Y3l9Uni.e:sir;'L''b!3Pj

39002006119300

THERS'WAR

DEPOSITED BY THE
LINONIAN AND BROTHERS LIBRARY

A BOOK OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE
The Brothers' War
By JOHN C. REED
Author of "T Hi Conduct of Law Suits," "The Old
AND New South," etc.
Crown 8vo, Cloth. 460 pages. Price, $2.00 net ; Postpaid, $2.15

An important book upon the slavery question and other causes of
the war between the North and South, with valuable information
regarding the present condition of the South and the negroes
living in it.
CHAP. CONTENTS
I. Introductory.
II. A Beginning Made with Slavery.
III. Unappeasable Antagonism of Free Labor and Slave Labor,
and Their Mortal Combat Over the Public Lands.
IW. Genesis, Course, and Goal of Southern Nationalization.
'V. American Nationalization, and How It Made the Bond of
Union Stronger and Stronger.
¦VI. Root-And-Braiich Abo]#ionists and Fire-Eaters.
VII. Calhoun,
VIII. Webster.
IX. " Uncle Tom's Cabin."
X. Slavery at Last Impelled into a Defensive Aggressive.
XI. Toombs.
XII. Help to the Union Cause by Powers in the Unseen.
XIII. Jefferson Davis.
XIV. The Curse of Slavery to the White, and Its Blessing to
the Negro.
XV. The Brothers on Each Side Were True Patriots and Mor
ally Right — Both Those Who Fought for the Union,
and Those Who Fought for the Confederacy.
XVI. The Race Question — General and Introductory.
XVII. The Race Question — The Situation in Detail.
Appendix. The Old and New South.
LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers
234 WASHINGTON STREET .-. .-. .-. .-. BOSTON, MASS.

THE BROTHERS' WAR
BEGINNING with the implacable antagonism
of slavery and free-labor the book tells how
the plain people of the South leagued to
gether in defence of slavery, — which was the
staple of their property and occupation system,
— against the plain people of the North, striving
to get the utmost possible of the Territories for
free-labor, which was the main factor of their eco
nomic system. The end was the Confederacy and
its subversion.
Showing that deadly rencounter was inevitable,
and that all the combatants — agitators, political
leaders, statesmen, generals, soldiers, — took and
kept their places, on each side, as God gave them
to see the right, the author, writing from a Southern
standpoint, strives to make each section fully rec
ognize that the other was conscientious, patriotic,
and lovable in the extreme.
He is a close observer, and he has studied his
tory and economic conditions thoroughly. With
an impartiality that seems to be perfect, he has
written such a book as might be expected fifty
years hence.
The chapters upon Webster, Uncle Tom's
Cabin, Calhoun, and Toombs, are relevant and im
portant parts of the work, and of much interest.

Extracts Irom "THE BROTHERS' WAR"
I am sure that it is high time that we of each section should school
ourselves into impartially appreciating the civil leaders of the other
side. The South has made more progress towards this than the North.
Certain causes have operated to help her onward. One of these is that
practically all of us recognize it is far better for the section that the
Union side won. Another is that the great mass have learned that
slavery both effeminated and paralyzed the whites and was a smoth
ering incubus upon our due social and material development. It is
natural that although we give our pro-slavery political leaders and the
confederate soldiers increasing love, we should more and more com
mend the pro-union and anti-slavery activity of the northern statesmen.
* « * * »
It is not the purpose of the foregoing expatiation to prove to you
such a familiar and well-known fact as that slavery parted North and
South and caused the brothers'' war. Its purpose is to arouse you to
consider nationalization, and have you see how it acts according to a
will of its own and not of man, and now and then works out most
stupendous results contrary to all that mortals deem probabilities.
You ought to recognize that the forces which produced the Con
federate States were just as all-powerful and opposeless as those which
produced the United States ; that in fact they were exactly the sarae
in kind, that is, the forces of nationalization.
* » * # «
Whoever diligently studies the facts will be convinced that southern
nationalization, with a power superior to human resistance, carried the
southern people into secession, and that their so-called leaders were
carried with thera. He will discern that the parts of the latter were
merely to serve as floats to rriark the course of the current beneath.
Therefore be just to these leaders for justice' sake.
* * » * »
I invite close consideration of all that I say of Webster. The pur
pose of Providence, bestowing birthplace, early environment, training,
and career as a preparation for a paramount mission, shows raore con
spicuously in him than in any other of America's great, with the
solitary exception of Wasihington. How the names of detracting
agitators and mere politicians written over his in the temple of fame
are now fading off, and how the invincible and lovable champion of the
brother's union looms larger upon us every year !

Extracts Irom "THE BROTHERS' WAR"
I am greatly in earnest to vindicate these leaders — especially
Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis. Much of the public life of each one
was concerned with matters of national interest. To this 1 give special
attention, for I want my northern readers to know what true Ameri
cans they all were. # « * * «
The more I study the abolitionists whom I distinguish as root-and-
branch, the more completely self-deceived as to facts, the wilder and raore
eraotional I find them to be. They put in circulation that Toombs
had said he expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the
foot of Bunker Hill Monument, — a slander which they persisted in
renewing after he had solemnly and publicly denied it.
*****
What is Webster's highest and best fame .' , . , We feel he is
higher in his profound love for his whole country than in his un
equalled eloquence. He and Lincoln were the supereminent Ameri
cans who could never, never forget that the people of the other
section were their own full-blood brothers and sisters. They are
the supreme exponents of that American brotherhood, raore deeply
founded and more lasting than either one of the nationalizations
which we have explained, out of which a continental is first, and then
a world-union to come. To save our union was also to do the better
deed of saving that brotherhood. For this each strove in his own way.
By the words "all the tragic evils of slavery" Professor Wendell
evidently means that the evils of southern slavery to the slave were both
very many and very great. I shall show, I believe, that the condition of
the average negro in southern slavery was far better than it was in Africa,
whence he came, and far better than it is now since he has been freed.
As Webster was the special apostle of the preservation of the Union,
Toombs was the same of secession. Their missions were parallel, in
that each one was the foremost champion of his nationality, Webster
of the Pan-American, as we may call it, and Toombs of the
southern. All through the brothers' war their phrases were on the
lips and fired the hearts of each host, those of Webster impelling
to fight for the Union, those of Toombs for the southern Confederacy.
Each was probably the ablest lawyer of his day. Each was surely the
ablest debater to be found. Each was of sublime courage in de
fying what he thought to be unjust commands of his constituents.

THE BROTHERS' WAJl

THE BROTHERS' WAR

BY . -<N
JOHN cr REED
OF GEORGIA
AUTHOR OF " AMERICAN LAW STUDIES " AND
"CONDUCT OF lawsuits"

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1905

Copyright, igoj.
By Little, Brown, and Company;

.All rights reserved
Published October, 1905

the UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A,

PREFACE
I WOULD explain the real causes and greater conse
quences of the bloody brothers' war, I pray that
'11 of us be delivered, as far as may be, from bias
and prejudice. The return of old affection between the
sections showed gracious beginning in the centennial
year. In the war with Spain southerners rallied to the
stars and stripes as enthusiastically as northerners. Rec
oncilement has accelerated its pace every hour since.
But it is not yet complete. The south has these things
to learn :
I. A providence, protecting the American union,
hallucinated Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Stowe,
Sumner, and other radical abolitionists, as to the negro
and the effect of southern slavery upon him, its purpose
being to destroy slavery because it was the sine qua non
of southern nationalization, the only serious menace ever
made to that union. This nationalization was stirring
strongly before the federal constitution was adopted.
The abolitionists, as is the case with all forerunners of
great occurrences, were trained and educated by the
powers directing evolution, and they were constrained
to do not their own will but that of these mighty powers.
2, The cruel cotton tax; the constitution amended
to prevent repentance of uncompensated emancipa
tion, which is the greatest confiscation on record ; the
resolute effort to put the southern whites , under the

vi Preface
negroes ; and other such measures ; were but natural out
come of the frenzied intersectional struggle of twenty-five
years and the resulting terrible war. Had there been
another event, who can be sure that the south would not
have committed misdeeds of vengeance against citizens
ofthe north?
3. We ofthe south ought to tolerate the freest dis
cussion of every phase of the race question. We should
ungrudgingly recognize that the difference ofthe northern
masses from us in opinion is natural and honest. Let us
hear their expressions with civility, and then without
warmth and show of disrespect give the reasons for our
contrary faith. This is the only way for us to get what we
need so much, that is, audience from our brothers across
the line. Consider some great southerners who have
handled most exciting sectional themes without giving
offence. There is no invective in Calhoun's speech, of
March 4, 1850, though he clearly discerned that abo
lition was forcing the south into revolution. Stephens,
who had been vice-president of the Confederate States,
reviewed in detail soon after the brothers' war the con
flict of opinion which caused it, and yet in his two
large volumes he spoke not a word of rancor. When
congress was doing memorial honor to Charles Sumner,
it was Lamar, a southerner of southerners, that made the
most touching panegyric of the dead. And the other
day was Dixon's masterly effort to prove that the real,
even if unconscious, purpose ofthe training at Tuskegee
is ultimately to promote fusion, which the southern
whites deem the greatest of evils. His language is en
tirely free from passion or asperity. He wonders in
admiration at the marvellous rise of Booker Washing
ton from lowest estate to unique greatness. And he

Preface

vu

gives genuine sympathy to Professor DuBois, in whose
book, " The Souls of Black Folk," as he says, " for the
first time we see the naked soul of a negro beating itself
to death against the bars in which Aryan society has
caged him."
These examples of Calhoun, Stephens, Lamar, and
Dixon should be the emulation of every southerner
speaking to the nation upon any subject that divides
north and south. This done, we will get the audience
we seek. It was this which not long ago gave Clark
Howell's strong paper opposing negro appointments to
office in the south prominent place in Collier's, and which
last month obtained for Dixon's article just mentioned
the first pages of the Saturday Evening Post. When we
get full audience, other such discussions as those of
Howell and Dixon, and that in which Tom Watson, in
the June number of his magazine, showed Dr. Booker
Washington a thing or two, will be digested by the north
ern public, to the great advantage of the whole country.
The last I have to say here is as to differing opinions
upon social recognition of prominent negroes. We of
the south give them great honor and respect. Could not
Mr. Roosevelt have said to us of Georgia protesting
against his entertainment of Booker Washington, " Have
I done worse than you did when you had him to make
that address at the opening of your Exposition in 1895,
and applauded it to the echo ? " Suppose, as is true,
that hardly a man in the south would eat at the same
table with Dr. Washington or Professor DuBois, how
can that justify us in heaping opprobrium upon a
northern man who does otherwise because he has been
taught to believe it right ? What has been said in
denunciation of the president and Mr. Wanamaker for

viii Preface
their conduct towards Booker Washington seems to me
rather a hullabaloo of antediluvian moss-backs than the
voice of the best and wisest southerners.
Amid all her gettings let the south get complete
calmness upon everything connected with the race
question — complete deliverance from morbid sensitive
ness and intemperate speech in its discussion.
Now here is what the north should learn :
I. Slavery in America was the greatest benefit that
any large part of the negro race ever received; and
sudden and unqualified emancipation was woe inexpres
sible to nearly all the freedmen. The counter doctrine
of the abolitionists who taught that the negro is equal
to the Caucasian worked beneficently to save the union,
but it ought now to be rejected by all who would urider-
stand him well enough to give him the best possible de
velopment. The fifteenth amendment was a stupendous
blunder. It took for granted that the southern negroes
were as ready for the ballot as the whites. The fact is
that they were as a race in a far lower stage of evolu
tion. Consider the collective achievement of this race,
not in savage West Africa, but where it has been long
in contact with civilization, in Hayti, and the south,
Hayti has been independent for more than a hundred
years, " Sir Spencer St. John , . , formerly British
Minister Resident in Hayti, after personally knowing the
country for over twenty years, claims that it is , . in rapid
decadence, and regards the political future ofthe Haytians
as utterly hopeless. At the termination of his service
on the island, he said : ' I now quite agree with those
who deny that the negro can ever originate a civilization,
and who assert that with the best of educations he remains
an inferior type of man.'

