.”JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 83

A second article soon after (August 4th) appeared,
over the signature of “An American,” explicitly charg-
ing that “a paper more devoted to the views of a cer-
tain party, of which Mr. Jefferson was the head, than
any to be found in” Philadelphia, “was wanted’’—that
“Mr. Freneau was thought a fit instrument’’—that a
negotiation was opened with him—that he “‘came here
(Philadelphia) at once editor of the National Gazette
and clerk for foreign languages in the department of
Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State’, that 1t was a new
experiment “in the history of political manoeuvres in
this country,” to have “a newspaper instituted by a pub-
lic officer, and the editor of it regularly pensioned with
the public money in the disposal of that officer.”’

A newspaper war followed, Freneau answering the
attacks made on him.

After a lull in this storm of invective for a few
weeks, the same writer returned to the assault of Mr.
Jefferson in a series of much more elaborate articles
than those already noticed. They were published in the
(Philadelphia) Gazette of the United States, over the
signature of “Catullus,” were six in number, and ex-
tended to the close of the year. They appeared formal-
ly, as an answer to a writer who signed himself
Aristides, and who undertook to defend the Secretary
of State.

Hamilton was at once generally understood to be the
author of these attacks; and they are now published as
his own in the authorized collection of his writings.

Washington wrote Jefferson:

How unfortunate, and how much to be regretted 1s
it, that while we are encompassed on all sides with
avowed enemies, and insidious friends, internal dis-
sensions should be harrowing and tearing our vitals.

peepee.

pan?

|
eee,84 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

The latter to me is the most serious, the most alarming,
and the most afflicting of the two; and without more
charity for the opinions and acts of one another in
governmental matters, or some more infallible criterion
by which the truth of speculative opinions, before they
have undergone the test of experience, are to be fore-
judged, than has yet fallen to the lot of fallibility, I
believe it will be difficult, if not impracticable, to man-
age the reins of government, or to keep the parts of
it together ; for if instead of laying our shoulders to the
machine after measures are decided on, one pulls this
way and another that, before the utility of the thing is
fairly tried, it must inevitably be torn asunder; and in
my opinion the fairest prospect of happiness and pros-
perity that ever was presented to man, will be lost,
perhaps forever.

My earnest wish, and my fondest hope, therefore,
is, that instead of wounding suspicions and irritating
charges, there may be liberal allowances, and tempor-
izing yieldings on all sides. Under the exercise of
these, matters will go on smoothly, and, if possible,
more prosperously. Without them everything must
rub; the wheels of government will clog; our enemies
will triumph, and, by throwing their weight into the
disaffected scale, may accomplish the ruin of the goodly
fabric we have been erecting.

I do not mean to apply this advice or these observa-
tions to any particular person of character. I have
given them in the same general terms to other officers
of the Government; because the disagreements, which
have arisen from difference of opinions, and the at-
tacks which have been made upon almost all the meas-
ures of Government, and most of its executive officers,
have for a long time past filled me with painful sensa-
tions, and cannot fail, I think, of producing unhappy
consequences at home and abroad.JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 85

On September 9, 1792, Jefferson replied to
the President from Monticello:

I now take the liberty of proceeding to that part of
your letter wherein you notice the internal dissensions
which have taken place within our government, and
their disagreeable effect on its movements. That such
dissensions have taken place is certain, and even among
those who are nearest to you in the administration. To
no one have they given deeper concern than myself; to
no one equal mortifications at being myself a part of
them. Though I take to myself no more than my share
of the general observations of your letter, yet I am so
desirous ever that you should know the whole truth,
and believe no more than the truth, that I am glad to
seize every occasion of developing to you whatever I
do or think relative to the Government; and shall,
therefore, ask permission to be more lengthy now than
the occasion particularly calls for, or could otherwise
perhaps justify.

When I embarked in the Government, it was with
a determination to intermeddle not at all with the Leg-
islature, and as little as possible with my co-depart-
ments. The first and only instance of variance from
the former part of my resolution, I was duped into by
the Secretary of the Treasury, and made a tool for for-
warding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood
by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this
has occasioned me the deepest regret. That I have
utterly, in my private conversations, disapproved of the
system of the Secretary of the Treasury, I acknowl-
edge and avow; and this was not merely a speculative
difference. His system flowed from principles ad-
verse to liberty, and was calculated to undermine and
demolish the Republic, by creating an influence of his
department over the members of the Legislature. I

    
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 

SRePee |

weeee |‘Lae

 

86 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

saw this influence actually produced, and its first fruits
to be the establishment of the great outlines of his pro-
ject by the votes of the very persons who, having swal-
lowed his bait, were laying themselves out to profit by
his plans; and that had these persons withdrawn, as
those interested in a question ever should, the vote of
the disinterested majority was clearly the reverse of
what they made it. These were no longer the votes
then, of the representatives of the people, but of de-
serters from the rights and interests of the people; and
it was impossible to consider their decisions, which had
nothing in view but to enrich themselves, as the meas-
ures of the fair majority, which ought always to be
respected.

Randall proceeds:

On Mr. Jefferson’s return route from Monticello
to the seat of Government, he reached Mount Vernon
on the 30th of September and remained until aiter
breakfast the next morning. A conversation there took
place between him and the President, which stands in
the light of an answer to a part of his letter to the
latter of September oth, and as such possesses much
interest. It was recorded in the Ana, on the same
day it took place, at Bladensburgh, where Mr. Jefferson
stopped over night. After giving some preliminary
conversation, in which the President very strongly ex-
pressed his regret at the proposed retirement of the
Secretary of State, and declared his own reluctance to
remain in office, but his determination “to make the
sacrifice of a longer continuance,” “if his aid was
thought necessary to save the cause to which he had
devoted his life principally,” the record proceeds:

He (the President) then expressed his concern at
the difference which he found to subsist between theJEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 87

Secretary of the Treasury and myself, of which he said
he had not been aware. He knew, indeed, that there
was a marked difference in our political sentiments, but
he never suspected it had gone so far in producing a
personal difference, and he wished he could be the
mediator to put an end to it. That he thought it 1m-
portant to preserve the check of my opinions in the ad-
ministration, in order to keep things in their proper
channel, and prevent them from going too far. That as
to the idea of transforming this Government into a
monarchy, he did not believe there were ten men in
the United States whose opinions were worth attention,
who entertained such a thought. I told him there were
many more than he imagined. I told him, that though
the people were sound, there were a numerous sect who
had monarchy in contemplation; that the Secretary of
the Treasury was one of these. That I had heard him
say that this Constitution was a shilly shally thing, of
mere milk and water, which could not last, and was
only good as a step to something better.

Randall goes on:

President Washington finally consented to become
a candidate for re-election. He met with no opposition
and received a unanimous vote in the Electoral College.
The Federalists supported John Adams for the Vice
Presidency, and the Republicans George Clinton, of
New York. The former received seventy-seven elec-
toral votes, and the latter fifty. But several considera-
tions prevented this from being made as purely a test
of the relative strength of parties as that which took
place in the.congressional elections under the new Ap-

pointment Bill.

The Republicans carried a decided

majority of the members. Precisely how large that

majority was, it would now be difficult to say, for be-

  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  

were,

pribouw88 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

fore the meeting of the third Congress, events took
place which changed the partisan relations of some of
the members. The Republicans lost considerably in
this way, yet on the vote of the Speakership they still
had a majority of ten.

Mr. Jefferson’s determination to retire from the
Cabinet at the close of the President’s first term of office
(now rapidly approaching) had become known to a few
intimate friends; and on the assembling of Congress
in the preceding November, it had soon spread through-
out the Republicans of that body. Their regret was
universal, and they earnestly besought him to recon-
sider his determination.

Mr. Jefferson on February 7, 1793, waited on the
President and informed him as follows:

That I should be willing, if he had taken no arrange-
ments to the contrary, to continue somewhat longer,
how long I could not say, perhaps till summer, perhaps
autumn. He said, so far from taking arrangements on
the subject, he had never mentioned to any mortal the
design of retiring which I had expressed to him, till
yesterday, when having heard that I had given up my
house, and that it was rented by another, he thereupon
mentioned it to Mr. E. Randolph, and asked him, as he
knew my retirement had been talked of, whether he had
heard any persons suggested in conversation to suc-
ceed me. He expressed his satisfaction at my change
of purpose, and his apprehensions that my retirement
would be a new source of uneasiness to the public.

wigs

Randall says:

Congress met on the 24th of October. The most
conspicuous of the old members had been rechosen.
The Republicans (as we may now call them), had
gained somewhat, but their opponents, the Federalists,JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 8&9

continued in a majority in both houses, and in a very
decided one 1n the Senate. Aaron Burr, a man destined
to exert an important influence on the future fortunes
of two members of the President’s Cabinet, took his
seat in the Senate from New York, in the place of
Hamilton’s father-in-law, General Schuyler, whose un-
popular manners, as much as his views, had led to his
defeat. Huis colleague, whose time had not yet expired,
was Rufus King, perhaps the ablest member of the
Federal party in the Senate. The most prominent Re-
publican member was James Monroe.

Randall states that during Jefferson’s ab-
sence in Virginia the malcontents in western
Pennsylvania on the subject of the excise law
had advanced toa point where they were sup-
posed to require the interposition of the fed-
eral government.

Another cause of disturbance was the ar-
rival of the minister of the revolutionary
French government, Genet, who endeavored
to drag the United States into the war then
raging between England and France. Jef-
ferson was accused of furthering Genet’s

plans. In any case his sympathies were
French.

Randall reports Jefferson as speaking as
follows:

From the moment... of my retiring from the Ad-
ministration, the Federalists got unchecked hold of
General Washington. His memory was already sen-

ier Pree

Wael,

Peer

vy
Pe.

Pees,

vaEny?

eeegO THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

sibly impaired by age, the firm tone of mind for which
he had been remarkable was beginning to relax, its
energy was abated, a listlessness of labor, a desire for
tranquillity had crept on him, and a willingness to let
others act, and even think for him. Like the rest of
mankind, he was disgusted with the atrocities of the
French revolution, and was not sufficiently aware of the
difference between the rabble who were used as instru-
ments of the perpetration, and the steady and national
character of the American people, in which he had not
sufficient confidence. The opposition, too, of the Re-
publicans to the British treaty, and the zealous support
of the Federalists in that unpopular but favorite meas-
ure of theirs, had made him all their own.

In 1794, the discontented in western Penn-
sylvania openly rebelled against the federal
government’s attempt to collect the excise
tax on whiskey.

Washington wrote to Henry Lee, in com-
mand of the militia to put down the Whiskey
Rebellion, on August 26, 1/94:

I consider this insurrection as the first formidable
fruit of the Democratic Societies . .. . instituted by
artful and designing members to sow the seeds of
jealousy and distrust amongst the people of the Govy-
ernment.

I see under a display of popular and fascinating
guises the most diabolical attempts to destroy the best
fabric of human government and happiness, that has
ever been presented in the acceptance of mankind.JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Oli

Jacobin Clubs similar to those vicious clubs
in France spread all over the country; they
excited the dread and abhorrence of Wash-
ington and Marshall but the approval of Jet-
ferson. Washington wrote Houston, on
August 10, 1794, of these clubs: “They are
spreading mischief far and wide’, and he
wrote to Edmund Randolph on October 16,
1794:

If these self-created societies cannot be discoun-
tenanced they will destroy the government of thts
country.

We have seen [referring to France] the representa-
tives of the people butchered and a band of relentless
murderers ruling in their stead with rods of iron. Will
not this or something like it be the fate of our wretched
country? Is not this hostility and distrust (to just
opinions and right sentiments) chiefly produced by the
slanders and falsehoods which the anarchists incessantly
inculcate ?

In the war then raging in Europe, Amer-
ican shipping suffered, particularly at the
hands of England. In 1795, Washington
sent John Jay abroad to negotiate a new
treaty with the British government. It met
with little public favor.