Preface

IX

"According to Sir Spencer, Hayti is sunk in misery,
bloodshed, cannibaHsm, and superstition of the most sen
sual and degrading character. Ever since the republic
has been established Haytians have been opposed to
progress, but of recent years retrogression has been
particularly rapid," ^
In the south, where reversion to West African society
has been checked by white government, this is a full
catalogue of the main institutions evolved by the freed
men. They have provided themselves with cheaply
built churches, in which their frequent and long worship
is mainly sound and fury. In the pinch of crop cultiva
tion or gathering they flock away from the fields to
excursion trains and " protracted meetings," Perhaps
their most noticeable institutions are "societies," some
prohibiting hiring as domestic servants, except where
subsistence cannot otherwise be had, and others pro
viding the means of decent burial. Compare these feeble
negro race performances with such white institutions,
made in the same territory and at the same time, as
Memorial Day, which the north has adopted; the Ku
Klux Klan; enactment of stock laws when the freed
men's refusal to split rails made much fencing impossi
ble ; and the white primary.
Institutions — what I have just called the collective
achievement of a race — mark in their character its
capacity for improvement, and also its plane of develop
ment. When the negro, with his self-evolved institu
tions, is compared with the race which has furnished
itself with fit organs of self-government all the way up
from town-meeting to federal constitution, and is now
1" Where Black Rules White," article by Hugo Erichsen, in The
Pilgrim for July, 1905.

X Preface
about to crown its grand work with direct legislation, it
is like comparing the camel dressed to counterfeit an
elephant, of which dear old Peter Parley told us in his
school history, with a real elephant, or trying to make a
confederate dollar in an administrator's return of 1864
count as a gold one.
And yet the negro. Professor Kelly Miller, replying
to Tom Watson, assumes that Franks, Britons, Germans,
Russians, and Aztecs have severally been in historical
times as incapable as West Africans of rising from
savagery and crossing barbarism into civilization. He
outdoes even this — he would have it believed that
Hayti is now a close second behind Japan in striding
progress. Surely the good people of the north ought to learn
the difference between the negro race and the white.
There is a small class of exceptional negroes which is
assumed by a great many at the north to be most fair
samples of the average negro ofthe south. Dr. Washing
ton and Professor DuBois severally lead the opposing
sections of this class. It consists of authors, editors,
preachers, speakers, some who with small capital in
banking, farming, and other business, have each by
Booker Washington's blazon been exalted into a national
celebrity, and others. Its never-sleeping resolve, fondly
cherished by the greater part, is to " break into " white
society and some day fuse with it. Its members are
nearly all at least half white, and many are more than
half white. But when a Bourbon snub to one of them is
received, as it often is, with dignity and proper behavior,
Mr. Louis F. Post, and a few more, exclaim to the
country, " See how this coal-black and pure negro excels
his would-be superiors ! " This man, almost white, is to

Preface

XI

them a coal-black, genuine, unmixed negro. Ought not
attention to facts incontrovertibly cardinal to rule here
as everywhere else ? To what is due the great accom
plishment of Dumas, Douglass, and Booker Washington
— to their negro blood or to their white blood ? If half
negro blood can do so well, why is it that pure negro
blood does not do far better ?
I have seen it asserted that Professor Kelly Miller is
pure negro. His head has the shape of a white man's.
The greyhound crossed once with the bull-dog, as Youatt
tells, and each succeeding generation of offspring re
crossed with pure greyhound until not a suggestion of
bull-dog was visible, occurs to me. Thus there was bred
a greyhound, possessing the desired trait of the bull-dog.
Who can say that there is not among the professor's
American ancestors one of half white blood ? If there
is in fact no such, he is, in his high attainment, almost a
lusus naturae.
The north, by due attention, will discern that the
small number constituting what I provisionally name the
upper class of negroes, is hardly involved in' the race
question. The negroes in the south outside of the upper class —
the latter not amounting to more than five percent of
the entire black population — are slowly falling away
from the benign elevation above West Africa wrought
by slavery. That they are here, is felt every year to be
more injurious. They greatly retard the evolution of a
white-labor class, which has become the head-spring of
all social amelioration in enlightened communities.
There appears to be but one salvation for them if they
stay, which is fusion with the whites. Though Herbert
Foster, and a few others, confidently assume that our

xii Preface
weakening Caucasian strain would be bettered by in
fusion of African blood, we see that while amalgamation
would bless the negro it would incalculably mjure us.
It would be stagnation and blight for centuries, not only
to the south but to the north also. Northerners are
more and more attracted to the south by climate and
other advantages, and intermarriage between the natives
of each section increases all the while. The powers,
protecting America, inscrutably to contemporaries kept
busy certain agencies that saved the union. It seems to
me that these same powers are now in both sections
increasing white hostility to the blacks, of purpose to
prevent their getting firm foothold and becoming de
sirable in marriage to poorer whites. One will think at
once of the frequent lynchings in the south. But let
him also think of how the strikers in Chicago were
moved to far greater passion by the few black than the
many white strike-breakers, the late inexplicable anti-
negro riot in New York City, and the negro church
dynamited the other day in Carlisle, Indiana, These
powers, who have protected our country from the first
settlement of the English upon the Atlantic coast down
to the present time, appear to speak more plainly every
day the fiat, " If Black and White are not separated.
Black shall perish utterly." I am convinced that at the
close of the century, if this separation has not been made
long before. Professor Willcox's apparently conservative
estimate of what will then be their numbers will prove
to be gross exaggeration. In my judgment he comes
far short of allowing the anti-fusion forces their full
destructiveness. Let the north purge itself from all delusion as to the
negro, and help the south do him justice and loving-

Preface xiii
kindness, by transplanting him into favorable environ
ment. 2, It is high time that the Ku Klux be understood.
When in 1867 it was strenuously attempted to give rule
to scalawags and negroes, the very best of the south led
the unanimous revolt. Their first taste of political power
incited the negroes to hcense and riot imperilling every
condition of decent life. In the twinkling of an eye the
Ku Klux organized. It mustered, not assassins, thugs,
and cutthroats, as has been often alleged, but the choicest
southern manhood. Every good woman knew that the
order was now the solitary defence of her purity, and
she consecrated it with all-availing prayers. In Georgia
we won the election of December, 1870, in the teeth of
gigantic odds. This decisive deliverance from the most
monstrous and horrible misrule recorded among Anglo-
Saxons was the achievement of the Ku Klux. Its high
mission performed, the Klan, burning its disguises, ritual,
and other belongings, disbanded two or three months
later. Its reputation is not to be sullied by what masked
men — bogus Ku Klux, as we, the genuine, called them —
did afterwards. The exalted glorification of Dixon is not
all of the Klan's desert. It becomes dearer in memory
every year, I shall always remember with pride my
service in the famous Sth Georgia Volunteers. I was
with it in the bloody pine thicket at First Manassas,
where it outfought four times its own number ; at Gettys
burg, where, although thirty-two out of its thirty-six
officers were killed or wounded, there was no wavering ;
and in many other perilous places, the last being Farm-
ville, two days before Appomattox, where this and
another regiment of Anderson's brigade, coming up on
the run, grappled hand-to-hand with a superior force

xiv Preface
pushing back Mahone, and won the field. But I am
prouder of my career in the Ku Klux Klan. The part
of it under my command rescued Oglethorpe county,
in which the negroes had some thousand majority, at
the presidential election of 1868, — the very first oppor
tunity, — and held what had been the home of William
H. Crawford, George R. Gilmer, and Joseph H. Lumpkin,
until permanent victory perched upon the banners of
the white race in Georgia.
3. I observe that the north begins in some sort the
learning of the two lessons above mentioned. But now
comes one which seems hard indeed, Calhoun, Toombs,
Davis, and the other pro-slavery leaders, ought to be
thoroughly studied and impartially estimated. They were
not agitators, nor factionists, nor conspirators. They were
the extreme of conservatism. Their conscientious faith
fulness to country has never been surpassed. Their
country was the south, whose meat and bread depended
-upon slavery. The man whose sight can pierce the
heavy mists of the slavery struggle still so dense cannot
find in the world record of glorious stands for countries
doomed by fate superiors in moral worth and great ex
ploit. In their careers are all the comfort, dignity, and
beauty of life, supreme virtue, and happiness of that old
south, inexpressibly fair, sweet and dear to us. who lived
in it ; and in these careers are also all the varied details
of its inexpressibly pathetic ruin. What is higher hu
manity than to grieve with those who grieve ? Brothers
and sisters of the north, you will never find your higher
selves until you fitly admire the titanic fight which these
champions made for their sacred cause, and drop genuine
tears over their heart-breaking failure.
The foregoing summarizes the larger obstacles which

Preface xv
bar true sight ofthe south and the north. The devastation
attending Sherman's march beyond Atlanta, the alleged
inhumanity at Andersonville, and many other things that
were bitterly complained of during the brothers' war, and
afterwards, by one side or the other, seem to me almost
forgotten and forgiven. Brothers who wore the gray
with me, brothers who wore the blue against me, I would
have all of you freed from the delusions which still keep
you from that perfect love which Webster, Lincoln, and
Stephens gave south and north alike. I am sure that
you must make the corrections indicated above before
you can rightly begin the all-important subject of this
book. With this admonition I commit you to the
opening chapter, which I hope you will find to be a fit
introduction, JOHN C, REED.'
Atlanta, Ga.,
September, 1905.

Contents

Chapter Page
I. Introductory  i
II. A Beginning made with Slavery  35
III. Unappeasable Antagonism of Free and Slave
Labor  45
IV. Genesis, Course, and Goal of Southern Nation
alization  51
V. American Nationalization, and how rr made
the Bond of Union stronger and stronger 62
VI. Root-and-Branch Abolitionists and Fire-eaters 84
VII. Calhoun  93
VIII. Webster  130
IX. "Uncle Tom's Cabin"  161
X. Slavery impelled into a Defensive Aggressive 208
XI, Toombs  212
XII, Help to the Union Cause by Powers in the
Unseen  282
XIII, Jefferson Davis  296
XIV, The Curse and Blessing of Slavery , , , , 330
XV. The Brothers on Each Side were True Patri
ots AND Morally Right — both those
who fought for the Union and those
WHO fought for the Confederacy . . , 346

xviii Contents
Chapter XVI. The Race Question: General and Intro- ^^'^^
DucroRY  359
XVII. The Race Question: the Situation in Detail 378
Appendix  429
Index  , . 451

THE BROTHERS' WAR

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

THE inhabitants of the English colonies in Can
ada, Australia, and New Zealand are all of the
same race, language, religion, and institutions
of government. Such homogeneousness, as has long
been recognized, works powerfully for the political coa
lescence of separate communities. With the adjacent
ones of the colonies just mentioned there has always
been trend to such coalescence, as is impressively illus
trated by the recent establishment of the Australian
Federation. The thirteen colonies out of which the
United States developed were likewise English, and
there was the same homogeneousness in their popula
tion, which made in due time, and also maintained for
a few generations, a union of them all — a continental
union. But there had crept in a heterogeneity, over
looked for many years, during which time it acquired
such force that it at last overcame the homogeixeous-
ness just emphasized and carried a part of the inhabit
ants of the United States out of the continental union.
African slavery dying out in the north, but prospering
in the south, was this heterogeneity. By a most natural
course the south grew into a nation — the Confederate
States — whose end and purpose was to protect slavery,

2 The Brothers' War
which had become its fundamental economical interest,
against the north standing by the original union, and
which having gained control of the federal government
was about to use its powers to extirpate slavery. The
continental or Pan-American nation — the American
union, as we most generally think of it — could not
brook dismemberment, nor tolerate a continental rival,
and consequently it warred upon and denationalized
the" Confederate States, The last two sentences tell
how the brothers' war was caused, what was its stake on
each side, and the true result. This compendious sum
mary is to serve as a proposition, the proof of vvhich we
now purpose to outline.
Our first step is to emphasize how the free-labor sys
tem which prevailed in the north, and the slave-labor
system which prevailed in the south, were utterly in
compatible. Free labor is far cheaper and more effi
cient than slave labor. It had consequently superseded
slavery in the entire enlightened world. But certain
exceptional peculiarities of climate, soil, and products
planted and made slavery profitable in the south.
To maintain the market value ofthe slaves two things
were needed: (i) the competition of free labor and the
import of cheap slaves must be rigorously prevented ;
(2) a vast reserve of virgin soil, both to replace the
plantations rapidly wearing out and to afford more land
for the multiplying slaves. The fact last mentioned made
it vital to the south to appropriate such parts of the soil
of the Territories as suited her cotton and other staples.
Therefore whenever she made such an appropriation she
turned it into a slave State ; for thus the competition
of free labor would be effectually excluded therefrom.
The much more rapid increase of her population made
appropriation of lands in the Territories likewise vital
to the north. Hers were all free-labor interests, as the

Introductory ¦?
south's were all slave-labor interests ; and whenever the
former appropriated any of the Territories, she made
a State prohibiting slavery in order to protect her free-
labor interests. The north was not excluded by nature
from any part of the public domain as the other section
was. Her free labor could be made productive every
where in it, and she really needed the whole.
Thus the brothers of the north and the brothers of
the south commenced to strive with one another over
dividing their great inheritance. The former wanted
lands for themselves, their sons, and daughters in all the
Territories possible made into States protecting their
free-labor system ; the latter wanted all of the Territories
suiting them made into States protecting their slave-
labor system. What ought especially to be recognized
by us now is that this contention was between good,
honest, industrious, plain, free-labor people on one side,
and good, honest, industrious, plain, slave-labor people
on the other, those on each side doing their best, as is
the most common thing in the world, to gain and keep
the advantage of those of the other. It was natural, it
was right, it was most laudable that every householder,
whether northerner or southerner, should do his utmost
to get free land for himself and family. This fact —
which is really the central, foundation, and cardinal one
of all the facts which brought the brothers' war — must
be thoroughly understood, otherwise the longer one con
templates this exciting theme the further astray from
fact and reasonableness he gets.
The foregoing shows in brief how there came an eager
contention for the public lands between parents, capi
talists, workers, employers, manufacturers, and so forth,
bred to free labor and hostile to slavery on the one side
— that is, in the northern States ; and the same classes
bred to slavery and hostile to free labor on the other

4 The Brothers' War
side — that is, in the southern States. The contention
grew to a grapple. As this waxed hotter the combat
ing brothers became more and more angry, called one
another names more and more opprobrious; and at
last each side, in the height of righteous indignation,
denounced their opponents as enemies of country, mo
rality, and religion. Here the root-and-branch aboli
tionist and the fire-eater begin their several careers,
and get more and more excited audience, the former in
the north and the other in the south. Both were emis
saries of the fates who had decreed that there must be
a brothers' war, to the end that slavery, the only peril to
the American union, be cast out.
Under the necessity of defending slavery against free
labor there came early an involuntary concretion of the
southern States, This was very plainly discernible
when the epoch-making convention was in session. It
was the beginning of a process which has been well-
named nation-making. After a while — say just before
Toombs takes the southern lead from Calhoun — it had
developed, as we can now see, from concretion into
nationalization — not nationality, yet — of the south.
It was bound, if slavery was denied expansion over the
suitable soil of the Territories and the restoration of its
runaways, to cause in the ripeness of time secession and
the founding of the Confederate States. But there was
another nationalization, older, of much deeper root and
wider scope — what we have already mentioned as the
continental or Pan-American. Its origin was in an
involuntary concretion of all the colonies — both the
northern and the southern — antedating the commence
ment of the southern concretion mentioned a moment
ago. While southern nationalization was the guardian
of the social fabric, the property, the occupations, the
means of subsistence of the southern people, the greater

Introductory 5
nationalization was not only the guardian of the same
interests of the northern people, but it had a higher
office. This was in due time to give the whole conti
nent everlasting immunity from war and all its prospec
tive, direct, and consequential evils, by federating its
different States under one democratic government —
this higher office was to perpetuate the American union.
This continental nationaUzation had probably ripened
into at least the inchoate American nation by 1776. It
was this nation, as I am confident the historical evidence
rightly read shows, that made the declaration of inde
pendence and the articles of confederation, carried the
Revolutionary war on to the grandest success ever
achieved for real democracy, and then drafted and
adopted the federal constitution. The constitution was
not the creator of this nation, as lawyers and lawyer-
bred statesmen hold, but the union and the constitution
are both its creatures. This nation is constantly evolv
ing, and as it does it modifies and unmakes the consti
tution and system of government of the United States,
and the same of each State, as best suits itself Why
do we not trace our history from the first colonial set
tlements down to the present, and learn that the nation
develops in both substance and form, in territory, in
aims and purposes, not under the leading hand of con
ventions, congress, president, State authority, of even
the fully decisive conquest of seceding States by the
armies of the rest, but by the guidance of powers in the
unseen, which we generally think of as the laws of evo
lution? To illustrate: For some time after I had got
home from Appomattox I was disheartened, as many
others were, at the menace of centralization. A vision
of Caleb Cushing's man on horseback — the coming
American Caesar — seared my eyeballs for a few years.
But after the south had been actually reconstructed I

6 The Brothers' War
was cheered to note that the evolutionary forces main
taining and developing local self-government were
holding their own with those maintaining and develop
ing union. To-day, you see the people of different
localities all over the north — in many cities, in a few
States — driven forward by a power which they do not
understand, in a struggle which will never end till they
have rescued their liberties from the party machine
wielded everywhere by the public-service corporations.
To resume what we were saying just before this short
excursion. Of course when the drifting of the south
toward secession became decided and strong, Pan-
American nationalization set all of its forces in opposing
array. As soon as the southern confederacy was a
fact, the brothers' war began. I emphasize it specially
here that this war was mortal rencounter between two
different nations.
The successive stages by which her nationalization
impelled the south to secession are roughly these :
I. The concretion mentioned above probably passes
into the beginning of nationalization when the south
was aroused by the resistance of the free-labor States
to the admission of Missouri as a slave State. With
a mo.st rude shock of surprise she was made to, con
template secession. Although there was much angry
discussion and the crisis was grave, you ought to note
that the root-and-branch abolitionist and fire-eater had
not come. That crisis over, which ended the first
stage, there was apparently profound peace between
the free-labor communities and the slave-labor com
munities for some while,
2, The south rises against the tariff which taxes, as
she believes, her slave-grown staples for the profit of
free-labor manufacturers. Here the next stage begins.
Perhaps the advent of nullification, proposed and advo-

Introductory 7
cated by Calhoun as a union weapon with which a State
might defend itself against federal aggression, signalizes
this stage more than anything else.
3. The second gives place to the third stage, when
the congressional debate over anti-slavery petitions
opens. It is in this stage that the root-and-branch
abolitionist and the fire-eater begin their really effec
tive careers. Opposition to the restoration of fugitive
slaves was spreading through the north and steadily
strengthening. It ought to be realized by one who
would understand these times that this actual encour
agement of the slaves to escape was a direct attack
upon slavery in the southern States, becoming stronger
and more formidable as the root-and-branch abolition
ists became more zealous and influential, and increased
in numbers, and the slaveholder was bound to recog
nize v/hat it all portended to him. It was natural that
when he had these root-and-branch abolitionists before
himself in mind, he should say of them :
"The lands of the Territories suiting slave labor are much
less in area than the due of the south therein. She will soon
need all these lands, as the slaves are multiplying rapidly, and
the virgin soil of her older States is going fast. With an excess
of slaves and a lack of fit land soon to come, if we are barred
from the Territories our property must depreciate until it is
utterly worthless. But these abolitionists attempt a further
injury. They instigate our slaves to fly into the north, and
then encourage the north not to give them up when we reclaim
them. They deny our property the expansion into what is
really our part of the Territories which it ought to have in order
to maintain its value ; and further they try to steal as many of
our slaves from us in the States as they can."
This was the double peril, as it were, which gathered
in full view against the south.

8 The Brothers' War
I cannot emphasize it enough that the hot indigna
tion of such as Garrison against slavery as a hideous
wrong was not excited before the competition between
north and south over the public lands had become eager
and all-absorbing. It is nearly always the case that
such excitement does not appear until long after an ac
tual menace by a rival to the personal or selfish interest
of another has shown itself. It is not until the menace
becomes serious that the latter wakes up to discover
that the former is violating some capital article of the
decalogue. This was true of the root-and-branch abo
litionist. And his high-flown morality was made still
more Quixotic by his conscientiously assuming that the
negro slave was in all respects just such a human being
as his white master.
This third stage extends from about January, 1836,
until the country was alarmed as never before by the
controversy of 1849-50 over the admission of California,
in southern latitude, with an anti-slavery constitution.
At its end the southern leadership of Calhoun standing
upon nullification, a remedy that contemplated remain
ing in the union, is displaced by that of Toombs, who
begins to feel strongly, if not to see clearly, that the
south cannot preserve slavery in the union,
4. The fourth stage begins with the compromise of
1850. Afterwards during the same year was an occur
rence which cannot be overrated in importance by the
student of these times. That was the consideration of
the pending question in Georgia, and action upon it by
a convention of delegates elected for that special pur
pose. The Georgia Platform, promulgated by that
convention, is as follows:
" To the end that the position of this State may be clearly
apprehended by her confederates of the south and of the north
and that she may be blameless of all future consequences, Be