Randall speaks of the Jay Treaty as fol-
lows:

Not a distinguished Republican in the United States
approved the treaty; and not a few of them were re-

sean?

wer)

Deere

weetTae

vas)

 

Q2 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

ported to have said or done things on the occasion which
showed that they were not a little moved from their
“propriety.” The celebrated Langdon, of New Hamp-
shire, was said to have condensed his argument and ex-
planation in regard to the document (at a meeting at
Portsmouth, we think), into the sententious remark
that ‘Tis a damned thing made to plague the French!”
Mr. Jay was in several places burnt in effigy.

The counter demonstrations in favor of the treaty
were few and feeble. The New York Chamber of
Commerce, and bodies principally of commercial men,
in a few other places, memoralized the President in its
favor, but we think not one imposing popular demon-
stration was made on that side.

The strength and violence of the torrent themselves
led to a partial reaction. General Washington being
now personally assailed, his immense popularity was
directly thrown into the scale of the Federalists, who
supported the treaty. He was now first avowedly and
severely attacked, for an important measure imputed to
himself ; and his old companions in arms, his Revolu-
tionary comrades generally, and that portion of the
rising generation who properly revered his great name,
were painfully affected by these oftentimes harsh pub-
lic strictures. The conservative men of the country
became alarmed at such manifestations of alienation
between the Government and people; and thousands
who had not the least favor for the treaty, felt that it
was necessary to rally around the Government, and
arrest the torrent of popular excitement, for the purpose
of ensuring stability at home, or avoiding a sudden and
violent precipitation into the warlike struggle going on
in Europe. The Government was, therefore, really
rapidly gaining strength when it appeared stripped of
all external support.JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 93

Mr. Jefferson fully shared in the general disapproba-
tion of the treaty.

The fourth Congress met on the seventh of Decem-
ber. The opening speech of the President announced
the conclusion of peace with the northwestern Indians
on suitable terms; a treaty with Algiers; the near close
of negotiations with Madrid for the cession of the navi-
gation of the Mississippi; and, finally, the treaty with
England.

An acrimonious debate was held in the
House of Representatives over this address.

On April 24, 1796, Jefferson wrote Philip
Mazzei, then in Florence, a letter containing
the following remarks:

The aspect of our politics has wonderfully changed
since you left us. In place of that noble love of liberty
and Republican Government which carried us triumph-
antly through the war, an Anglican monarchical and
aristocratical party has sprung up, whose avowed ob-
ject is to draw over us the substance, as they have al-
ready done the forms, of the British Government. The
main body of our citizens, however, remain true to their
Republican principles: the whole landed interest is re-
publican, and so is a great mass of talents. Against us
are the Executive, the judiciary, two out of three
branches of the Legislature, all the officers of the Gov-
ernment, all who want to be officers, all timid men who
prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of
liberty, British merchants and Americans trading on
British capitals, speculators and holders in the banks
and public funds, a contrivance invented for the pur-
poses of corruption, and for assimilating us in all things
to the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British

   
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 

'
PEEP

Pee

, 7!
pert

rie

SHEPY'
'ceo

 

QO4 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

model. It would give you a fever were I to name to
you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies,
men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in
the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the
harlot England. In short we are likely to preserve the
liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and
perils.

Randall continues:

The fall elections of 1796 brought an important
change to the future life and prospects of Mr. Jefter-
son. We have seen him reiterating to Madison his
strong and determined disinclination against becoming
a candidate for the Presidency—and urging the latter
to assume that position. The Republican party willed
it otherwise. When the subject began to be generally
mooted, it became speedily apparent that the decided
preferences of that party all pointed to Mr. Jefferson—
indeed, that no other man was, or would be, thought
of as its candidate. By the middle of summer he was
its universally understood nominee, in case General
Washington should decline a re-election. The latter
declared his determination to do so, in his celebrated
Farewell Address, published in September ; and thence-
forth the canvass was opened with spirit between Mr.
Jefferson and Mr. Adams, who was the candidate of
the Federalists.

The Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates
in the election of 1796 were John Adams and Thomas
Pinckney on the part of the Federalists, and Thomas
Jefferson and Aaron Burr on the part of the Repub-
licans. Under the then Constitution, the candidates for
both offices were voted for in the electoral college of
each State, without designating which the elector in-
tended for the first and which for the second office.JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 5
Lists of these votes were transmitted to the seat of
Government, and the candidate having the greatest
number (if a majority of the whole) became President,
and the one having the next greatest number, Vice
President. It might thus happen that by the intentional
or accidental subtraction of one vote from the real
Presidential candidate of the victorious party, he might
be reduced to the second position, and a man not voted
for by a single Presidential elector in the Union (un-
less the one who subtracted his vote from the real can-
didate) with the intention or desire of making him
President, would receive that office. If the two high-
est candidates received an equal number of votes, the
House of Representatives (as now) was to proceed im-
mediately to choose by ballot one of them for President,
voting by States, each State having one vote, and a
majority of all the States being necessary to a choice.
In case of a tie on the Vice President, the Senate was
to choose between the equal candidates... .

The vote in the electoral college stood for Mr.
Adams, seventy-one; for Mr. Jefferson, sixty-eight ;
for Mr. Pinckney, fifty-nine; for Mr. Burr, thirty; for
Samuel Adams, fifteen; for Oliver Ellsworth, eleven;
for John Jay, five; for George Clinton, seven; and ten
votes were scattered between five other candidates. Ac-
cordingly Mr. Adams was chosen to the Presidency and
Mr. Jefferson to the Vice Presidency.

Thus Jefferson became Vice President
when John Adams was inaugurated Presi-
dent. At this time the Federalists controlled
both branches of Congress. A strong reaction
against the French Revolution was evident,
and the Federalists took advantage of it to

    
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
    
   
 

Deteee

peel.

Perens

Trt

eee,96 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

pass the Alien and Sedition Acts, by which
the government was empowered to stop
newspaper criticism of its measures and to
expel undesirable aliens from the country. By
so doing, they delivered themselves into Jef-
ferson’s hands.

Jefferson now prepared to appeal to the
principle of states’ rights against what he
considered the tyranny of the majority. He
secretly prepared his famous resolutions of
1798. The most important of them, as fol-

lows, was passed by the Kentucky legislature
in November, 1798:

1. Resolved, That the several States composing the
United States of America, are not united on the prin-
ciple of unlimited submission to their general Govern-
ment; but that, by a compact under the style and title
of a Constitution for the United States, and of amend-
ments thereto, they constituted a general Government
of certain definite powers, reserving, each State to it-
self, the residuary mass of right to their own self-
government; and that whensoever the general Govern-
ment assumes undelegated powers, its acts are un-
authoritative, void, and of no force: that to this com-
pact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral
party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party:
that the Government created by this compact was not
made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the
powers delegated to itself; since that would have made
its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of
its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact
among powers having no common judge, each party hasJEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Q7

an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions
as of the mode and measure of redress.

Similar resolutions were passed by the Vir-
ginia legislature.

This was one of the cornerstones of seces-
sion. But circumstances made it unneces-
sary for Jefferson himself to go further in
the way of resistance to the general govern-
ment. In 1800 he and Aaron Burr were the
candidates of the Republicans and received
a large majority over Adams; as they both
had the same number of votes, neither was
elected, and the selection of a president was
thrown into the House of Representatives.

The balance of power was now in the hands
of the Federalists. They inclined to elect Burr
rather than Jefferson, but Hamilton inter-
vened in the latter’s behalf, and at length he
was chosen. The history of the United
States here changed. The Federalist regime
and nationalism were replaced by Jefferson
and democracy.

Perers |

Pees.

epeeear

    
  
   
   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
    

CHAPTER VI.

Development of Secession

TIASHINGTON justly set the greatest
J)| value on the Union which he had done
so much to promote. His farewell ad-
dress to the American people dwelt
strongly on this theme:

 

 

 

The unity of government which constitutes you one
people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is
a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence;
the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace
abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that
very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is
easy to foresee that, from different causes and from
different quarters, much pains will be taken, many
artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the con-
viction of this truth; as this is the point in your political
fortress against which the batteries of internal and ex-
ternal enemies will be most constantly and actively di-
rected, it is of infinite moment, that you should prop-
erly estimate the immense value of your national union,
to your collective and individual happiness.

Never was prophesy better realized; hardly
had the new government of the United States
been firmly seated in the saddle and strength-
ened by some years of practice than move-
ments began to break up the Union, to createDEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION Q9

which had been the last and greatest work of
Washington. ‘The first attempts against the
Union, however, did not come, as might have
been expected, from the party of Jefferson.
Jefferson indeed, in the Kentucky and Vir-
gcinia Resolutions, furnished arguments for
disunion that were later to be used with dire
effect, but secession actually uprose for the
first time in New England.

The reason for this was New. England’s
profound discontent with the accession of
Jefferson as President and with the.policy
pursued by Jefferson and his successor, Madi-
son. If the Democratic-Republican party
had lost in the election of 1800, that party
would probably have pushed the Kentucky
and Virginia Resolutions to the point of open
secession; but since the Federalists lost, it
was the latter party that first definitely
thought of secession. The rule of the Demo-
cratic-Republican party displeased New Eng-
land. Jefferson’s embargo injured New Eng-
land commerce; Madison’s War of 1812 with
England ruined it. From 1807 to 1814
threats of disunion were freely uttered in
New England and, in the Hartford Conven-
tion of 1814, the advisability of secession was
debated. In fact, there is a striking simuilar-
ity between the Hartford Convention of 1814
and the Nashville Convention of 1850; both

weeps.

ere.

peeri .eaae

c30

100 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

were preliminary secession movements.
However, in New England the causes tend-
ing to bring about secession were weakened
after peace was restored in 1815, while in the
South the irritation that was making the
Southerners disunionists continued until it
resulted 1n secession and war.

Now that Jefferson had become President
he followed many of the nationalist policies
of the Federalist party, for he had no wish to
weaken the government of which he himself
was the head. The same thing was true of
Madison, Jefferson’s successor in the Presi-
dency. Madison viewed disunionist activi-
ties in New England with alarm and in later
years explained that the Constitution of the
United States, of which he was largely the
author, did not contemplate such a remedy
as secession.

Yet secession was considered on a number
of occasions—by New England and by the
South. In fact New England, jealous of the
formation of new states, especially slave
states, spoke of secession as late as 1845,
when Texas became a part of the Union. It
did not act, however, and it might not in any
case have acted, no matter how much it felt
itself aggrieved. The South did act, and by
its action plunged the nation into war and
was itself desolated and almost destroyed.DEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION IOI

Slavery was not the cause of the first
serious quarrel between the North and South:
it was the tariff. New England considered
secession in 1814 because it was a commercial
section and its commerce had been ruined by
the war with England. In its desperation, it
thought of breaking off from the Union and
establishing a New England republic. How-
ever, when peace came, the first protective
tariff quickly followed, in 1816, and the atti-
tude of New England speedily changed. New
England was transformed from a shipbuild-
ing and grain and lumber exporting section
into a factory region, and its devotion to a
Union that supplied it with a _ protected
market was greatly strengthened.

On the other hand, the South was begin-
ning an economic change that made its trade
relations international rather than national;
consequently its devotion to the Union, which
was strong from 1800 to 1820, gradually
weakened. And when its love for the Union
lessened under the stress of two great con-
flicts—those over the tariff and over slavery
—it found ready at hand the states’ rights
philosophy of Jefferson and the disunionist
hints of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolu-
tions to encourage it in thoughts of separa-
tion from the federation. The whole idea of
the right of the state to set its will against

Tere

weer

PRPPEL

wPeee.

een,JPaaan

IO2 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

that of the nation in an emergency was there
to foster discontent and lead to disunion,
though Jefferson himself never carried his
theory that far and never wished to do so.