Introductory 9
it resolved by the people of Georgia in convention assembled.
First, that we hold the American union secondary in impor
tance only to the rights and principles it was designed to per
petuate. That past associations, present fruition, and future
prospects, will bind us to it so long as it continues to be the
safeguard of these rights and principles.
Second. That if the thirteen original parties to the compact,
bordering the Atlantic in a narrow belt, while their separate in
terests were in embryo, their peculiar tendencies scarcely devel
oped, their Revolutionary trials and triumphs still green in
memory, found union impossible without compromise, the
thirty-one of this day may well yield somewhat in the conflict
of opinion and policy, to preserve that union which has ex
tended the sway of republican government over a vast wilder
ness to another ocean, and proportionally advanced their
civilization and national greatness.
Third. That in this spirit the State of Georgia has consid
ered the action of congress, embracing a series of measures for
the admission of California into the union, the organization of
territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico, the estab
lishment of a boundary between the latter and the State of
Texas, the suppression of the slave-trade in the District of Co
lumbia, and the extradition of fugitive slaves, and (connected
with them) the rejection of propositions to exclude slavery from
the Mexican Territories, and to abolish it in the District of Co
lumbia ; and, whilst she does not wholly approve, will abide by
it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy.
Fourth. That the State of Georgia, in the judgment of this
convention, will and ought to resist, even — as a last resort —
to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the union, any
future act of congress abolishing slavery in the District of Co
lumbia, without the consent and petition of the slaveholders
thereof, or any act abolishing slavery in places within the slave-
holding States, purchased by the United States for the erection
of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other like purposes ;
or any act suppressing the slavertrade between slaveholding
States; or any refusal to admit as a State any Territory ap-

IO The Brothers' War
plying, because of the existence of slavery therein ; or any act
prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the Territories of
Utah and New Mexico ; or any act repealing or materially mod
ifying the laws now in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves.
Fifth. That it is the deliberate opinion of this convention,
that upon the faithful execution of the fugitive slave bill by the
proper authorities depends the preservation of our much loved
union." This platform was the work of statesmen who had
added to the wisdom of the fathers, making the declara
tion of independence, articles of confederation, and the
great constitution, worthy wisdom of their own from a
far more varied experience and better training in gov
ernment. These statesmen came indiscriminately from
all parties. The people in the State, from'the highest
in authority through every intermediate circle down to
the humblest citizen, deliberately, without excitement
or passion, endorsed this platform with practical unanim
ity. And all' parties stood upon it to the end. This
was not an ignorant, debased, corrupt, unrighteous
people; but it was even better in everything that makes
a people great and good than the former generation
which had given the country Washington and Jefferson.
Especially should the student meditate what this
solemn declaration shows was the sentiment of the
people of the State at that time towards the American
union. Every one of the five planks contains its own
most convincing proof of deepest devotion. Think of
the child who at last resolves to fly from the home which
had been inexpressibly sweet until the stepmother came ;
of the father whose conscience commands him to save
the mother's life b)' killing the assailing son ; of what
the true Othello felt when he had to execute the precious
Desdemona for what he believed to be her falseness —
think of these examples, if you would realize the agony

Introductory 1 1
of the better classes of the southern people when they
at last discovered that the union had changed from
being their best friend into their most fell enemy.
The Georgia Platform was actually drafted, I believe,
by A. H. Stephens, then a whig. It was probably
moulded in its substance — especially in the fourth and
fifth planks — more by Toombs, also a whig, than any
other, Howell Cobb, a democrat, approved, and was
elected governor upon it the next year, receiving the
ardent support of Toombs and Stephens, Toombs was
just forty, Stephens a' year or two, and Cobb some six
or seven years, less than forty. These three were the
leading authors. Note how much younger they were
than Calhoun, who had a few months before died in his
sixty-ninth year. The platform indicates the new senti
ment, not only of Georgia but ofthe entire south. When
its contents are compared with the doctrine of nullifi
cation, it clearly shows as the production of a new era in
the history of southern nationalization ; for it marks
what we may somewhat metaphorically distinguish as
the close of the pro-union and opening of the anti-union
defence of slavery. The proclivity to secession uninter
ruptedly increases from this point on,
I would have it noted that the tactics of this fourth
stage are unaggressive. The Georgia Platform was no
more than most grave and serious warning against being
driven to the wall. It did not bully nor hector. The
threat of what must be done in case certain menaced
blows to slavery were struck was so calmly, deprecat-
ingly, and decorously made, that one wonders it was
not heeded. He ceases to wonder only when history
reveals to him that fate had become adverse to the good
cause of this noble people,
5. A change of tactics characterizes thd fifth stage.
The faster growing population of the north, furnishing

12 The Brothers' War
settlers in far greater number than that of the south,
was sweeping away all chance of new slave States,
The situation commanded that the defence of the south
change to the aggressive, just as Stoessel was constrained
the other day to take the offensive against 203 Meter
Hill, In the first sortie the south got the Missouri com
promise repealed. Then she tried to make a slave State
of Kansas, She failed. When she had lost Kansas —
like California in southern latitude — she could not help
recognizing that the outlook for slavery in the union had
become desperate. My northern countrymen, if you
were as free from the surviving influence of the old
intersectional quarrel as we all ought to be, you would
applaud the ability and valor with which the south h^d
fought this losing fight for the welfare and comfort
of her people; and especially would you admire her
supreme effort in behalf both of that people, and also
of the union which she loved next to the cause of her
people. Not quailing before odds incalculable, she was
as brave and self-sustained as Miltiades, coming forth
with his little ten thousand to fight the host of Mar-
donius hand-to-hand. The only thing for her now was
new aggression, to make a demand never seriously
urged before. That was that congress protect the
master's property in every Territory until it became a
State, If this were done, she could, perhaps, keep
slavery in some of the Territories long enough for it to
strike root permanently. If it could not be done she
must choose between her own cause and the union.
Her persistence in the demand mentioned — and she was
obliged to persist — spht the democratic party, which
had until this time been her main upholder in the union.
The north refused her demand by electing Lincoln.
This was the end of the fifth stage. Her nationality
had become fully ripe. She seceded into the Confed-

Introductory 1 3
erate States, her only opportunity of conserving the
property and occupation interests of her people. Of
course she expected to get her part of the public
domain, and to enforce extradition of her fugitive
slaves. The foregoing is the barest outline of the rise and
conflict between the two nationalizations. The subject
has been neglected too long. There begins to be some
faint understanding of the greater nationalization, but
that understanding is far short of completeness. There
is hardly a suspicion of the other. And yet as to our
own special subject it is really the more important, for
in it is the initiative of the brothers' war. There has
been made by nobody, any investigation at all of the
main parts of that train of events which I designate as
southern nationalization. Not Wilson's " The Rise and
Fall of the Slave Power in the United States," nor any
book by a partisan of either side in the struggle, gives
any help towards this investigation. The historical
sources have never been studied at all ; such as the
colonial records now publishing, the records and papers
of the probate court in some of the older and more
important counties of the south — especially the returns
of administrators, executors, and guardians, and files of
newspapers advertising their citations. Here can be
found the prevailing prices of slaves, their rate of multi
plication, all details of their management, from the very
beginning. The trial and equity courts contain records
of litigation about slaves; of advice of chancellors to
trustees seeking to make or change investment; of
wills manumitting slaves ; and a thousand other relevant
matters. The course of legislation as to slaves from
the first to the end is also important. From these,
from local literature such as "Georgia Scenes," " Simon
Suggs," biography, and various pamphlets, and other

14 The Brothers' War
original sources, — far better historical evidence than
any which is now generally invoked, — can be learned
the real facts as to the growth of slavery ; and especially
how in its economic potency consequent upon the
invention of the gin it supplanted or made dependent
upon itself all other property, and became the solitary
foundation of every kind of production and mode of
making a living; so that even by 1820 to abolish slavery
would have been almost to beggar the southern people
for two or three generations. It is to be hoped that
Professor Brown, finding the opportunity which he
desires, may yet exhaust not only the sources I have
mentioned, but also important ones that I have not even
thought of, and give the true ante-bellum history of the
lower south. Some such work is necessary to explain
the active principle, the raison d'etre of southern nation
alization. How north and south were sundered by the different
nationalizations is yet to be told in full detail without
any censure of the people of either. Practically every
American was born into an occupation or way of life
connected with or founded upon either slave or free
labor interests, and so was born into one or the other
of these two nationalizations, and his conscience coerced
him to stay with it. These nationalizations made two
different publics and two different countries in the United
States. After the slavery agitation had become active
the masses in either public knew but little of the other,
and cared for it less ; and when war broke out between
the two countries every man, woman, and child was ready
to die, if there was need, for his own. When the history
of the times has been impartially and adequately written
the world will recognize that the patriotism and moral
worth of neither side excels that of the other, and it will
crown both.

Introductory 1 5
The evolution indicated above produced not only the
two hostile peoples, but also their leaders and represent
atives of every class. I have taken pains in a relevant
chapter to show how the fire-eaters and the root-and-
branch abolitionists were at last brought upon the stage.
Every fierce controversy in history has had their like
on each side. Their coming is late. The antagonists
have become excited. The intelligence guiding evolu
tion deceives them as to the parts they must play. They
beHeve that their mission is to arouse the public con
science in order to right some alleged moral wrong.
Their real mission is to excite to angry action. Cicero
condemns the Peripatetics for asserting that proneness
to anger has been usefully given by nature.^ He over
looked the fact that the outbreak of the passion is
intended to spur us into doing something important for
our own protection; and that it is therefore an indis
pensable weapon in our self-defensive armory. These
fanatics, as we often call them, instigated north and south
to quarrel more and more fiercely, and finally to fight.
The purpose of the powers in the unseen in, causing the
fight has already been stated.
What especially concerns us here is that we avoid
adhering to the mistakes of these partisans which still
have injurious effect upon opinion. Thus the fire-eater
could see no good whatever in the yankees, as he called
them, denying them honesty, trustworthiness, and other
elementary virtues ; accusing them of robbing us by the
tariff and other measures, and hating us for the pros
perity and comfort which the slavery system had blessed
us with. Other of his false charges are still lodged in
the memory of some influential southerners. But the
fire-eater's predictions were all completely falsified by
the result of the war ; and he has become so much dis-
1 De Officiis, i, § 89,

1 6 The Brothers' War
credited as an authority, there is no very great need for
consuming much time and effort in correcting his
misstatements. On the other hand the decisive suc
cess of their side has kept thousands at the north fully
believing the wildest fabrications of the root-and-branch
abolitionists. The latter believed that the African slave
of the south was just such a human being, ready for
liberty and self-government in all particulars, as civilized
and enlightened whites. They believed that the con
dition of his immediate ancestors in West Africa was
one of high physical, mental, moral, and social develop
ment, and that if there was in him now any inferiority
to his master it was entirely due to the sinister influence
of American slavery. They also believed that the sys
tem was fraught with such cruelties as frequent separa
tion of man and wife and of mother and young children,
under- feeding and clothing, and grinding overwork, —
that, in short, the average slave was daily exposed to
something like the torture of the Inquisition, All this
was invention, American slavery found the negro gab
bling inarticulately and gave him English; it found
him a cannibal and fetishist and gave him the Chris
tian religion ; it found him a slave to whom his savage
master allowed no rights at all, and it gave him an
enlightened master bound by law to accord him the
most precious human rights; it found him an inveterate
idler and gave him the work habit ; it found him promis
cuous in the horde and gave him the benign beginning
of the monogamic family, — in short, as now appears
very strongly probable, American slavery gave him
his sole opportunity to rise above the barbarism of West
Africa, These tremendous mistakes of fact, after knitting the
north in solid phalanx against dividing the Territories
with the south and restoring fugitive slaves and thus

Introductory 1 7
hasting forward the war, prompted that folly of follies
the fifteenth amendment, and have ever since kept the
north from understanding the race question,
I am sure that it is high time that we of each section
should school ourselves into impartially appreciating
the civil leaders of the other side. The south has made
more progress towards this than the north. Certain
causes have operated to help her onward. One of these
is that practically all of us recognize it is far better for
the section that the union side won. Another is that
the great mass have learned that slavery both effemi
nated and paralyzed the whites and was a smothering
incubus upon our due social and material development.
It is natural that although we give our pro-slavery polit
ical leaders and :he confederate soldiers increasing love,
we should more and more commend the pro-union and
anti-slavery activity ofthe northern statesmen. Nothing
like this has led the north to revise the reprobation
which in the heat and passion of the conflict it bestowed
upon the public men of the south. If I ever read a
good word from a northern writer as to them, it is for
something in their careers disconnected with the south
ern cause. Even Mr. Rhodes, the ablest and most
impartial of northern historians of the times, finds in
Calhoun only a closet spinner of utterly impractical
theories. Further, I could hardly believe it when I
read it — and it is hard for me to believe it yet — that,
citing some flippant words of Parton in which a slander
of contemporary politics is toothsomely repeated as his
voucher, he flatly charges the lion-hearted knight of
the south with playing the coward in the most heroic
episode of his grand career. My faith is strong that
this mode of treating the good and great southern lead
ers will soon go out of fashion.
I am greatly in earnest to vindicate these leaders —

1 8 The Brothers' War
especially Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis. Much of the
public life of each one was concerned with matters of
national interest. To this I give special attention, for I
want my northern readers to know what true Americans
they all were. Without this they cannot have their full
glory. And their justification is that of their people.
Such effective leaders are always representative. It is
a misnomer to call them leaders. They were really fol
lowers of their constituents who were struggling for the
subsistence of themselves and their dear ones. During
this time Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis, had they not
labored in every way to protect this great cause — the
cause of their own country — as they did, would have
been as recreant as the confederate soldier, skulking
away from the line defending home and fireside. When
our country is in peril the unseen lords of its destiny
do not take any one of us, from the greatest to the
humblest, into their confidence as to the event. Every
man of us must support in politics and on the field the
cause of our people. If that must go down it will make
defeat glorious to go down with it, as contentedly and
bravely as did Demosthenes, Cicero, and Davis,
Whoever diligently studies the facts will be convinced
that southern nationalization, with a power superior
to human resistance, carried the southern people into
secession, and that their so-called leaders were carried
with them. He will discern that the parts of the latter
were merely to serve as floats to mark the course of
the current beneath. Therefore be just to these leaders
for justice' sake. Further, you brothers and sisters of
the north ought to bethink yourselves and keep in mind
how we regard them. The reputation of these our civil
champions and their graves are as dear to us as those
of our mothers. If you adopted an orphan, you would
feel it to be unpardonable to speak slightingly to him

Introductory 1 9
of his parents, Cleopatra, her conqueror sending her
word to study on what fair demands she would have,
answered : " That majesty to keep decorum, must
No less beg than a kingdom."
Let those who wore the blue and their descendants think
over it long enough to realize how unspeakably low and
'treacherous it would be in us to abet any condempation
whatever of these men for their anti-union acts — these
men whom we or our fathers voted for and supported
because of these acts. If you deny justification to them,
how can we keep decorum in accepting it ourselves .'
I would say one more word, where perhaps I am a
little over-earnest. These southern leaders have con
tributed richly to the treasures of American history.
Their moral worth, — nay, moral grandeur, — their great
natural parts, their statesmanly ability, their eloquence,
their heroic fidehty to their people, — by these each has
won indefeasible title to the best of renown. Whenever
the north has made real study of them, she will give
them as generous admiration as she now does to the
charge of Pickett, I have done my utmost to present
Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis faithfully, using, as I believe,
all the main facts which are relevant and incontroverti
ble, I am sure that every northerner who reads them,
after he has laid aside all prejudice, will admit that I did
not claim too much when I was recounting their merits
a moment ago,
I invite close consideration of all that I say of Webster.
The purpose of providence, bestowing birthplace, early
environment, training, and career as preparation for a
paramount mission, shows more conspicuously in him
than in any other of America's great, with the solitary
exception of Washington. How the names of detract
ing agitators and mere politicians written over his in the

20 The Brothers' War
temple of fame are now fading off, and how the invinci
ble and lovable champion of the brother's union looms
larger upon us every year !
I am painfully conscious of how certain omissions,
unavoidable in my limited space, mar the symmetry of
my ground-plan. The average reader will probably
think that I ought to have sketched Lincoln, Grant, and
Lee. I was convinced that the public had already be
come reasonably instructed as to them.
John Q. Adams is one of the most conspicuous men
of his day. Standing aloof from parties, completely
self-reliant, opulently endowed with every high power
of .moderation, insight, and effective presentation, his
good genius gave him the championship in congress
of the free-labor cause during the critical years that it
was preparing for the decisive meeting with the slave-
labor cause. In this time it seems to me that single-
handed he achieved more for the latter than all its other
champions, A pleasant parallel between him and Lee
occurs to me. Each had filled the proudest place in the
chosen avocation of his life. Adams had been the chief
magistrate of the great republic, elected by the votes of
a continent. Lee had been the foremost general of the
bravest and most puissant nation that ever lost its exist
ence by war. Each one of the two passed from power
down into what is usually a condition of inaction and
accumulating rust till the end of life, and to each was
most kindly granted the achievement of new fame and
glory. In the national house of representatives, Adams,
during the last twelve years of his life, — 1 836-48, — did
the great deeds which we have just lauded. In the last
years of his life Lee, as the head of an humble institution
of learning, showed not only the youth in his charge,
but all of his stricken people, how to conquer direst
adversity with such grand success in an example of

Introductory 2 1
unmurmuring endurance that every future generation
of men will give it more loving appreciation.
John Q. Adams, as I have tried to explain, is almost
an American epoch of himself; but I could not give him
the chapter that is his due,
I felt that it would have been well to pair Stephen A,
Douglas ofthe north with Alexander H. Stephens ofthe
south. They are in nearly exact antithetical contrast.
The former clung to the south, the other to the union,
until the clock struck the dread hour of separation.
How they loved each other and each other's people !
They most strikingly exemplify the adamantine grip
which each one of the two nationalizations kept upon
its greatest and best.
Wendell Phillips and William L. Yancey should be
contrasted. Each one was the very prince of sectional
agitators, helping with great efficiency to make the
public opinion that carried forward Seward and Lin
coln, the actual leaders of the north, and Toombs, the
actual leader of the south. It is my strong conviction
that Phillips and Yancey were the most gifted, eloquent,
and influential stump speakers in America since Patrick
Henry. Chase steadily rises in my estimate. His solid parts,
his consistent, conscientious, and able anti-slavery career,
and especially that decisive speech in the Peace Congress,
— these, and other relevancies that can be mentioned,
drew me powerfully. The firm candor with which he
avowed in that memorable speech that the north had
decided against the expansion of slavery, demonstrates
the clearness of his vision. The part of it which recurs
to me most frequently is that in which he impressively
recounts the intersectional dissension over the fugitive
slave law, — the south believing slavery right, the north
believing it wrong, — and proposes that in place of the

22 The Brothers' War
remedy given by that law the master be paid the value
of his slave. " Instead of judgment for rendition," he
said, " let there be judgment for compensation deter
mined bythe true value ofthe services, and let the same
judgment assure freedom to the fugitive. The cost to
the national treasury would be as nothing in comparison
with the evils of discord and strife. All parties would
be gainers."
Calhoun devised to restrain the sections from mutual
aggression by endowing each with an absolute veto
against the other. Webster fondly beheved that if he
could be president he would bring back the wrangling
brothers to love one another again as much as he loved
them all. Chase also had his pet impracticable project.
Each one of the three recoiled and racked all of his
invention to save his country from the huge fraternal
slaughter that his divining soul whispered to him was
near. The south will cherish the memory of Chase more
and more fondly as she learns better how he firmly
stood for civil law against military rule, and that he
was heart and soul for universal amnesty.
It was all I could do to deny a chapter to William
H. Seward. He seems to me to have been the only
northern man whose foresight of the coming convul
sion equalled that of Calhoun, He did not become a
Jeremiah as the other did, for his section was not, after
it had just emerged from a gulf of blood, to be plunged
and held for years in a gulf of poverty and disorder.
He was far less serious and much more optimistic in his
nature than Calhoun. Affectionate, sympathetic, rarely
agreeable in his manners — how well Mrs. Davis depicts
him in what is to me one of the pleasantest passages of
her book.i He was spoils politician, able popular leader,
1 Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 579-583.

Introductory 23
and great statesman in rare combination. While his
heart was extremely warm, his head was never turned
by his feelings. Lincoln ardently believed in his soul
what Choate calls "the ghttering generalities" of the
declaration of independence. But to Seward current
illusions were the same as they were tb Napoleon Bona
parte — he was to lead the masses with them just as far
as possible, but not to deceive himself. Read in your
closet his two epochal speeches, the " higher law " one
of March 11, 1850, and that proclaiming the irrepressible
conflict at Rochester, October 25, 1858, then read that
of Chase at the Peace Congress, and you cannot avoid
feeling that while Chase opposes slavery mainly be
cause he conceives it to be a gross moral wrong, the
other opposes because it is the belonging of an inferior
civilization. In my opinion no man of that time had
such a clear conception as Seward of the utter econom
ical incompatibility of the free-labor system and the
slave-labor sy.stem, and of the doom of the latter in
their conflict then on. While he had this superior in
sight and wisdom it was the better way for him to follow
the tide of morbid moral sentiment and unreasoning
zeal carrying the country on to his goal. Following
thus he proved a leader unsurpassed. The longer I
contemplate Seward the stronger becomes my convic
tion that he is the most entertaining subject and the
most delightful in variety of parts and traits of all
American statesmen for the essayist portrait painter.
To give a picture true to life demands the very best and
highest art.
In my last two chapters I do all I can to clear up the
race question, which is now densely beclouded with
northern misunderstanding and southern prejudice. The
negro has a nature that in some material particulars dif
fers so widely from that of the Caucasian that it ought

24 The Brothers' War
to be duly allowed for; and yet as people are so prone
to think all others just like themselves, this is hardly ever
done. Now, forty years after Emancipation, we see that
the promptings and consequences of his nature just
emphasized in combination with the social forces oper
ating upon him have caused changes in the situation, of
the gravest import to him. His native idleness, coming
back stronger and stronger the further he gets in time
from the steady work of slavery, his lack of forecast, his
vice, inveterate pauperism, increasing disease and in
sanity, on one side ; the hostility excited against him by
the inexpressibly unwise grant to him of equal political
rights, and the rapid invasion by white labor since the
early nineties of the province which he appropriated
during the years when the whites had not recovered
from the paralyzing shock and surprise of emancipa
tion, on the other side, example these changes. There
has evolved a division of the southern negroes into two
classes. One class, which I most roughly distinguish
as the upper, contains all those who are not compelled
by their circumstances to be unskilled laborers in country
and town. It hardly amounts to one-twentieth of the
whole. The millions are all in the other class, which I
again most roughly distinguish as the lower. Ponder
what I tell you of them, their helplessness, their accel
erating degradation, their mounting death rate, their
gloomy prospects, I try hard also to have the upper
class well understood. To a southerner it. is amazing
how many outside people of education, intelligence, and
fair-mindedness assume that the multitude in the lower
class are the same in every material detail of character
and ability as those few who by various favors of fortune
have found place in the upper class. To stress here, in
the beginning, a fact as its very great importance de
mands, nearly all the negroes who get high station are