This first tariff, it should be noted, was not
sectional; one of its advocates was the young
John C. Calhoun, then a nationalist of the
broadest views. Calhoun did not remain a
nationalist long; the forces of life were
alienating the lower South from the rest of
the nation. The lower South, just being set-
tled in many parts, was becoming a cotton-
raising region, and for cotton-raising at that
time slavery was necessary. In other words,
the revolution that transformed the United
States from a country chiefly engaged in ex-
porting lumber, tobacco, meat and flour into
a nation growing textile materials resulted in
a definite division between the great sections
of the North and West and the South. The
North and West remained a region for small
farmers and for industries; the lower South
was divided into great plantations devoted
almost exclusively to cotton-raising and
populated by slaves. This development
brought the United States to the parting of
the ways. South Carolina was the leading
state of the lower South, and, as such, lived
by cotton-growing. The South, however, was

devoted exclusively to cotton-raising, not toDEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION 103

cotton-manufacturing. There are more spin-
dles in the South today than in any other
country, but it was not so from 1820 to 1860;
in that period there were hardly half a dozen
successful cotton mills in the whole area of
the Southern States.

The South lived by producing cotton and
sold most of the raw product to England. Be-
cause it was engaged in international busi-
ness and was wholly agricultural, the South
was opposed to the efforts of New England
to raise the tariff. New England, like the
South, lived largely by the money that came
to the United States for cotton; but New
England desired a larger share of the profit
made by the South—that is, the difference
between the selling price of cotton to ex-
porters and the cost of producing cotton by
slave labor. New England sought to increase
its share of the cotton profits by raising the
tariff, thus compelling Southern planters to
pay more for manufactured articles. The
South, especially the people of the lower
South, bitterly opposed this tax for the bene-
fit of New England manufacturers; they pre-
ferred to lower the tariff so as to buy manu-
factured articles cheaper from England, if
New England could not successfully compete.
The upper South was divided, and Kentucky

weeee.

eee

eeeTO4 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

furnished in Henry Clay the first great Amer-
ican advocate of protection.

Clay was born in Virginia but spent most
ot his lifein Kentucky. He was, from first to
last, a strong nationalist. He supported the
War of 1812 against the opposition of the
New England members of Congress and was
long a leader in Jefferson’s party when that
party was the only one in the United States.
A division in the party, however, was in-
evitable and Clay was the principal promoter
of it. He was bitterly opposed to Andrew
Jackson and, so far, was moved by personal
motives; but he was also an advocate of a
protective tariff and internal improvements,
and so was on the side of the developing prin-
ciple of nationality that was strong in the
West and later became so in the North. As
a Southerner of broad sympathies, it was his
fate to stand between the sections for thirty
years, from 1820 to 1850, and keep the peace
by one compromise after another. For this
reason he was never elected President—be-
cause he was a Southerner who defended
slavery and the Southern mode of life and.
at the same time, a nationalist whose asso-
clates were mostly Northerners. Because he
was so much a Southerner the North would
not vote for him, and because he was in so
many ways a Northerner he failed to gain theDEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION TO5

support of the South. As a patriot to whom
every part of the United States was dear and
who sacrificed his political hopes for the wel-
fare of his country, Clay deserves the venera-
tion of Americans.

Clay’s tariff policy brought him into con-
flict with South Carolina, which, in its ar-
rogance, became the mouthpiece of lower
South ambitions. Calhoun was obliged to
give up his nationalist ideas and lapse into a
narrow advocate of states’ rights and an op-
ponent of the protective tariff. He spent his
later years in opposing the growth of national
ideals, in promoting separatism; he used in
this unhappy cause a genius second to few.
At length, in 1832, South Carolina came into
open conflict with the United States govern-
ment. It deduced from the Kentucky and
Virginia Resolutions the principle that a
state has the right to refuse to obey an act
of Congress that it believes to be unjust.
South Carolina believed the tariff act of 1828.
greatly increasing duties on many imports, to
be unjust and dangerous, and South Carolina.
under Calhoun’s leadership, prepared to put
this principle of nullification, as it was called,
into practice. Andrew Jackson, Southern
President though he was, was angered by
South Carolina’s stand, and there was danger
of war. Clay saved the situation by sacri-

    
   
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   

PPP Ee.

PPL eee:

PpePe

Tet100 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

ficing the tariff and his own career, for he
was never forgiven by the New Englanders.
The tariff was lowered successively by terms
of years. This settlement satisfied the South
but gave offense to the manufacturing states
and was one of the causes of the Civil War.
The main cause of the war was the effort
of the lower South to defeat the will of the
majority and make slavery a permanent in-
stitution of American life. The lower South
was the single aristocratic section of the
United States. The charge is often made that
Virginia was an aristocracy; this is false.
There were never any aristocrats in Virginia
except the weaklings from the British court,
sent over to rule the colony, most of whom
were regarded with deserved contempt by
the people. The Virginians of means lived
simply on estates usually of no great size and
with comparatively few servants. In the
lower South, however, there were great
estates cultivated by slaves which produced
large incomes and led to the beginnning of
what would have been a genuine aristocracy
if it had not been destroyed by the Civil War.
It was to the interest of these large cotton
planters, who lived in luxury and controlled
politics, to perpetuate slavery. Indeed, not
until cotton raising by slave labor became
highly profitable was any apology made forDEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION 107

the institution. Up to that time it was re-
garded as an evil, by Southerners and North-
erners alike.

Virginia, from the earliest times, opposed
slavery and the introduction of slaves. It
could not prevent the importation of slaves
in the eighteenth century, however, because
the corrupt courtiers of the British court
profited by their sale. Time and again the
colonial legislature of Virginia protested
against the slave trade, but in vain. The im-
portation was one of the principal reasons for
the discontent of Virginia with the royal
government and, consequently, one of the
causes of the Revolution. In 1774, especial-
lv, the Virginia House of Burgesses bitterly
complained of the practice, and Jefferson,
when he wrote the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, put in a clause denouncing the
British king for furthering the slave trade—
a Clause that was struck out in deference to
Southern and New England opinion.

Virginia continued to oppose slavery, and
it was the Virginian, Jefferson, who pre-
vented the introduction of the institution into
the Middle West. Virginians practiced the
manumission of slaves at death, and this cus-
tom prevailed to such an extent that if the
legislature had not passed an act in 1816
somewhat checking it, there would soon have

) Po

TERE.

Beepr

r2a94%

eae
i?

peaat

Pree

Supe.108

been no slaves left.

 

THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

The movement toward

emancipation continued in Virginia until 1832,
when an emancipating bill narrowly failed in
the legislature.

The

immense

economic

importance of

slavery to the lower South, however, saved
the institution and led to efforts to extend it.
This growth of slavery brought about a pro-
test in the North, which had for some time
regarded it as a decaying institution. Now it
was seen to be not only not decaying but

spreading.

The admission of Texas in 1845

brought into the Union a vast territory given
over to slave labor. Then it was that Northern
members of Congress sought to check the de-
velopment by advocating the Wilmot Proviso,
which forbade the introduction of slaves in
the territory gained from Mexico by the
Mexican War of 1846-1848. A great struggle
followed in Congress, where the members
from the lower South advocated slavery with

much arrogance and

self-assertion. Seces-

sion seemed possible at this time, and a con-
vention was held at Nashville in 1850 to con-
sider the measure, but Henry Clay got
through Congress the Compromise of 1850,
his last act of enlightened patriotism, for he
died not long afterward. By this measure,
New Mexico and Utah were opened to slavery

—if they desired it—while California wasDEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION IOQ

admitted as a free state. A Fugitive Slave
Law was passed which enabled slave-owners
to follow their runaway servants into any
state of the Union and secure them.

For a brief time the slavery issue seemed
dead, but it was revived by Stephen A.
Douglas, Senator from Illinois, in 1854.
Douglas desired to run a railroad from Chi-
cago to the Pacific Ocean through what was
then unorganized territory belonging to the
United States. It was necessary to have this
region organized before the railroad through
it could be secured, and Douglas sought
Southern support. The price offered was the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820,
by which the unorganized territory of the
United States was divided by a line: north of
this line there was to be no slavery and
south of it slavery might exist. Douglas now
offered the Southerners the chance to extend
slavery into the region north of the dividing
line, and they took it.

Kansas was thrown open to slavery—that
is, it was to be a slave state if the advocates
of slavery were in the majority and formed
the state constitution. Settlers from both
the free and slave states poured into Kansas
and violence followed. It was in this strug-
ele that John Brown first distinguished him-
self by cruelly murdering a number of pro-

Per)

Peres.

weer

eee

PPCELe.

Peeere.

prauea

Secue|
,

BeerI1O THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

slavery men. Two constitutions were
formed by rival governments, and Kansas re-
mained in this condition until the verge of the
Civil War, as it was not admitted to the
Union as a free state until 1861.

In this conflict the slavery advocates were
really defeated in Kansas and they would
have been forced to admit defeat if the Su-
preme Court had not come to their aid. This
was in the famous Dred Scott decision, most
momentous of all American court pronounce-
ments. John Marshall had made the Supreme
Court the judge of the constitutionality of
acts passed by Congress and, in this way, he
put an end to such resistance to the laws as
was offered by South Carolina in the nullifica-
tion measure of 1832. The slavery advocates
thought that they would overthrow their
opponents if they could get the Supreme
Court to decide in favor of their contention
that it was illegal to prevent American
citizens from carrying their property into any
territory of the United States.

Unquestionably this contention would have
been sound in the case of any other species of
property than slaves. But slavery was recog-
nized, by all the legislation on the subject, as
a peculiar institution and slaves as property
of an exceptional character. Nevertheless a
majority of members of the Supreme Court,DEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION III

with Taney, the Chief Justice, decided that
the Missouri Compromise preventing the in-
troduction of slaves into any territory of the
United States was unconstitutional—conse-
quently American citizens might take slaves
into all the territories.

This decision was not rendered until March
6, 1857. One of the clauses of the Constitu-
tition cited in support of the decision was
that:

Nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty or
property without due process of law.

The court, in citing this, held that property
in slaves was under the Constitution on the

same plane with property in horses and cat-
tle.

Chief Justice Taney thus speaks of the
negro at the date of the framing of the Con-
stitution in his opinion in the Dred Scott case:

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of pub-
lic opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which
prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of
the world at the time of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, and when the Constitution of the United
States was framed and adopted. But the public his-
tory of every European nation displays it in a manner
too plain to be mistaken.

They had for more than a century before been re-
garded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether
unfit to associate with the white race, either in social

     
   
 
    
  
  
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

eer.

Peres.

wenaNiaaT

aaa

112 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY
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. He was bought and sold,
and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and
traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This
opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the
civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as
an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one
thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dis-
pute; and men in every grade and position in society
daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pur-
suits, as well as in matters of public concern, without
doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion.

And in no nation was this opinion more firmly fixed
or more uniformly acted upon than by the English
Government and English people. They not only seized
them on the coast of Africa and sold them or held them
in slavery for their own use; but they took them as
ordinary articles of merchandise to every country where
they could make a profit on them, and were far more
extensively engaged in this commerce than any other
nation in the world.

The opinion thus entertained and acted upon in
England was naturally impressed upon the colonies
they founded on this side of the Atlantic. And, ac-
cordingly, a negro of the African race was regarded
by them as an article of property, and held, and bought
and sold as such, in every one of the thirteen colonies
which united in the Declaration of Independence, and
afterwards formed the Constitution of the United
States. The slaves were more or less numerous in the
different colonies, as slave labor was found more or
less profitable. But no one seems to have doubted the
correctness of the prevailing opinion of the time.DEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION eis

This statement of the Chief Justice is in
the teeth of the truth of history. Lord Mans-
field, in the Court of Kings Bench in 1771,
delivered the opinion in the Somersett case,
which is referred to by Justice McLean, one
of the dissenting judges in the Dred Scott
case, as follows:

No case in England appears to have been more thor-
oughly examined than that of Somersett. The judg-
ment pronounced by Lord Mansfield was the judgment
of the Court of Kings Bench. The cause was argued
at great length, and with great ability, by Hargrave and
others, who stood among the most eminent counsel in
England. It was held under advisement from term
to term, and a due sense of its importance was felt
and expressed by the Bench.