Introductory 25
part white. Dumas, the father, was at least half white.
The son Dumas was probably three-quarters white.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Anglo-African composer,
is half white. Such as these are the samples by which
nearly all the continent and England, and many north
erners, estimate the capacity of the pure negroes of the
south, grovelling in depths out of which one climbs
only now and then by a miracle. The men just men
tioned are not real negroes. It is the same with nearly
all the so-called negroes of America, from Douglass to
Dr. Washington, who have become famous. They are
but examples of what whites can do against adversity.
The coal-black equalling these in achievement would be
as rare among his fellows as Hans, the Berlin thinker, is
among horses. This palpable distinction between men
who are largely, if not nearly all, Caucasian, and men
who are purely West African in descent, is utterly over
looked by many most conscientious and earnest ones
of the north, like Mr, Louis F. Post, who is always tell
ing us of the south what the negro is — not, and how
we should treat him, magisterially reading us lessons in
ABC democracy.
There will be fewer and fewer part-white negroes in
the south by reason of the steadily increasing hostility
of each race to mixed procreation. This upper class
has long shown a drift northward. Under the expul
sion of many of its members from certain occupations
by white competition, lately commenced and fast in
creasing, this drift now gathers strength. From what I
see every day it seems to me that the destiny of much
the greater part of this upper class is disappearance
partly by absorption and partly by euthanasy.
It is the millions of the lower class that should be our
deepest concern. If they be left where their Utopian
emancipators and enfranchisers have placed them, it is

26 The Brothers' War
almost certain that nearly the whole will go into the
jaws of destruction, now opening wide before them and
sucking them in. Such a result of the three amend
ments — that is, to have annihilated hosts upon hosts
of pure negroes in order to make just a few part-whites
all-white — would be a fit monument to the statesman
ship of the maddest visionaries in all history. We
must come resolutely and lovingly to the help of these
wretched creatures. I tell you at large how it is our
duty to give the black man his own State in our union, ,
and supervise him in it even better than we are now
doing for the Philippine.
I believe that the foregoing, re-enforced by a glsince
over the chapter-titles, will give a reader the preconcep
tion which he ought to get from an introduction to a
book which he is about to begin. In dealing with the
causes and some of the more important consequences
, of the brothers' war my method is rationale rather than
narrative. My first purpose is to indicate how every
thing happened according to laws that with cosmic
force reared two great economic powers, divided the
whole land into a vast host standing up for one of the
two in the south, and a still larger host standing up for
the other in the north, and how these same laws were
most faithfully served by all the actors on each side, I
try to set out and explain what are the principles of
evolution and the ways of human action, and especially
the commanding view-points, which must be rightly
attended to in their supreme importance before the
greater one of the two critical American eras can have
its fit history. The man who writes it will be entirely
free from the monomania and orgiastic fury of both
fire-eater and root-and-branch abolitionist, from their
excessively emotional assumptions, their explosive and
exclamatory argumentation ; he will have the industry.

Introductory 27
the undisturbed vision, and the perfect fairness of the
foremost sociologists of our time; he will show how
each side was right from first to last in upholding its
own separate country, — all belonging to it, statesmen,
agitators, demagogues, fanatical fire-eaters and aboli
tionists, generals and soldiers. He will .show that such
things which in expedience ought not to have been
done were unavoidable, and therefore to be excused.
He will show what erroneous judgments of each section
should now be challenged and kept from working in
jury. Especially do I emphasize it, he will convince
every average reader that north and south were equally
conscientious, honest, heroic, and lovable from begin
ning to end. Such a history will be even greater than
that by which Thucydides realized his soaring ambition
to give the world an everlasting possession ; and it will
become the bible of America, treasured and loved alike
by the people both north and south.
This bible is coming, as many signs show, I will
illustrate by examples from three northern authors,
given not exactly in the order of time, but in that of
their approximation to full attainment. After a cir
cumstantial description of each one of the three days'
fighting at Gettysburg, fair and impartial in the ex
treme, Mr. Vanderslice eulogizes both sides, without
invidious distinction, for "their fidelity and gallantry,
their fortitude and valor," and because there was noth
ing done by either " to tarnish their record as soldiers,"
and most becomingly emphasizes the " martial fame
and glory" thereby won "for the American soldier."
But just here he sounds a most unpleasantly discord
ant note by saying, " One was right and the other
wrong." ^ He forgot that brothers who fight as those
did at Gettysburg are all right, and that whenever
1 Gettysburg, 164, 165.

28 The Brothers' War
one falls on either side flights of angels sing him to
his rest.
In June, 1902, Mr, Charles F, Adams, making an
academic address at Chicago, startled many of his au
ditors with this outspoken vindication of the south :
" Legally and technically, — not. morally, — , , . and wholly
irrespective of humanitarian considerations, — to which side
did the weight of argument inchne during the great debate
which culminated in our civil war? ... If we accept the judg
ment of sorae of the more modern students and investigators of
history, — either wholly unprejudiced or with a distinct union
bias, — it would seem as if the weight of argument falls into
what I will term the confederate scale." *
Mr, Adams, having made further inquiry of his own,
December 22 of the same year, announced a still more
advanced conclusion. He had said at Chicago that the
confederate scale preponderated ; but now his vision
having become more certain he said the scales hung
even.^ Note that in the passage just quoted from him I
have italicized the two words " not morally." I do not
understand that in the Charleston speech he meant to
revoke the italicized words, and to say anything more
than that each side was right in its own view of the nature
of the government. Even with this reservation, the
utterances of Mr. Adams evince a grateful improvement
upon the dogmatism which characterizes nearly every
other northerner or southerner who has treated the
subject. Professor Wendell sees clearly that both sides were
morally right, and he is impartially just and equally
loving to both. I feel that the quotations from a late
work of his which I now make are the chief merits of
1 Quoted by himself in his Ciiarleston speech, mentioned later on.
2 Speech at the banquet of the New England Society of Charleston,

Introductory 29
this chapter. Considering the controversy between the
sections, he says, with the truest insight, "The consti
tution of the United States was presenting itself more
and more in the light of an agreement between two in
compatible sets of economic institutions, assuming to
each the right freely to exist within its own limits." ^
In this next passage as to the same subject, rising
above Mr. Adams to the high frankness which the facts
demand, he says, " The truth is that an irrepressible
social conflict was at hand, and that both sides were as
honorable as were both sides during the American Rev
olution, or during the civil wars of England." ^
How just to north and south each, and how frater
nally compassionate towards the south is this : " Solemn
enough to the uninvaded north, the war meant more
than northern imagination has y'et realized to those
southern States into whose heart its horrors were
slowly, surely carried. Such a time was too intense
for much expression ; it was a moment rather for heroic
action ; and in south and north alike it found armies of
heroes. Of these there are few more stirring records
than a simple ballad made by Dr. Ticknor, of Georgia,
concerning a confederate soldier,^ And then he quotes
" Little Giffen " in full.
Professor Wendell reaches a still greater height when
he decorates the Tyrtseus of the Confederate States and
the supereminent anti-slavery lyricist of the north with
equal homage and admiration. He says :
" The civil war brought forth no lines more fervent [than the
concluding thirty-six of Timrod's ' The Cotton Boll,' which are
set out], and few whose fervor rises to such lyric height. In
the days of conflict, north regarded south, and south north, as
the incarnation of evil. Time, however, has begun, its healing
1 A Literary History of America, 345.
2 Id. 346. ' Id. 489.

30 The Brothers' War
work ; at last our country begins to understand itself better than
ever before ; and as our new patriotism strengthens, we cannot
prize too highly such verses as Whittier's, honestly phrasing
noble northern sentiment, or as Timrod's, who with equal
honesty phrased the noble sentiment of the south, A litera
ture which in the same years could produce work so utterly
antagonistic m superficial sentiment, and yet so harmonious in
their common sincerity and loftiness of feeling, is a hterature
from which riches may come." ^
These words are more golden than I can tell. They
parallel the elevation of Webster, showing the same love
for South Carolina and Massachusetts, in the pertinent
parts of the reply to Hayne, which since my boyhood
I have cherished as a nonpareil. It is cheering to a
faithful southerner to receive such sure proof that the
day must soon come when all obloquy will be lifted from
the fame of Calhoun, Toombs, and Davis. What a
grand triumph of contrast, almost surpassing the best
achievement of Shakspeare, it will be when some
honest Griffith, having shown Webster, Lincoln, and
Grant in all the worth which merited their unspeakably
happy lot, each radiant with the victor's glory, places
opposite the great civic heroes of the southern nation,
their due renown at last fitly blazoned. That renown
will be that they devoted the very greatest human
powers and virtues all their lives, with never remitted
effort and spotless fidelity, to save a doomed country, —
the imperishable renown of grand failure in a cause
which adverse fate cannot keep from being ever dear to
all humanity.
My last word as to what I have just quoted from the
three northern authors is that all of us — and especially
the fast widening public of readers — ought to be for
ever in earnest to applaud such sentiments and chide
1 A Literary History of America, 494, 495.

Introductory 3 1
every manifestation of excessive sectional bias or preju
dice from either northerner or southerner. This has
been my incessantly kept faith for years. As proof I
refer to my article, " The Old and New South," nearly
all of it written in the early part of 1875 — thirty years
ago — and which I pubhshed the next year. I give an
exact copy of it in the Appendix. As you go through
it remember these things of the author : The election of
Lincoln made me believe, as it did thousands of other
southerners, that secession was the only patriotic course.
I therefore voted for secession delegates to the State
convention. I served in the confederate army all the
war, taking part in the First Manassas and many other
battles ; and when I had been surrendered and paroled
at Appomattox I walked back to my home in Georgia,
Ten years after this I had found full solace and comfort
for the direful event to the south of the brothers' war ;
and I had learned that the brothers on each side had
complete justification in conscience for their contrary
parts as statesmen, public leaders, voters, and at the
end as soldiers. I want my readers of each section to
see that I have long practised what I am now preaching.
I beg attention to the article on another score. It
shows that the opinions expressed in this book have not
been formed in haste. Nearly all of the more impor
tant will be found therein, in embryo, at least; and the
present book will show, I hope, that they have prosper
ously grown. There are passages in the article, such as
those touching the relations of the races, the future of
the negro, the maintenance by the decentralizing forces
of the union of their balance with the counter ones, and
also others, which I might now justly claim to have
proved prophetic ; and I do not believe that a serious
misprediction can be found in the entire article. This is,
I hope, such corroboration by after occurrences as indi-

32 The Brothers' War
cates that even my early studies of the transcendently
important theme were not unfruitful.
Further, the article serves in some sort to mark a
definite stage in evolution. To give but one illustra
tion : Although my close attention to planting interests
at the time and for the seven or eight preceding years
had kept me closely watching the negro, I had not then
discovered even the beginning of that division of the
race into two classes which is now so plain to me.
Possibly some readers may shy away from my book,
deeming that its subject is hackneyed and worn out.
They will exclaim. What can this author say that has
not been said in the vast library of books already written
upon the civil war? This will be asked, I am sure, only
by the unobservant and unreflecting. If one but turn
away from the assumptions, dogmas, and philippics,
with which north and south cannonaded each other's
morality with increasing fury from 1831 to 1861, to the
rerum causes, the play of resistless social forces, and the
other actualities and great things indicated above, their
huge stores of varied novelty, interest, romance, and
wisdom will greatly embarass him — as has been my
painful experience — both in making the best selection
and in his felt inability to give what he does at last se
lect its fit presentation.
As illustration I will say that every thoroughly im
partial northern reader who meditates what I narrate as
to Toombs will, I believe, be astonished to learn that
one so prodigally gifted with supreme virtue and su
preme genius, and who was of unexampled success in
doing all the common and all the extraordinary duties
of high place, has become worse than forgotten in al
most his own day ; and such a reader will suspect, as I
do myself, that there is much more of value in his career
that I have overlooked.