In giving the opinion of the court, Lord Mansfield
said: “The state of slavery is of such a nature that
it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons,
moral or political, but only by positive law, which pre-
serves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and
time itself, from whence it was created, is erased from
the memory; it is of a nature that nothing can be suf-
fered to support it but positive law.”

There would seem to have been no explana-
tion of this perversion of history except on
Lincoln’s theory at the time this opinion was
delivered that the 'object was to justify
slavery and to vindicate the South in its pur-
pose to perpetuate and extend it to all the
states. Most of the capital of the South ac-

Pre.

rein

PeEee.

Perens |

Seeee

Teenrc tha

Ii4 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

cumulated in the previous century and a half
was invested in three millions of slaves, with-
out whose labor cotton could not be profitably
cultivated according to the belief of cotton-
state planters. The opinions of the Chief
Justice and the other justices who concurred
with him in relation to slave property were
equally fallacious and, as Lincoln insisted, in-
tended to pave the way for the judicial de-
termination by the most august tribunal in
the world that the owners of slaves were en-
titled under constitutional provisions to carry
them into every state of the Union just as
they might carry their horses, or other chat-
tels.

Lincoln, as late as June 16, 1858, had an
honest conviction that a conspiracy existed
in the cotton states to make the institution
of slavery a permanent institution, not only
in the then existing slave states and the then
existing territories of the Union, but also in
all the then free states, whose constitutions
expressly excluded slavery. This result was
to be worked out by the Supreme Court of
the United States under the perversion of the
following provision of the Constitution of the
United States: “The citizens of each state
shall be entitled to all the privileges and 1m-
munities of citizens of the several States.”
Lincoln was convinced that such evil intentDEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION I15

was plainly squinted at, if not openly ex-
pressed, by the majority of the justices in the
Dred Scott case.

In his speech at Springfield, [llinois, on
June 16, 1858, he boldly charged that
“Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Chief
Justice Roger B. Taney (who delivered the
majority decision in the Dred Scott case), and
James Buchanan all understood one another
from the beginning, and all worked upon a
common plan drawn up before the first blow
was struck.”

In Lincoln’s speech on February 27, 1860,
at the Cooper Institute in New York City,
he thus referred to the Dred Scott decision
and the attitude of the South toit. He was
speaking to the South:

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by
the use of John Brown, Helper’s Book, and the like,
break up the Republican organization? Human action
can be modified to some extent, but human nature can-
not be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling
against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a mil-
lion and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judg-
ment and feeling—that sentiment—by breaking up the
political organization which has been formed into order
in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how
much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which
created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box
into some other channel? What would that other
channel probably be? Would the number of John
Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?

Pe

eae

errr

Pree.

phase." PALES

116 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

But you will break up the Union rather than submit
to a denial of your Constitutional rights.

The four public men that Lincoln charged,
as late as June 16, 1858, with having influ-
enced the Dred Scott decision were Demo-
crats, and three of them extreme partisans:
Stephen A. Douglas, a violent schemer for
the Presidency through the vote of the
South; \ Franklin Pierce, the Democratic
President lately retired; James Buchanan,
the newly-elected Democratic President;
Roger B. Taney, the Democratic Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States. All four of these distinguished Demo-
crats were opposed to the institution of
slavery. How far the violence of public ex-
citement and the desire to frustrate the
threatened secession of the slave states in-
fluenced the extraordinary decision of the
majority of the court in the Dred Scott case
can never be known, but it rendered the elec-
tion of Lincoln to the Presidency inevitable
in 1860. It will appear from the opinion of
Chief Justice Taney that no one but a South-
ernor from a slave-holding state and one ap-
proving slavery would have gone out of his
way to outrage the public sentiment of the
more than half the states of the Union whose
constitutions excluded slavery.DEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION VE7

In 1860, the Northern Democrats hoped to
save the Union by electing Douglas Presi-
dent. At that moment Douglas was popular
in the North and West because he had op-
posed the Dred Scott decision on the ground
that it took away from territories the right
to permit or exclude slavery within their
limits. His refusal to stomach the Dred
Scott decision, however, made him bitterly
unpopular in the far South, and the national
committee of the Democratic party schemed
to defeat him by holding the nominating con-
vention in a city hostile to him. For this
purpose Charleston, South Carolina, was
selected.

When the convention met, a majority of
the delegates favored the nomination of
Douglas and declined to put a plank in the
platform approving the Dred Scott decision.
This led to a split; many of the lower South
delegates, led by William L. Yancey, of Ala-
bama, left the convention. An adjournment
was then made to Baltimore, where Douglas
was nominated by the Northern and Western
delegates. The Southern delegates, in a con-
vention at Richmond, nominated the Vice
President, John C. Breckinridge. Some of
the old Whigs put up John Bell, of Tennessee.
The Republican party, fearing to nominate
Seward, who had been prominent in the Whig

Weae.

eEPe

‘POEEL.

eeon,

Teen118 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

party, named Abraham Lincoln as an avail-
able candidate.

Thus the lower South wrecked the hope of
saving the Union, for if Douglas had been
supported by a united Democratic party he
would probably have been elected. As it was,

Lincoln was easily victorious in a split-up
field.

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina
seceded.

Thus far had the United States come from
the purpose of its founders. Established as
the highest expression of human freedom, in-
heriting all that was best in English tradi-
tions, morally supported by the Christian re-
ligion, the American republic was now threat-
ened by the refusal of the South to bow to
the will of the majority and do away with an
institution that had become hateful to civil-
ized mankind. It was one of the darkest
hours of history, for it seemed that the great
experiment had failed. It seemed then that
monarchists were right in their contention
that stable and righteous government could
not be established and maintained by the peo-
ple themselves, that hereditary rule was the
only workable system.

The secessionists used the Kentucky and
Virginia Resolutions to justify them, and par-
ticularly the “reserved powers” of states.DEVELOPMENT OF SECESSION II9g

By this theory, a state could sever its federal
relations whenever it felt that it could no
longer obtain justice in the Union. Jefferson
and Madison were long since dead, but their
precepts and example were cited in support
of disunion. States’ rights, advocated by
Jefferson in opposition to what he considered
the tyranny of the federal government, had
led to disunion and war.reiay

ET

   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

CHAPTER VII.
Davis and the Confederacy

 

|HE leading promoters of disunion were
William L. Yancey of Alabama and
Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Caro-
lina. Rhett had been in favor of se-
ceding in 1850 and he continued to
foster the movement in his newspaper, the
Charleston Mercury, until at length South
Carolina withdrew from the Union. Yancey
had ruined Douglas’s chance of election by
breaking up the Democratic convention of
1860. Another advocate of secession, though
a late and reluctant one, was Robert Toombs
of Georgia.

When the Confederate convention, at
Montgomery, Alabama, met to form a new
government of the seceding states, the mat-
ter of electing a president of the provisional
government came up. None of the men
prominent in secession was chosen, but Jet-
ferson Davis, of Mississippi, who had been
one of the Southern leaders in the Senate for
years but who had entered on secession re-
luctantly. Davis, however, had done much
to bring secession about, for he was one of
the national committeemen of the DemocraticDAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY [2]

party who had selected Charleston as the
place for holding the convention of 1860 and
had used all his influence to defeat Douglas.
He was now elected provisional president of
the Confederacy because he was believed to
be a moderate man and had the reputation of
being an excellent soldier. In reality, how-
ever, he was not much of a soldier and was
unreliable politically.

Davis’ shiftiness as a politician is illustrated
by his whole career. In his first important
speech in the House of Representatives in

1846, he said:

From sire to son has descended the love of Union
in our hearts, as in our history are mingled the names
of Concord and Camden, of Yorktown and Saratoga,
of Moultrie and Plattsburg, of Chippewa and Erie, of
Bowyer and Guilford, and New Orleans and Bunker
Hill. Grouped together, they form a monument to
the common glory of our common country; and where
is the Southern man who would wish that that monu-
ment were less by one of the Northern names that
constitute the mass?

In 1850, however, he opposed the compro-
mise measures proposed by Clay. Clay said
to him: “Come join us in these measures of
pacification, and they will assure to the
country thirty years of peace. By that time
I will be under the sod and you, my young
friend, may then have trouble again.”

ehhhe)

wae.

Pe,Te a

I2Z2 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

Davis, with the arrogance of a young poli-
tician from the cotton states, thus replied in
the Senate to Clay’s pathetic appeal:

That I may be understood upon this question and
that my position may go forth to the country in the
same columns that convey the sentiments of the Senator
from Kentucky, I here assert that never will I take
less than the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific
Ocean, with specific right to hold slaves in the terri-
tory below that line; and that before such territories
are admitted into the Union as states, slaves may be
taken there from any of the United States at the op-
tion of the owners.

In 1851, in disgust at the passage of the
Compromise of 1850, Davis resigned his place
in the Senate and went back to Mississippi to
run for governor and be defeated. In 1852,
after his defeat for governor, he advocated
the election of Franklin Pierce for president
and was rewarded by a place in the cabinet.
In 1857 he returned to the Senate.

In 1858 he traveled North. He spoke, in
October 1858, in Faneuil Hall, Boston; then,
in New York. In reply to an invitation to at-
tend the Webster Birthday Festival, he de-
nounced “partisans who avow the purpose of
obliterating the landmarks of our fathers and
of men whose oaths to support the Consti-
tution had been taken with a mental reserva-
tion to disregard its spirit.”DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 123

Davis visited Maine in the same month, for
the first time. He madea speech at Portland
in which he said:

If, at some future time when I am mingled with
the dust, and the arm of my infant son has been nerved
for deeds of manhood, the storm of war should burst
upon your city, I feel that, relying upon his inheriting
the instincts of his ancestors and mine, I may pledge
him in that perilous hour to stand by your side in the
defence of your hearth-stones.

Some thought he was seeking the Presi-
dency by thus flattering the North.

President Buchanan sent his message to
Congress in December, 1860, in which he de-
nied the right to coerce the seceding states.
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina adopt-
ed an ordinance of secession, declaring that
that state had resumed its sovereignty. John
B. Floyd, Secretary of War, resigned, being
in full sympathy with the secession move-
ment and realizing the vital importance of
the Southern forts and arsenals to that cause.

Pollard, in his Life of Davis, asserts that on
January 5, 1861, a council composed of the
fourteen senators from Florida, Georgia, Ala-
bama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and
Texas met in one of the rooms of the Capitol
and recommended the immediate secession
of their states and the holding of a convention
at Montgomery, Alabama, on February 15,

weer!

BPP PeL

beepeee ||

Pera.
“

ae
F,124 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

ISols to orsanize the Confederacy. ‘This
statement would appear to be confirmed by
the speedy passage of the ordinances of se-
cession by each of the states named and by
the assembling on February 4 of the con-
vention which organized what was called the
Southern Confederacy and which elected
Jefferson Davis President.

Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee
took no part in that convention.

When the question of coercion of South
Carolina was debated, Davis said on the Sen-
ate floor:

I would have this Union severed into thirty-three
fragments sooner than have that great evil befall con-
stitutional liberty and republican government.

Mississippi attempted to secede on January
9, 1861, but Davis continued in Washington
until the 21st, when he withdrew. In his fare-
well speech in the Senate he closed with these
words: “Invoking the’ God of our fathers
who delivered them from the power of the
lion, to protect us from the ravages of the
bear.”

All this time President Buchanan was in a
painful position, declaring on the one hand
that secession was illegal and, on the other,
that the coercion of the seceding states was
likewise illegal. John B. Floyd, Secretary ofDAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 125

War, a leading secessionist, was sending arms
South to aid the cause.

Prior to January 16, 1801, Senator Crit-
tenden, of Kentucky, a splendid type of
Southern character and _ statesmanship,
sought to stay the passions of Southern
politicians by resolutions reaffirming slavery
legislation as without the authority of Con-
gress, denying the power of Congress over
slavery in the District of Columbia, and
strengthening the Fugitive Slave Law by
additional enactments.

These resolutions were voted down by the
close vote of 25 nays to 23 yeas. Pollard
states that six Southern Senators were in
their seats but refused to vote and that Davis
was detained in his room by “convenient sick-
ness.” Whether this statement of Pollard’s
is correct the author cannot say, but it was
written when most, if not all, of these Sen-
ators were alive.

Pollard was on the staff of John M. Daniel,
the owner of the Richmond Examiner, a man
of genius and probably the greatest editor
in the South during the Civil War, which po-
sition gave Pollard exceptional advantages
in learning what was going on around him
in Richmond and in Washington. He wrote
an interesting history of those times, but
much of what he wrote is marred by that

eae.

‘PP Per ee.

ee PPR?

vEes.!

Reeee.!Paar

126 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

conceit frequently found in the bomb-proof of
an editorial sanctum; and being a deep-dyed
secessionist, he could not forgive Jefferson
Davis and General Lee for the disastrous
failure of the Confederacy.

One of the best known biographies of Jef-
ferson Davis is that of Professor William E.
Dodd of the University of Chicago.

Professor Dodd gives this gloomy account
of the Confederacy within a few months after
its organization at Montgomery. ‘The pro-
visional Congress (which was the conven-
tion) met for a final session on November
18, 1861. Foreshadowing the already antici-
pated struggle, Davis said in his message on
the first day:

If we husband our means and make a judicious
use of our resources it would be difficult to fix a limit
to the period during which we could conduct a war
against the adversary whom we now encounter.

By way of inspiring an everlasting hatred
and contempt for the North he added:

If, instead of being a dissolution of a league, it
were indeed a rebellion in which we are engaged we
might find ample vindication for the course we have
adopted in the scenes which are now being enacted in
the United States. Our people now look with con-
temptuous astonishment on those with whom they had
been so recently associated. They shrink with aversion
from the bare idea of renewing such a connection.DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 127

When they see a President making war without the
assent of Congress, when they behold judges threatened
because they maintain the writ of habeas corpus so
sacred to freedom, when they see justice and law
trampled under the armed heel of military authority,
and upright men and innocent women dragged to
distant dungeons upon the mere edict of a despot;
when they find all this tolerated and applauded by a
people who had been in the full enjoyment of freedom
but a few months ago, they believe there must be some
radical incompatibility between such a people and them-
selves. With such a people we may be content to live
at peace, but the separation is final, and for the in-
dependence we have asserted we will accept no alter-
native.

These references to the manner of waging
the war and to the treatment of civilians by
the government of the United States were
designed to show the faint-hearted and hesi-
tating in the Confederacy the utter futility
of hoping for a restoration of the former
conditions, as well as to justify the course of
the South. Davis sought to explain in a
dignified way the failure of his diplomatic
mission to Europe, which had been expected
to return with assurances of the coveted
recognition of the Confederacy as an inde-
pendent nation:

We have sought no aid and proposed no alliance
offensive and defensive abroad. We have asked for a
recognized place in the great family of Nations but

PPPS...

ppaepat

weer)

hee)

See epel|

PeLERS.
wae
BELLE.

preie.

papas

Peeeel |wea)

128 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

in doing so we have demanded nothing for which we
did not offer a fair equivalent.

While the war which is waged to take from us
the right of self-government can never attain that end
it remains to be seen how far it may work a revolu-
tion in the industrial system of the world which may
carry suffering to other lands as well as to our own.
In the meantime we shall continue this struggle in
humble dependence upon Providence, from whose
searching scrutiny we cannot conceal the secrets of our
hearts and to whose rule we confidently submit our
destinies.

Dodd states that the first Confederate
Congress under the constitution (which con-
vened in 1862), contained all the elements of
discord and disagreement it was possible to
assemble under one roof in the South. He
declares that the time had already come
when Davis felt constrained to hold in check
the discordant elements in the “republic.”
If men had gone off to war in the preceding
spring as on a picnic excursion, they were
now disposed to hasten back to their homes
with even more eagerness. Congress yielded
to the unfortunate request of their constitu-
ents and twice enacted legislation which
would have put into the hands of irresponsi-
ble physicians the authority to grant tur-
loughs to anyone who thought camp life not
conducive to good health. Davis vetoed these

bills. Dodd says:DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 129

During the late autumn and early winter of 1861,
when the Southern armies were daily being depleted by
desertions, furloughs and the expiration of the terms
of enlistment, McClellan was organizing the grand
army that was to move with irresistible weight upon

the Confederate Capital in
Halleck and Grant were not

the coming spring, and
less hopeful of breaking

the defenses of the West. At that time an overwhelm-

ing force was pressing Albert

Sidney Johnston at every

point in his long line. News came early in February
1862 that Halleck and Grant would probably break
through Albert Sidney Johnston’s line even in the dead
of winter. Before February 20th it was known in
Richmond that all Kentucky was lost and that it would
cost a mighty effort to save Tennessee.

Meantime the hope

of recognition in

Europe vanished. Before the Inauguration
on February 22, 1862, Fort Donelson and Roa-

noke Island had fallen.

In the midst of these

depressing events the provisional government
prepared to give way to the regular govern-
ment on the 22nd of February, a date which
states rights’ men of earlier days had affected

to despise.

Misfortunes thickened about the South.
On April 6-7, 1862, the battle of Shiloh

was fought and General

Albert Sidney John-

ston killed. At the same time fell Island No.
10 in the Mississippi River, a strong Con-
federate fortification off the corner of Jen-
nessee; it was lost with 7,000 men and im-

mense military supplies.

 

 

On April 23, Far-

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

hePPe

Pe EEES

vee ear.

Peper

SPP)

vipee

;
eryepea.ee

130 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

ragut opened the lower Mississippi to New
Orleans and on May 1 Norfolk and the whole
lower Chesapeake Bay became Northern ter-
ritory, as was eastern North Carolina. The
end of the Confederacy seemed near at hand.

Long before this Jefferson Davis had dis-
appointed the hopes of the South. The fol-
lowing editorial of the Richmond Examiner,
of January 1, 1862, was written by John M.
Daniel:

The end of the year just passed fills the mind with
melancholy reflections on the vanity of human wishes,
the instability of human creations, and the frivolity
of all the thoughts of man. Where now is that won-
derful country which realized the political dream of
philosophers and patriots—that grand temple of lib-
erty, built for eternal duration; that perfect common-
wealth, which gave the lie to all the ages, and proved
the self-government of nations to be something more
than the fable of a noble, but irrational, imagination ?
What has bcome of that splendid illusion which shed
its lustre on the opening mind of the American youth—
the lofty thought, that he was born and would live in
a glorious republic of heroic States and free citizens,
whose title was above the royal rank, and whose birth-
right was the envy of the world? One short year
has ended both alike. The “star-pointing-pyramid”’
has proven a tower of Babel; that noble faith in the
virtue and intelligence of the soil’s sons has given place
to a disgust and indignation, too deep for utterance in
words; and on the plains where perpetual peace was
supposed to have made her settled seat, war, with all
its original savagery, reigns undisputed. ‘The catas-DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 131
trophe, brought by the year that ended yesterday, leaves
us not even the sombre consolation of the grandeur
that has attended the ruin of other empires. The
majestic fabric fell not beneath the giant hand of an
invading race, or before the blazing ambition of a
secular genius. Enfeebled by the cankers of inaction,
and gnawed by the teeth of vermin, it has gone down
like a ship whose timbers have been the unsuspected
prey of worms and mice.

Vice President Alexander H. Stephens was
at odds with Davis and opposition to the lat-
ter was already showing itself, as Professor
Dodd points out:

It was not to be expected that the head of a revo-
lutionary government on whom depended the lives and
fortunes of millions of people could avoid criticism and
even bitter hostility.

The Professor continues:

He, Davis, could not conciliate disappointed rivals
like Rhett and Yancey, and he failed of course to ap-
pease Joseph E. Johnston and Beauregard, both of
whom made tacit alliances with his opponents, John-
ston with Stephens and Beauregard with the Rhett
family.

There is not a shadow of foundation for
these false charges against Johnston and
Beauregard, but some professors do not per-
mit such immaterial considerations to inter-
fere with their theories.

        
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
    

Spore,

ahead

Pere.

TPR)

PEERS’

peeeoedwea,

132 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

Professor Dodd alleges, in the face of the
facts, that Davis was slow to suspend the
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Davis,
in his inaugural speech on February 22, 1862
in Richmond, denounced Lincoln in unmeas-
ured terms for the suspension of the writ
and in a few weeks thereafter did the same
thing when the need for it was doubtful.

The Professor proceeds:

Congress set the example of criticism of the Ex-
ecutive, and the policy of Congress was in turn criti-
cized by both Davis and Lee.

It would be difficult for Professor Dodd to
find a scintilla of evidence that Lee ever criti-
cized Congress. He was never known during
the entire war to criticize any of his blunder-
ing or disobedient general officers, except in
the single instance 1n which he confidently
expected to capture Sedgwick’s corps after
the defeat of Hooker at Chancellorsville in
May, 1863, when Sedgwick’s corps, which
had crossed over to the south side of the
Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, was
hastening to Chancellorsville without knowl-
edge of Hooker’s disaster. Lee directed Mc-
Laws to intercept him and prevent his re-
crossing at a ford above Fredericksburg,
which seemed entirely feasible; but Sedg-DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 133

wick was permitted to escape. Lee thus
addressed McLaws:

General, I am too old a man to command this whole
army and each separate division. I have a right to
expect that my orders will be carried out by my sub-
ordinates.

The author has seen Stonewall Jackson
place under arrest some of his most brilliant
generals for permitting their soldiers to
straggle on the march. Lee on the contrary
never did that, even when subordinates’
blunders or disobedience to orders lost a bril-
liantly-planned battle; he took the responsi-
bility for failure, as in the case of Gettys-
burg.

Professor Dodd goes on about Davis:

One of the first difficulties arose in connection
with the choice of officers of the army. He made the
mistake of promoting too many of his friends.... .
The appointment of John B. Floyd to the command
of Fort Donelson was probably the most conspicuous
example of Davis’ mistaken policy.

Professor Dodd adds that Floyd “failed
ignominously,”’ surrendering the vitally im-
portant fort and 10,000 troops to Grant. Does
Professor Dodd, who claims for himself, as
we shall see, almost as much military ability
as he concedes to his hero, really believe that

Trieeesa.

SP Pee es.

PPP.

eee PR.

PP eeee.

pee

war,

.
epee
4134 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

Davis’ partiality for Floyd, which led to his
selection of that incompetent officer for com-
mand at Fort Donelson, was the most con-
spicuous example of his mistakes in promot-
ing “too many of his friends?” Does the
Professor not know, or does he lack the
candor to admit, that Davis’ most colossal
and wilful blunders were his selection of
Bragg and Pemberton and Hood for high
commands, at the same time removing and
humiliating Joseph E. Johnston and Beaure-
gard, two of the most eminent soldiers in the
Confederate service?

The only known claim of Floyd to be en-
trusted with such a command as Fort Donel-
son was that as Secretary of War in Buch-
anan’s cabinet he had made the vain effort
to further Davis’ visionary scheme, devised
by the latter as Secretary of War in Pierce’s
cabinet, of inducing Congress to invest large-
ly in camels to furnish military transportation
in the Southwest, where the difficulty of mov-
ing supplies for the army was serious.

The Professor proceeds in his account of
Davis’s appointments:

Commissary General Northrop, a member of a South
Carolina family of prominence and a West Point grad-
uate, who had seen service in the United States army,
was from the beginning slow, uncertain and imper-DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 135

vious to suggestion. Lee repeatedly complained of the
inefficiency of the department and early in 1864 he
suggested the removal of Northrop, but Davis stood by
lis appointee.