Introductory 3 3
Perhaps this chapter is too long already. But I pray
my reader to allow me to say a little more. We are
upon the threshold of a new American era. Evidently
because of our western coast we are to dominate the
Pacific ocean commerce and to develop it into propor
tions so enormous as to be now almost inconceivable.
That coast will soon outstrip the Atlantic in population
and great cities. Our people, safe against wars on the
continent, maintaining armies only of workers, taught
better methods every year by practice and science,
will soon be far in advance of their present enviable
prosperity and comfort. Cheering as is the promise of
their material progress, that of their progress in virtue
and good government is still more cheering. Every
where in the north — which was not impoverished, de
prived of familiar modes of production, and paralyzed
with a race question by the event of the brothers' war
— the State electorates are rebelling successfully against
the party machine, cashiering the boss, and subverting
the corporation oligarchy. That in the last election the
voters most intelligently split their tickets assures the
early expulsion of spoilsmen, grafters, and pubhc-service
franchise-grabbers from the control of our pohtics, legis
lation, and administration of government, and the real
and permanent elevation of the people to being their
own absolute governors. In several States — one of
these a southern — the vote was for the most democratic
and anti-plutocratic president since Lincoln, while at the
same time the anti-plutocratic State candidates, either
of the other party or independent, were elected. Our
population will soon outstrip aU the world in average
riches, comfort, virtue, and education. The special note
to be made of this new American era now beginning
is that we are to lead the nations into a war-abolishing
United States of the world, which in the end will make
3

34 The Brothers' War
and keep them our equals in solid welfare and happiness.
With this prospect in view, the brighter and more en
rapturing as I cannot keep from contrasting it with the
black and hopeless future which settled around me at
Appomattox, I would do all that I can to bring about
that better understanding between north and south
which befits the good time near at hand.

CHAPTER II
A BEGINNING MADE WITH SLAVERY
A S a distinguished southerner, famihar with the
/\ subject, says, slavery in the United States was
X J^ " a stupendous anachronism." ^ It is almost in
credible to the average northerner of to-day that the
enlightened people of the south sank backwards in
social development a thousand years or more, and
hugged to their bosoms for several generations such a
monstrous evil and peril.
The co-operation of two facts fully explains the won
der just noted. Now let us try to understand this.
The first fact is the part played by tobacco and cotton
before the anti-slavery sentiment became influential. At
a time when there was practically no industry but agri
culture these two staples became the most lucrative of
all common American crops. Tobacco found its true
soil in Virginia, and cotton farther south. It developed
in time that both could be made far more profitably
with African slaves than by free white labor, the only
other labor to be had. Of course you are to remember
that slave cultivation of tobacco did not become general
in Virginia until near the end of the seventeenth cen
tury, and that it was the invention of the gin soon after
the adoption of the federal constitution in 1789 that
started cotton production bn a large scale. What you
^ 1 Major Joseph B. Curaming, speaking to the toast, " New Ideas, New
Departures, New South," at fourteenth annual dinner of New England
Society of Charleston, S. C, December 22, 1893.

36 The Brothers' War
are especially to grasp here is the economic conditions
which naturally spread slavery from its beginning at
Jamestown, first over Virginia, and then throughout the
entire south, either settled in large measure from Vir
ginia, or looking thither for example. The Virginian
who could not replace his exhausted fields with virgin
soil at home went with his slaves either west or south,
and hacked down enough of the primeval forest to
give his working force its quantum of arable land. We
need not stop here to tell of rice and cane, nor of
other crops and industries which for a while engaged
slave labor in northern regions of the south where the
soil did not suit tobacco. The foregoing suggests ad
equately for this place how slavery became general in
the south.
The second fact is that the prevalent opinion of that
time was far different from that of to-day, for certain rea
sons, to which I would now have you attend.
Long before the discovery of America personal
slavery had fallen under the ban of the christian church
and become in Europe a thing of the past. The Di
vine Comedy catalogues in detail the religious, political,
mioral, and social events of its age. It is utterly silent
throughout as to slavery, Dante died in 1321, soon
after he had finished the Divine Comedy, That was
nearly three hundred years before the appearance of
African slavery in Virginia,
Now for something of very great importance to us
here, which occurred soon afterwards, and before the
introduction of African slavery into America, It is that
by the Renascence the literature of slaveholding Greece
and Rome suddenly acquired and long held command
ing influence upon almost every educator of the public
in the enlightened world. It was in the last quarter of
the fourteenth century — some fifty years after Dante

A Beginning made with Slavery 37
had died — that the classics revived in Italy. Spreading
thence over Europe, they are found dominating the great
Elizabethan divines, philosophers, poets, and other opin
ion-forming writers at the end of the fifteenth century.
And during all of the time from the landing of the
twenty Africans at Jamestown by the Dutch man-of-war
in 1619 until slavery had become the solitary prop of
southern industry and property, the Greek and Latin
ancient writers were in our mother country almost the
sole subjects of school or university education, and the
main reading of all those that read at all. And every
page of this Hterature, studied with enthusiastic worship
and resorted to day in and day out for instruction and
inspiration, disclosed that in Greece and Rome the aver
age family was dependent for its maintenance upon
slaves ; and that so far from slavery being a relic of bar
barism, as the American root-and-branch abolitionists
afterwards fulminated in a platform, it was the very
foundation ofthe state in those two great nations whose
philosophy, learning, science, jurisprudence, poetry, art,
and eloquence are still the models in every enlightened
land. Naturally the educated classes, now that it had
been several hundred years since slavery was a burning
question, had forgotten or had never heard of the old
disinclination of the church, and could not see any evil
in that which their most admired and dearest ones had
all practised. The classics did not stop with giving
slavery the negative support just mentioned. Although
such authors as Quintilian and , Seneca, and the later
jurists — aU of the discredited silver, and not of the
glorified Ciceronian and Augustan ages — do express,
theatrically and academically, anti-slavery opinions,
yet what they say was merely dust in the balance when
weighed against the commendations of the institution to
be found in the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero,

38 The Brothers' War
who had now become the great idols of intellectual
society.^ The church would not stay out in the cold and dark,
whither it had been suddenly and rudely cast by the
Renascence. It woke up to discover that as the African
was a heathen barbarian it was God's mercy to kidnap
him for a christian master, and thus give him his only
opportunity of saving his soul. And although it is not
right to enslave other races, the descendants of Ham are
an exception, who by reason of Noah's curse are to
be the servants of servants to the end of time — that is
what Holy Church taught by precept and example,
" Sir John Hawkins has the unenviable distinction
of being the first English captain of a slave-ship,
about the year 1552." ^ His venture proved a great
success. Good Queen Bess reproached him for his
mistreatment of human beings. He answered that it
was far better for the African thus to become a slave
in a christian community, than to live the rest of
his life in his native home of idolatry; and this was
so convincing that " in the subsequent expeditions
of this most heartless man-stealer, she was a partner
and protector,"^ Until the end of the seventeenth
century the masses regarded the negro as being rather
wild beast than man, showing no more scruples in
catching and making a drudge of him than later
generations did in lassoing wild horses and working
them under curb-bit, spur, and whip. And the more
understanding ones, who recognized that the negrp ; be-
1 See Cobb, Slavery, xcvii, xcviii, for relevant citations. Chaps. V.
and VI. of the Historical Sketch, the former entitled " Slavery in Greece,"
and the latter, "Slavery among the Romans" (pp. lix-xcviii), are
very readable, learned, and adequate treatments of their respective
subjects. 2 Cobb, Slavery, cxii.
8 Id.

A Beginning made w^ith Slavery 39
longed to humanity, re-enforced Aristotle ^ and Phny^
with much that they found both in the Old and New
Testaments.^ The many who preached liberty or the
true religion posed as humanitarians, pharisaically com
paring themselves with the best characters of Greece
and Rome, The citizens of those great republics, they
said, in spite of their advanced democracy, tore men
and women of their own race and blood away from
home and country and forced them with the scourge to
toil in chains, while we do that only with savages and
heathens, who cannot be civilized or christianized in any
other way. We eschew slavery in the abstract. We
tolerate it only in the concrete, which is the slavery of
those destined for it by God and nature. Slave-catcher,
slaveholder, and the public seriously and conscientiously
held this creed.
You must now add to the list of influences planting
and stimulating slavery in America the protection it got
in the constitution under which the federal government
started in 1789, As Mr, Blaine says:
" The compromises on the slavery question, inserted in the
constitution, were among the essential conditions upon which
the federal government was organized. If the African slave-
trade had not been permitted to continue for twenty years, if it
had not been conceded that three-fifths of the slaves should be
counted in the apportionment of representatives in congress, if
it had not been agreed that fugitives from service should be
returned to their owners, the thirteen States would not have
been able in 1787 'to form a more perfect union,'"*
1 Aristotle maintained the justice of wars undertaken to procure
slaves. See Cobb, Slavery, xii, foot-note 3, for references.
^ " Pliny compares them to the drones among the bees, to be forced
to labor, even as the drones are compelled." Id. xcviii.
* In his chapter entitled " Slavery among the Jews " Mr. Cobb cites
most of the important passages. Id. xxxviii sq.
* Twenty Years in Congress, vol. i. i.