Pollard says of Northrop:

One other instance of remonstrance by Congress
against Northrop deserves to be related. Senator Orr,
of South Carolina, backed by several Congressmen,
attempted to procure his removal, moved by the out-
cry from the army and the country against an officer
especially hateful and ignorant, who was ridiculed for
his grotesque incompetency, who had been lampooned
as a vegetarian, and had been accused as almost in-
sane.

Professor Dodd informs us that his ora-
torical hero, Davis, made one of his best
speeches at Murfreesboro, in which he told
the people of a state made illustrious by two
sreat Democratic Presidents that “The tory-
ism of East Tennessee has been greatly ex-
aggerated” and that, if the people would but
arouse themselves and sustain the conflict “a
while longer,” foreign intervention would be
offered and would mark the close of the war.

New Orleans had fallen in the early part
of 1862 and Slidell had notified Mr. Davis
privately that there was little hope of the
recognition of the Confederacy by foreign
powers, and yet Davis was seeking to en-
courage the people, then getting tired of the

SUPE

Taree

WERE,

ipeenyre 4
; , i

LU Paee

136 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

war, with that vagary of his imagination,
European intervention.

The Professor, proceeding with his nar-
rative of Davis’s excursion into the South-
west, in 1862, and after relating his speech at
Murfreesboro, when he told the Tennesseans
that if they would hold out “a while longer’
the Confederacy would be recognized by
foreign powers and the war would end, says:

After a formal review of the army under Bragg
and earnest consultation with the commanding officers
he continued his journey south by way of Chattanooga,
where he had a long conference with Joseph E. John-
ston, whom he had recently put in the command of
all the Western forces.

This statement anent Johnston’s being
placed in command of all the Western forces
the Professor must have known to be un-
true, as his own narrative speedily discloses:

Joseph E. Johnston had journeyed with the Presi-
dent from Chattanooga and had preceded him from
Richmond only a few days, though he had hardly re-
covered from his wound at Gaines Mill [Johnston
was wounded at the Seven Pines battle in May, 1862,
not at Gaines’ Mill]. He was not pleased with his
position, he disliked Pemberton, the general in charge
of Vicksburg, and he entertained a very low opinion of
General Bragg. When he received his appointment to
the West, which was next to his rival’s the most re-
sponsible command in the Confederacy, he remarkedDAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 137
that with Lee’s army “I could do something’’, and the
Examiner, a sort of Johnston organ, said there was no
chance for him to succeed where he was.

Professor Dodd could have found no scin-
tilla of evidence to sustain this libel on John-
ston, that he ever for a moment considered
Lee his rival or that he ever intimated that

he deemed himself entitled to be restored to
Lee’s army.

The Professor, speaking of Johnston, con-
tinues:

Still he had at Jackson, Miss., a long and friendly
conversation with the President about the condition
of the Southwest and he remained in Jackson to hear
what was looked forward to as the apology of the
administration to that portion of the country under
these unpromising conditions. Davis rose to address
his former constituents, who but two years before had
bidden him farewell when he set out for Montgomery
to take up the responsibilities of his dangerous office.
It was indeed an anxious assemblage. He began by
emphasizing his former love for the Union. Then he
rehearsed the extraordinary changes of the preceding
year (1862), admitting that the war had been far
more serious than he had expected, “But we can never,
never reunite with the North, a people whose ascend-
ents” he unworthily said, “Cromwell had gathered from
the bogs and fens of Ireland and Scotland.”

He then entered into a dignified defence of his ad-
ministration which most fair-minded men have taken
to be satisfactory. The failure to invade the North,
the necessity for the conscript laws, the disappointing

    
 
   
 
 
 
  
  
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   

DPpere i

PRPS S DT.

Try)

Beer.

wey

Pee,

elaee.)

eee

Peeteen

Tat aa.

138 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

attitude of Europe was set forth with a frankness that
his audience appreciated. On the vexed point of States
Rights he said: “I hope no conflict will arise between
the States and the common cause, and if any State
chooses to inflict such a blow by making conflicting
military laws, I hope Mississippi will be the last to
join such a suicidal policy.”

Professor Dodd states that from Jackson
President Davis went to the towns along the
Mississippi River up to the neighborhood ot
Memphis, where according to one newspaper
he appeared incognito on December 27, 180602.

On December 30, 1862, while the President was
on his return trip, Bragg was attacked by Rosecrans at
Murfreesboro. A bloody encounter ensued in which
the loss on the Confederate side was 10,000 men, on
the Union side 13,000, but the result was a drawn
battle. Both armies, bleeding from their wounds, lay
opposite each other for two days. Then the Con-
federate general (Bragg) was led to believe that the
enemy was being heavily reinforced. This was untrue,
but he ordered a retreat, leaving the field and the rich
region in the hands of his unsuccessful rival.

A more alert commander, with the same army and
in a friendly country, would have expelled the foe.
Davis had trusted him and hoped he would gain a
victory. Twice he had let a fine opportunity slip and
failed to meet expectations. Bragg disliked Johnston,
and the soldiers disliked Bragg. The day of his re-
moval was not distant. Neither was Pemberton
strongly entrenched in the public confidence; he was
reproached for being a Northerner and a favorite of
the President. He was also on bad terms with John-DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 139

ston, who was, however, well liked by the people and
the army, though as uncertain and slow in his move-
ments as he had been in Virginia.

It would have been impossible for Profes-
sor Dodd to find any evidence to support his
allegation that Johnston had been uncertain
or slow in Virginia. Johnston and Beaure-
gard had won the battle of Bull Run and both
advised Davis to concentrate the Confederate
forces into two armies, one in Virginia and
the other in Tennessee, instead of attempting
to guard a line of 1,500 miles penetrated by
many navigable streams. This advice Davis
rejected because of his fatal delusion that he
was a military genius, in the course of which
delusion he made the discovery that Bragg
and Pemberton were superior to Johnston
and Beauregard.

The tragedy proceeds. Vicksburg is lost;
the end 1s in sight.

Professor Dodd says:

Before February 1, 1864, the disintegrating forces
and conditions became alarming to the Executive, who
nevertheless hoped that if the Confederates would but
rally to his support, the cause might be won. He
addressed Congress in a special message calling its
attention to the state of the country:

“The zeal of the people,” he said, “is failing; dis-
content, disaffection, disloyalty, are manifest among
these who, through the sacrifice of others, have enjoyed

ree e,

Pane

veeeey. |

Pee

pee,

Pe,

j
Tease.

vaeee

phebauueeae

I40 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

quiet and safety at home; public meetings of treason-
able character in the name of State sovereignty are be-
ing held, soldiers are taken from the armies on the eve
of battle under the cover of writs of habeas corpus,
traitors in the city of Richmond give information to
the enemy, and when laws are enacted to prevent these
abuses the officials of States, or localities, contrive
through legislation or other delays to nullify them.”

Professor Dodd adds:

Alarming symptoms indeed were there; the dis-
solution of the Confederacy seems imminent.

He proceeds:

Davis suggested another remedy. It was the sus-
pension of the writ of habeas corpus in all disaffected
districts, which would have been equivalent to putting
the country into the hands of a supreme dictator.

Dodd comments:

Only some such measure could have saved the Con-
federacy in 1864.

Professor Dodd doubtless dreamed that he
was addressing a class of juvenility and not
erown-up men and women who had borne
the horrors of hell for nearly four years in
pursuit of a phantom, and had witnessed the
destruction of the accumulated property of
a century, the result of the toil and sweat of
its honest yeomanry.DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY IAI

Desperate, Davis and his advisers looked
around for further resources.

Professor Dodd says:

Judah P. Benjamin, the hated Jew, whom the Pres-
ident had retained at his Cabinet table despite the thous-
and and one protests of the Southern people and press,
proposed long before Congress met in the early days of
November, 1864, to liberate the slaves.

In July, 1864, Davis fatuously removed
from the command of the Western army Jo-
seph E. Johnston, who was conducting a bril-
liant retreat in the face of an overwhelming
enemy. Johnston was replaced by John B.
Hood, and Hood was defeated and lost At-
lanta. Davis joined Hood’s beaten army in
Georgia.

Professor Dodd in his account of the Hood
disaster says:

Leaving Hood at Palmetto, Davis returned to Ma-
con, a centre of as intense Southernism as Charleston
itself, and made one of his first great war speeches.
He said: “Our cause is not lost. Sherman cannot
keep up his long line of communication, and retreat
sooner or later he must, and when that day comes
the fate that befell the army of the French Empire in
its retreat from Moscow will be re-enacted.

Pattee

Pree, |

‘PPP PEe.

‘wep etal
PEERED

eEeLer.

eeCLEe.

peepee,

vee)

pareeredraearaa:

Sac en

‘Laer

IA2 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY
The Professor further proceeds:

On September 25, 1804, he met Beauregard, Har-
dee and Howell Cobb in conference at Augusta, Ga.,
where it was decided to make the chief feature of the
campaign against Sherman the breaking of the Federal
communications with Chattanooga. In fact it is difficult
to see what other policy was open to him, for Hood’s
inferior force could hardly be expected to operate suc-
cessfully against the enemy strongly fortified in Atlanta.
The President accompanied by the generals was present
at a great rally where the utmost harmony seemed to
prevail. He urged the people to sustain the sacred
cause of self-government, to cast their gold to the
winds, and leave their families behind them for a
while. “For if our Confederacy fails, constitutional
government, political freedom itself will fall with it.”

At this critical juncture the people of
Georgia had no gold to cast to the winds,
and Davis’ reference to winds was ominous
of the financial storm that would soon have
wrecked the Confederacy without further
appalling havoc in precious lives on senseless

battlefields.

Professor Dodd continues:

After the interview between Davis and Beauregard,
Howell Cobb and Hardee on Sept. 25, 1864, Beauregard
set out at once for Hood’s headquarters to arrange with
him the details of the plan to “smoke Sherman out of
Georgia.”” When Beauregard reached Hood the latter
had already crossed the Chattahoochee River on his wayDAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 143

to cut Sherman’s communications. The two generals
disagreed as to what was to be expected, and Hood,
undoubtedly in accordance with the wishes of the Pres-
ident to whom he gave the most respectful obedtence,
moved his army to Gadsden, Georgia. Sherman has-
tened Thomas back to Tennessee with a force strong
enough to defeat any army the enemy could bring
against him while he himself took up the march towards
Savannah much to the disappointment of the Con-
federate chieftains. On hearing that Sherman declined
to follow Hood, Davis telegraphed the latter on No-
vember 7th to change his plans, but the message was
not delivered until it was too late and the Southern
army, now 44,000 strong, marched into Tennessee
where it was disastrously defeated by Schofield and
Thomas before the end of the year. Sherman con-
tinued his journey toward Savannah.

This last statement of Professor Dodd’s is
an indictment of Davis, without Dodd’s re-
alizing it. According to that statement, at a
council of war held at Augusta, on September
25, 1864, between Beauregard, Hardee, How-
ell Cobb and Davis, a plan of campaign was
arranged for poor Hood, whose every move
up to that date had been a blunder inflicting
carnage on the Confederate army. Then,
according to Professor Dodd, Beauregard
was sent by this war council to Hood’s head-
quarters to arrange for the carrying out of
these orders.

Beauregard and Hood, it seemed, “dis-
agreed”; and the Professor adds, with pro-

‘Peper

PPE.

‘pre,

PEE...

Prreer

PUREE.

Preres

‘Pee,

SePPE i

‘DPDEE.‘eee

144 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

found significance, “as was to be expected,
Hood, undoubtedly in accordance with the
wishes of the President to whom he gave the
most respectful obedience, moved his army to
Gadsden, Ga.” This statement of Dodd’s is
tantamount to the fateful admission that
Davis was secretly instructing Hood in the
face of the instructions borne to him by
Beauregard, to which Davis had publicly as-
sented, to go contrary to those instructions.

While Hood was blindly attempting to fol-
low Davis’s absurd notions of strategy, ex-
pecting to delude the masterful Sherman into
following him, that able general was laugh-
ing at Davis’s military puerilities and pre-
paring to administer another crushing defeat
to Hood. This he did very soon thereafter
and before a telegram from Davis to Hood
attempting to correct his criminal folly could
reach the latter.

John B. Pemberton was another pet with-
out military capacity or experience whose
elevation led to disaster.

Davis had a mysterious affection for Pem-
berton, a captain in the United States army,
and placed him in command at Charleston,
S. C., from which, under the compulsion of
strong opposition, he later removed him.
Davis then made Pemberton a lieutenant-
general, promoting him over some of the most~

DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 145

brilliant officers in the Confederate service
and placing him in command of the Depart-
ment of Mississippi and Louisiana with head-
quarters at Vicksburg, the critical point of
the Mississippi Valley.

A protest went up trom the whole valley
of the Mississippi, including Davis’ own state,
against this absurd appointment. Without
any intention of heeding this protest, Davis
-esorted to a ruse similar to that in Hood’s
case and pretended to place Joseph E. John-
ston, whom the people clamored for but whom
Davis disliked, in command of the same de-
partment but without authority to control
the actions of Pemberton, who ignored every
order of Johnston's. Pemberton’s disobedi-
ence led to his being besieged in Vicksburg
and forced to surrender.

Johnston wrote:

Gen. Pemberton made not a single movement in
obedience to my orders, and regarded none of my in-
structions, and finally did not embrace the only op-
portunity to save the army—that given by my order to
abandon Vicksburg.

It is reported that at the time of these dis-
asters, and in explanation of Pemberton’s
flagrant disregard of all of Johnston’s sug-
gestions and orders, the former bore on his
person the secret advices of Davis in oppo-

Serer

Eee.

Pepper

rere)

Pree

eyebey146 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

sition to his superior’s orders. This accusa-
tion Davis in his lifetime never denied.

In the same period Pollard quotes Senator
Wigtall as denouncing Davis in the Senate at
Richmond in language that the press feared
to report. “Only-the Examiner dared tell of
the fires in which he roasted the amalgam of
malice and mediocrity,” as Wigfall described
Davis. Wigfall had been one of the extreme
secessionists at the beginning of the war,
but he had come to oppose Davis violently.

Pollard further quotes from a Richmond
newspaper of that period:

A remedy for all discontent has suggested itself to
the mind of every man who thinks, and has been ad-
vised by a thousand mouths in the same breath. It is
the creation of a new officer—a Commander-in-Chief—
who shall exercise supreme control over the armies and
military affairs of the Confederacy; and the appoint-
ment of General Lee to be that officer. Such an act,
if made in good faith, and solidly guarded against
counteracting influences, would restore public confi-
dence, and give the country heart for a new effort
equal to that which it has hitherto made.

Pollard comments:

As the train of disasters had progressed, all eyes
had been turned upon General Lee as the remaining
hope of the Confederacy. There was an anxiety to
put on his broad shoulders the burden of. the public
cares, and to trust him for a safe deliverance. Gen-
eral Lee could not have been insensible to this trust andDAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 147

confidence of the people. His modesty could not have
barred the knowledge of it; it was in the thoughts and
speeches of all men; it was before his eye in every
newspaper he read; it reached his ear in every tone
of expression.

Pollard further states that, after the cam-
paign of 1864 forced General Lee back to
Richmond, Davis was in opposition to Lee:

Since that time the President had been in opposition
to him to an extent little known to the public. The
people of Richmond would have trembled had they
known that after General Lee drew in his defences
around the capital, and when Grant shifted his opera-
tions south of the James river, he wrote a private
letter of warning to Mr. Davis, telling him that he even
then had but little hopes of holding the city, and that
the loss of his communications, with the numerous
cavalry of the enemy operating upon them appeared
to be only a question of time; but what would have
been the feelings of this people, thus startled and dis-
tressed, to have known the additional fact that Mr.
Davis, so far from being properly impressed by this
letter, despised its warning, and even resented it, in
way of reply, by urging Lee to send troops from the
small and critical force that scarcely covered the ap-
proaches to the capital to aid in the defence of Char-

leston !

Armistead C. Gordon, one of Davis’s biog-
raphers and idolaters, thus writes of him:

His qualities of both head and heart were affirma-
tive and aggressive. There was nothing negative or
indifferent in his character. Extreme both in his at-
tachments and in his antagonisms, he was a profoundly

biadae

pepeieee

148 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

loyal friend and relentless enemy. Out of these extremes
of opinion and feeling sprung his most odious faults. He
was severe in his judgment of those whom he disliked,
and slow to perceive or suspect a fault in those he loved
and trusted. If once his confidence was shaken, how-
ever, from whatever cause—well grounded, or imagi-
nary—he was prone to pass to the other extreme, that
of entire distrust. The tenacity of his friendship is
illustrated by his continued confidence in more than
one of his generals who proved unsuccessful com-
manders.

Gordon generously overlooks the natural
and logical results of such traits of character
and temper in his idol. One of these results
was the loss of Fort Donelson with 10,000 of
the flower of the Confederate army and a
fortress of vital importance, with the conse-
quent need to hurry conscription. Another
one of these logical results was the killing
and cripplingof 10,000 more Confederate sol-
diers by Davis’ favorite, Bragg, at the battle
of Murfreesboro, one of the bloodiest battles
of the war.

Another logical result of such fine traits of
character on the part of Davis was the en-
trusting of the defense of Vicksburg to Pem-
berton, one of his pets, the killing and crip-
pling of many thousand Confederate soldiers
in the battles around Vicksburg, and the final
surrender of twenty-odd thousand of them
to Grant.DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 149

Still another of the logical results of these
traits of Davis’s was the removal, on July
17, 1864, of Joseph E. Johnston from the com-
mand of the army defending Atlanta, and the
placing of it at the mercy of Hood, another
one of Davis’s incompetent pets. Hood's
army was quickly routed with the sacrifice
of the lives of many thousand Confederate
soldiers, and Atlanta passed into the hands
of Sherman, who at once started on his march
to the sea unmolested by Hood. His bleeding
and demoralized army was practically turned
over to the personal command of Davis. He,
ignoring the disastrous march of Sherman,
led it in an opposite direction and soon sub-
jected it to further massacre.

The winter of 1865 came on, and the Con-
federate cause was hopeless. Still Davis en-
deavored to animate the people to new et-
forts.

Lee thus wrote of the condition of the army
on February 8, 1865:

All the disposable force of the right wing of the
army has been operating against the enemy beyond
Hatcher’s Run since Sunday. Yesterday, the men had
to be retained in line of battle, having been in the same
condition the two previous days and nights. I regret
to be obliged to state that under these circumstances,
heightened by assaults and fire of the enemy, some
of the men had been without meat for three days, and

tee

verre

Testa.

PEPE.

TeLeee |

WePee.

SeenI50 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

all were suffering from reduced rations and scant cloth-
ing, exposed to battle, cold, hail, and sleet.

Then the South was given a chance to
make peace; a meeting was arranged between
Lincoln and Seward and Confederate repre-
sentatives. Alexander H. Stephens, R. M.
I. Hunter and Judge Campbell were chosen
by Davis as the Commissioners to the Hamp-
ton Roads Conference. The conference failed
because Davis had instructed his representa-
tives to treat on no other terms than the
recognition of the independence of the Con-
federacy, which, of course, Lincoln could not
consider.

R. M. T. Hunter, one of the Hampton
Roads Commissioners, joined Davis, it is re-
ported, in a final effort to fire the Southern
heart, after his return from the Hampton
Roads interview with Lincoln and Seward,
and to prolong the agony and bloodshedding
of an exhausted people, by misrepresenting
what occurred at Hampton Roads. He is
reported to have addressed an audience in
Richmond within two or three days after his
return in insincere language, charging that
the Commissioners had been met by Mr. Lin-
coln with cold insolence:

I shall not attempt to draw a picture of subjugation.
It would require a pencil dipped in blood to paint its
gloom.DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY ISI

The artful Judah P. Benjamin affected to
witness in the hopelessly dejected counte-
nances of his great audience the high spirit
and enthusiasm which he knew did not exist.
He said:

How great the difference in one short week! It
seems an age, so magical has been the change. Hope
beams in every countenance. We now know in our
hearts that the people must conquer its freedom or
die.

This eloquent Israelite knew that he had
no idea of dying with them, for when the
Confederacy collapsed on April 2, 1865, about
forty-five days after this ludicrous and hy-
pocritical harangue was delivered, Benjamin
fled from Richmond at midnight and sought
a foreign land, where he died.

Pollard in his Life of Davis says of this
attempt to further fire the Southern heart
after the Hampton Roads Commissioners re-
turned:

To the volume of rhetorical appeal President Davis
himself added the most remarkable speech of his life.
It was the last public speech of the President of the
Southern Confederacy but in all its circumstances the
most splendid and dramatic oration he had ever made.

The author sat near him, and to look upon the
shifting lights on the feeble, stricken face and to hear
the beautiful and choice words that dropped so easily

SPP

TePee.

eee ee:

eee

eee,

visee

here

Sone

Peer

POPPS)Jace

I52 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

from his lips inspired a strange pity, a strange doubt
that this “old man eloquent” was the weak and unfit
President whom a large majority of his people had been
recently occupied in deposing and abusing. The senti-
ment of his speech was that of imperilous, uncon-
querable defiance to the enemy, “Their insolent officials
at Fortress Monroe” Davis said, “little knew that they
talked to their masters and it would be their turn to
ask for peace before the summer’s solstice was reck-
Onedias =

And yet in forty-five days after this brag-
gadocio, Davis also fled from Richmond with
his artful Secretary of State, seeking refuge
in some foreign land and attempting to turn
his back on the desolation and death he had,
in part, wrought.

Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President
ot the Confederacy and the leading Commis-
sioner at Hampton Roads, had not the cour-
age to expose the farce which was being
enacted at Richmond by Davis and Benjamin
and Hunter over a dead Confederacy, but he
refused to be a party to it. This is what he
says in The War Between the States, after
listening to Davis:

However much I admired the heroism of the sen-
timents expressed, yet in his general views of policy
to be pursued in the situation I could not concur. I
saw nothing to prevent Sherman himself from pro-
ceeding right on to Richmond and attacking Lee in
the rear, to say nothing of any movements by Grant,DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 153

who then had an army in front, of not much, if any,
under 200,000 men. Sherman’s army, when united
with Schofield’s and Terry’s, which were joining him
from Wilmington, N. C., would be swelled to near
100,000. To meet these the Confederates had in his
front nothing but the fragments of shattered armies,
amounting in all to not one half the number of the
Federals. When the program of action thus indi-
cated by Mr. Davis in our interviews, as well as in his
message and the speech referred to, was clearly re-
solved upon, I then for the first time, in view of all the
surroundings, considered the cause as utterly hopeless.
It may be it was utterly hopeless anyhow, that nothing
could have saved it at that time, or at any time.

We may see from Stephen’s report to Davis
of the real results and tone of the Hampton
Roads conference and from authentic records,
all of which was well known to Davis when
he made his inflammatory speech to fire the
heart of the people, that the South by this
mad conduct lost a golden opportunity to re-
ceive pay for the slaves, to avoid confiscation
of its property, to prevent the adoption of the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution, and in all probability to avoid
the assassination of Lincoln and the horrors
of Reconstruction.

The author feels it due to the truth of his-
tory to relate a conversation had by him
with R. M. T. Hunter during the latter’s
term as Treasurer of the State of Virginia.
He would not feel at liberty to repeat this

vee)

eee er.

pePperer.

Pa

eas

TP eeee|
SPP RPs|

eee)vitae

154 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

private conversation but for the fact that
what he here relates is fully confirmed by
Stephens, who was one of the Commissioners
sent by Davis to the Conference at Hampton
Roads.

The author was sitting with Hunter on a
bench in the Capitol Square at Richmond,
Va., early in 1874, when the latter gave him
a detailed account of the conference and what
led up to it.

Hunter said that the three Commissioners
had an interview with Davis before leaving
for Hampton Roads. Davis instructed them
most explicitly that the only terms upon
which the war could end was the uncon-
ditional recognition of the independence of
the Southern Confederacy. Hunter said that
both he and his associates considered that
their instructions rendered the mission hope-
less in view of the condition of the Conted-
eracy and that when they reached City Point
within Grant’s lines, from which they were
to go down the James River to Hampton
Roads and meet Lincoln, they reported their
instructions. These Grant communicated to
Seward, who replied that under these cir-
cumstances a conference would be useless
and proposed to call it off. Hunter said that
Grant seemed very anxious for the confer-DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 155

ence and so informed Seward, who instructed
him to pass the Commissioners.

Hunter said that Lincoln treated them
with marked courtesy; whilst he and Seward
would make no promises, Hunter and his
associates were convinced from what both
of them said that the South would be com-
pensated to a reasonable amount for the
Slaves if it laid down its arms and submitted
to the authority of the United States. Hun-
ter declared that the Commissioners so re-
ported to Davis, and he expressed himself
strongly in condemnation of Davis for his re-
fusal to accept the offer. They all knew that
there was no hope for the Confederacy, and
that whatever the South could get for the
slaves would be of immense help after the
war.

Alexander H. Stephens, in his work The
War Between the States, gives a narrative
of what occurred at the Hampton Roads Con-
ference between Lincoln and Seward on the
one side, and R. M. T. Hunter, Judge Camp-
bell and himself on the other which confirms
Hunter’s statement.

Seward told the Commissioners that Lin-
coln could not express himself more clearly
or forcibly in reference to the means of the
restoration of peace, supposing the Confed-
erates were consenting to it, than he had done

PEePPa

Per)

SEED)

wears,

PUDeS.

ThE),

ew ePoe.!

SELty.

Pees.

PPP een156 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

in his message to Congress in December be-
fore and referred specially to these words:

In presenting the abandonment of armed resistence
to the national authority on the part of the insurgents
as the only indispensable condition to ending the war
on the part of the government | retract nothing here-
tofore said as to slavery. I repeat the declaration made
a year ago that while I remain in my present position I
shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation
Proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person
who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by
any of the Acts of Congress. If the people should by
whatever mode or means make it an executive duty
to reinslave such persons, another and not I must be
the instrument to perform it. In stating a single con-
dition of peace I mean simply to say that the war will
cease on the part of the Government, whenever it shall
have ceased on the part of those who began it.

Then Stephens mentions Lincoln’s part in
the conference:

Mr. Lincoln said that so far as the confiscation acts
and other penal acts were concerned, their enforcement
was left entirely with him and on that point he was
perfectly willing to be full and explicit and on his
assurance perfect reliance might be placed. He should
exercise the power of the Executive with the utmost
liberality. He went on to say that he would be willing
to be taxed to remunerate the Southern people for
their slaves. He believed the people of the North were
as responsible for slavery as the people of the South,
and if the war should then cease with the voluntary
abolition of slavery by the States he should be in favorDAVIS AND THE CONFEDERACY 157

individually of the Government paying a fair indem-
nity for the loss to the owners. He said he believed
this feeling had an extensive existence at the North.
But on this subject, he said he could give no assurance,
enter into no stipulation. He barely expressed his
own feelings and views and what he believed to be the
views of others upon the subject.

Mr. Seward said that the Northern people were
weary of the war; they desired peace and the restora-
tion of harmony, and he believed they would be willing
to pay as indemnity for the slaves what would be re-
quired to continue the war, but stated no amount.

Stephens says that he opposed any written
report by the commissioners as a full dis-
closure of what occurred could not be made;
but Davis insisted and the others agreed, so
Stephens signed it.

Stephens says Davis took the position that
as there could be no peace without the sur-
render of the Southern armies the people
should be aroused by appeals through the
press and by public addresses to the full con-
sciousness of the necessity of renewed and
more desperate effort. “Davis himself’, says
Stephens, “seemed more determined than
ever to fight it out on this line, and to risk all
upon this issue.”

Stephens left Richmond on February 9,
1865, and the Vice President of the Southern
Confederacy on that day abandoned the Con-
federacy, leaving the President to play out

TERED.

vere?
i

opetaa

SPT

ees

eee

pheeerey

Pee ne!

Seen,158 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

the farce until April 2, 1865, when, with the
fall of Richmond and the retreat of General
Lee’s army on that day from Petersburg,
Jefferson Davis fled at midnight. Lee sur-
rendered his army to Grant at Appomattox
on April 9, 1865, and the Confederacy col-
lapsed just sixty days after its Vice President
pronounced it dead.CHAPTER VIII.
Result and Remedy

IHE Civil War was a sad interruption
| in the development of America; it led
| to a great economic expansion in the
North and West, but to political re-
version. Yet it was inevitable under
the circumstances, for the South did not have
leaders wise enough to avert it.

 

 

 

Slavery could not continue to exist in the
United States because it contradicted the
principles on which the American Republic
had been founded. What these principles
were we have seen: a right to trial by jury,
to suffrage, to representation in the law-mak-
ing branch of government—things derived
from England. Added to these were develop-
ments purely American: the economic inde-
pendence of the average farmer; the absence
of an overshadowing aristocracy; the chance
for the average man to make a good living
and to acquire property. Since the United
States offered its citizens so many good
things, it is evident that the negro could not
continue to be a chattel: the contrast was too
great. Not even the fact that the slaves

eee

eprl.

eer

PPPS a160 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

 

were of a different race could prevent eman-
cipation.

The fact that the negroes were of a dit-
ferent race was, however, a vast menace to
American civilization. ‘The whole theory of
our life rests on the supposition that the av-
erage citizen is fairly capable and conscien-
tious: otherwise it cannot exist successfully.
Civilization had advanced along strictly racial
lines from its beginning in Egypt; apart from
the European races there has been practically
no progress for thousands of years. The ad-
vance of civilization is, with little exception,
the work of European races. modern repre-
sentative government is wholly European.
Therefore, when the American negroes Wet*
freed by the Civil War and endued with all
the rights of American citizens, men of a race
totally unprepared suddenly found them-
selves in possession of the priceless inher1-
tance that had been so painfully handed down
and enlarged by the best strains of Europe.
The result was a degradation of American
political ‘nstitutions almost sufficient to blast

the hope of free sovernment. The South

managed to weather this storm, but at the
price of the curtailment of its freedom and
of the impoverishment of its life. The South-
erner who feels compelled to vote the Demo-
cratic ticket under all circumstances, becausewheel.

RESULT AND REMEDY 161

of the evils of the Reconstruction and the pos-
sible threat of negro domination, has sur-
rendered that freedom of choice that is the
greatest blessing of representative govern-
ment; he votes merely for a negation and not
for men and measures.

Other evils have come into our life to di-
vert us from the path of political progress and
threaten our future welfare. Masses of 1m-
migrants from southern and eastern Europe
and western Asia poured into the United
States for a generation, changing our electo-
rate greatly. These immigrants had no bet-
ter political heritage and no more political
education than the negroes of the Recon-
struction period, and yet they were, almost
immediately on their arrival on our shores,
presented with all the rights and privileges
of American citizenship. The result has been
the development of the evil “machine” gov-
ernment and the voting of masses of people
without regard to real issues. The American
electorate of today is far inferior to the elect-
orate of a hundred years ago.

Another evil brought on by the Civil War
is the excessive centralization of our national
government. The doctrine of states’ rights
pushed to the extreme ot nullification and se-
cession was a great error; but equally so is
the theory of nationalism when pushed to

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

Sue)

‘PEPSI...

Beperl

+}
re.

peeeeTe

162 THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

the point of the destruction of states’ rights.
At present we rely on the national govern-
ment to do everything, thereby weakening
our local governments incalculably and our
capacity for self-help. We should do some-
thing for ourselves as localities and states:
our childish appeals to the national govern-
ment in every emergency are a dishonor to
our political inheritance of self-government.

Lastly, radicalism is undermining the
United States and breaking down our insti-
tutions. Political radicalism is a plant of
evil growth: nothing good has ever sprung
from it. The great advances in human prog-
ress have come as the result of the resistance
of conservatives to encroachments on con-
stitutional liberty. The members of the Long
Parliament opposing Charles I. were not rad-
icals seeking to overthrow English institu-
tions: on the contrary, they were trying to
preserve the tradition of Parliamentary par-
ticipation in government. Our forefathers
who took part in the Revolution were not
destroyers: they were fighting for the Ameri-
can tradition of “No taxation without rep-
resentation.” The radicals of 1793-1800,
who approved of the French Revolution, laid
down the theory of the right of states to re-
sist the national government: they had much
to do with bringing about the Civil War.RESULT AND REMEDY 163

The radicals of today construct nothing; all
that they can dois destroy. In attempting to
destroy American institutions they attack
civilization at its roots, for our institutions
are founded on principles essential to the wel-
fare and progress of humanity. Radicals do
not believe in the institution of private prop-
erty—at least they would curtail the right to
hold property—despite the fact that no com-
munal system in history has been successful.
They urge government ownership or control
of great industries, in order that the work-
men in these industries may levy exhorbitant
wages by means of taxation, regardless of the
fact that unjust taxation has been the ruin of
most civilizations that have fallen and that
just taxation is the very basis of English
and American liberty. They assail Chris-
tianity as if it were an enemy to human
rights, regardless of the fact that for the
‘mass of mankind there were no rights be-
fore the rise of Christianity. It was Chris-
tianity that broke the shackles of the slave
in antiquity, that in the Dark Ages taught
the serf that he as well as his lord had a
soul, that nerved men in every period to stand
for truth and justice. And every other bul-
wark of our social and political system 1s at-
tacked, as if the condition of mankind would
be improved by the overthrow of the only in-

Pere

wera

jillian

epee,
a

PPerre |

Peery

a
PeeEn

DPPEP

RoeMae:

Cras

mended

164. THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

stitutions under which mankind has ever at-
tained happiness.

What is the remedy? The return to the
principles of constitutional liberty, the or-
ganized defense of American institutions.
Our folly has played havoc with our consti-
tutional traditions, as in the case of the
Eighteenth Amendment, which has changed
the attitude of the average American from
veneration of our Constitution, the bulwark
of our system, to disgust and ridicule. But
we need not commit such errors in the future.
By inculcating respect for our traditions, by
educating youth in the principles that ac-
tuated Washington and Lincoln, we can do
much to restore to American life what has
been lost by the Civil War, immigration and
radicalism. We had sound men in the past.
By studying them and making their methods
and views our Own, we can raise sound men
for the future. The fate of America is in
the hands of the Americans.PALE eee

a " 7
SUPP Teese ere asa
!
i
b]
5
’
;
|

Vglegs ee hehe ©

Beer a eeeee: _ F 1 PPicePeu ia teae‘Tee eer’

rereetaeerreeae

et ee ee a a

TILLER chathea?

ALDERMAN LIBRARY

The return of this book is due on the date
indicated below

 

DUE DUE

 

 

Usually books are lent out for two weeks, but
there are exceptions and the borrower should
note carefully the date stamped above. Fines
are charged for over-due books at the rate of five
cents a day; for reserved books the rate is twen-
ty-five cents a day. (For detailed regulations
please see folder on “Loan of Books.”’) Books
et ae presented at the desk if renewal is
esired.REG WeC SG RG LE LT ATEGEREL OP PERSP LEE Leh iat EVPEUETRPTIERE

weet yh

> Fe tee eee PPR eee Terres arth
TELE Bla LLLLeLele! he ALUM DL LALLA

= 7 PEO
ee ee = ore res - » resort
ry {

4 age cae ape ,
; TE ec CRETE a eee eee Cia
ey eederyréceyieqareraairaiy : ‘¢