40 The Brothers' War
Think over it until you can fully take in the prodigious
favor to slavery which this countenance of it by the
American bible of bibles naturally created in the north
and south.
The forces rapidly sketched in the foregoing were so
powerful in their co-operation to bring in slavery that
its establishment and a long era of vigorous growth were
inevitable. Note the years during which they met no
sensible or only a fitful opposition. The first anti-slavery
agitation that shook the entire country was that over
the Missouri question, which having lasted a little more
than two years ended in 182 1, thirty-two years after the
adoption of the constitution. This agitation was only
.against the extension of slavery. It was not until 1835
that the presentation to Congress of petitions for the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia disclosed
to the far-seeing Calhoun alone that serious and mighty
aggression upon slavery in the States was commencing.
Here we may date the beginning of the abohtion move
ment. But that movement did not become respectable
with the great mass of northern people until the apph
cation of California in 1850 for admission into the union
as a free State widened the chasm between the sections
so that it commenced to show to the dullest eye, and
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," which came out in 1 8 52, stirred the
north to its depths. The growth of slavery was then and
had been for a quarter of a century complete. The soil,
climate, and best agricultural interests of the south, at a
time when she was to be wholly agricultural or economi
cally nothing at aU, the practice and precepts ofthe sages
of Greece and Rome, of the patriarchs of Israel, of Jesus
and his disciples and apostles, of the great and good of
modern times, — all these had, with oracular concensus,
led her understanding, and conscience into adopting,
nurturing, and on into extending slavery over her terri-

A Beginning made with Slavery 41
tory. Thus when abolition first emerged into open day,
slavery had become the very economical life of the south.
It had so permeated and informed the combined prop
erty, social, and political structure, that abolition would
subvert the community fabric and beggar the popula
tion of the southern States now living in content and
comfort, I trust that the foregoing shows you that it is not
so strange after all that slavery ran the career just
described. But some one says, how could the southerners as
Americans, the especial champions of liberty, stultify
themselves by slaveholding ? how could they forget the
world-arousing words of the declaration of independence
that all men are created equal, and endowed with unalien
able rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness ?
This has already been answered. The slaveholding
republics of Greece and Rome had advanced in democ
racy so far beyond anything to be found in Europe at
the revival of learning, that from that time on for many
years the political doctrine in the recovered classics was
the very greatest of all the intellectual influences that
made for mere democracy. The celebrated passage
in which Burke eulogizes the stubborn maintenance of
their freedom by free slaveholders has been the text of
speakers from Pinkney, addressing the United States
senate on the Missouri question, to Toombs, lecturing in
Tremont Temple, Boston, and it has never been confuted.
History shows no instance where such men ever re
proached themselves for slaveholding, and while it was
profitable put it aside because it is undemocratic.
As to the words which you quote from the declara
tion of independence, Jefferson, the draftsman, doubt
less, meant them to include the African ; but the majority
of the congress making it, and the American people

42 The Brothers' War
actually ratifying it, almost unanimously held that the
African was not enough of man to come within the
words. A Roman law parallel aptly illustrates. In the In
stitutes it is said that slavery is contrary to the law of
nature, for under this every one is born free ; ^ and again,
that slavery was established by the jus gentium under
which a man is made subject to the dominion of an
other contra naturam, that is, against nature, against y«J
naturale, or the law of nature.^ And in the Pandects
this is weakly echoed.^ But the actual enactment of
the corpus juris civilis fortifies slavery as it had been
established all over the world by the jus gentium with
these plain words : " The master has power of life and
death over his slave; and whatever property the slave
acquires, he acquires for the master." *
Our forefathers making the declaration of independ
ence, and the Romans of Justinian's time, sentimental
ized in the same words over the natural right to equality
1 I, 2, 2. ? Id. I, 3, 1-2.
* Dig. I, I, 4, where, in an excerpt from Ulpian, it is said that all
human beings 3.XS jure natwali (that is, by the law of nature) bom free.
We of to-day must not regard the last three passages cited from the
Corpus Juris Civilis as particularly reprehending the property of the
master in his slave. Cicero asserts that there is no private property
whatever according to the law of nature ; that according to that law all
things are common property. He details some of the ways by which
private appropriation is made, such as long holding, entry into vacant
lands, capture in war, acquisition by contract, etc. According to this, a
prisoner of war stood on the same footing as a horse captured from the
enemy. By the law of nature there could be private property in neither.
But this law of nature was really repealed by the jus gentium, under
which both horse and prisoner alike became private property. If an
other took either the horse or slave away from the owner, he would —
to use Cicero's language — violate the law of human society. De Officiis,
Lib. I. cap. 7, §§ 20, 21.
« Inst. 1, 8, I. When Mr. Cobb says that there is " but one voice in
the Digest and Code," book cited, xcviii, meaning that they give no coun
tenance to slavery, the statement is misleading.

A Beginning made with Slavery 43
and liberty of all human beings, and also resolutely held
on to their slaves. The solemn assertion that all men
are created equal and of inalienable liberty made by
American slaveholders was but a repetition of what
Roman slaveholders had already said ; and it is curious
that the fact has not attracted due attention.
I fancy that my objector now shoots his last bolt.
He exclaims that southerners were incredibly dull and
obtuse not to discern that resistlessly puissant eco
nomical, pohtical, moral, and intellectual forces, not of
America only but of the entire world, were leaguing
together against slavery, and therefore they ought to
have fled in time from the coming wrath and evil day,
A satisfactory reply need not postulate any other than
ordinary intelligence and alertness for the south. Note
how people dwell near overflowing rivers, or a sea of
tidal waves, or live volcanoes, or in earthquake districts,
or near a tribe of scalping redskins, where they, their
wives and children, keep merry as the day is long until
calamity comes. The warning of the abolitionists was
too late. Suppose we had given the inhabitants of Her-
culaneum or Pompeii or St. Pierre timely counsel to
abandon their homes and settle beyond the reach of
eruption. How many would have done it? I knew
hundreds of people, and among all of them there was
but one who showed by his actions that he foresaw the
early fall of slavery. That was Mr, Frank L. Upson of
Lexington, Georgia, a highly accomplished and well-in
formed man. In 1856, I think it was, he sold aU of his
slaves, declaring as his reason that he believed if he
kept them he would see them freed without compen
sation. He was so serious that he declared this even to
his purchasers. They merely laughed, and everybody
else laughed too, to think how green he was to give
them the good bargain that he did. But after the war

44 The Brothers' War
he enjoyed comfort from the money those slaves had
brought him, when all his neighbors had been plunged
into hard times by emancipation. There may have been
others that did like him. There could not have been
many such, for I have never been able to hear of a
single one.
We did like the rest of mankind do or would have
done. We stuck to our homes and business until the
tidal wave washed them away. Yet there are wise ones
who are positive that had we not been far more dull and
unforeseeing than the average we would have under
stood many years before the final convulsion that the
forces arrayed against slavery were irresistible, and sur
rendered it in time to get compensated emancipation.
Look at the monopolists now preying upon the pubhc
in every corner of the land. They are confident that
their holdings are impregnable against democracy com
ing invincibly against them. Look at the great mass of
our population, shutting the fresh air out of their houses
in order to be comfortably warm, and thereby rearing
parents — especially mothers — who unawares are in
cessantly developing tuberculosis to destroy themselves
and their children. Some years hence when resumption
by government of its functions now granted to private
persons has dispossessed all the monopolists, and when
every dweUing-house is kept perfectly ventilated and
free from infected air, there will be other wise ones to
believe that hindsight is just the same as foresight, and
to inveigh against the monopolists and parents just men
tioned for their unwonted stupidity and improvidence.

CHAPTER III
UNAPPEASABLE ANTAGONISM OF FREE LABOR AND
SLAVE LABOR, AND THEIR MORTAL COMBAT OVER
THE PUBLIC LANDS
NOW a brief explanation of the antagonism be
tween free and slave labor. The expense of
his slaves to the farmer is the same whether
they are resting or at work. Sundays, days and even
seasons of unfavorable weather, in long do-nothing in
tervals succeeding the making and also the gathering of
the crop, they cost him just as much as when he can
work them from sun to sun. But this is not all of his
load. The year round he must subsist the numerous
non-workers in the families of his laborers, whether
young, superannuated, or afflicted. Suppose another
farmer to be on adjoining land who can employ laborers
just as he wants them, and discharge them as soon as
he has no further use for them. Do you not perceive
that this free-labor farmer can produce far more cheaply
than the slave farmer? And do you not also perceive
that if there is a supply of free labor to be had in a
slave country, and it can be got by every farmer ad
libitum, slaves must lose their value as property and
be driven to the wall ? Free labor was kept out of the
south by the repugnance of the white laborer to the
negro. Note also that when the number of slaves had
become considerable their owners would naturally com
bine to protect the market value of their property by
preventing the coming in of cheaper labor. This was
the real reason why Virginia and Delaware opposed the

46 The Brothers' War
extension ofthe African slave-trade from 1800 to 1808,
and the Confederate States' constitution refused to
reopen it. Slavery made some headway in the north.
But not finding there the stimulus of such products as
tobacco and cotton, it could not become so widespread
and deep-seated as to sweep out free labor. The latter
under favorable conditions commenced the competition
in which it could not fail to win ; and in due time slavery
died out in the north. We especially desire to em
phasize the attitude towards extension of slavery that
free labor was bound to take. That it had already
ejected slavery from every other enlightened commu
nity will occur to the reader at once as weighty proof
that the two cannot live together.^ Think of the free
worker's suffrage, and you cannot believe that he could
long be induced to vote for the protection and further
spread of a system taking the bread out of his own
mouth, and degrading him by engendering profound
disrespect for his class ; and then think of the vast and
rapidly growing numbers of the free laborers of the
north, receiving every day great accessions of foreign
immigrants avoiding the south as they would the plague ;
think of all these, and you begin to discern what a
mighty power was rising against slavery.
This has brought us to the place where we can
properly treat the contention for the Territories. Con
sider their vast area. Remember that our people have
settled thereon in such numbers that thirty-two new States
have been added to the old thirteen, and others still are
to be added. Here for some generations was land for
the landless ; the full meaning of which Henry George
has made us plainly see. The adventurous and enter-
1 Inthe first chapter of his History of England Macaulay ascribes this
result to moral causes, and to religion as chief agent. He is only one of
many acute historians who overlook the play of economical forces.

Antagonism of Free and Slave Labor 47
prising of the old States of each section set their faces
thitherward in a constantly swelling stream. Attend to
the only material difference for us between the north
erner and the southerner going west. Each settler
wanted a community like his native one. The north
erner had not been trained to manage slave labor and
property ; he did not like it ; he thought it out of date
and vastly inferior to free labor ; and he could not en
dure to have himself and family live among negroes,
repulsive to him because of un familiarity. He had
learned from its history in the south that wherever
slavery established itself it superseded all other labor.
Therefore he would none of it in his new home; and
he settled in a non-slave community. Of course the
southerner, knowing nothing of free labor and bred into
a love of the slave system, settled among slaveholders.
And so for a generation or two free and slave States
were steadily added to the union in pairs.
But the unsettled lands were diminishing in area.
Its population multiplying so marvellously, the north
felt urgent need for the whole of these lands. The
great majority of settlers going thence into the Territo
ries were farmers. Note some of the more influential
classes left behind them. The parents, relatives, and
friends who wanted them suited in the west — this was
the largest class of all, and it was of prodigious intellec
tual, pohtical, and moral potency. Then the manu
facturers of agricultural implements, and of many
articles, all of which the southerners either had their
mechanic slaves to make by hand, and of oldtime
fashion, or did without ; the millers, and many sorts of
wholesale merchants who had found slave owners poor
and the employers of free labor good customers; and
these manufacturers and merchants were greedy for the
new markets which they could get only in free States.

48 The Brothers' War
These are but the merest hints, but they serve some
what to suggest the all-powerful motives which at last
united the great majority of northern people, east and
west, in intelligent and inveterate opposition to the
further spread of slavery.
Now look at the southern situation. At the outset,
note that his slaves were the southerner's only laborers,
and practically his only property. And note especially
that this property was not only self-supporting, but it
was also the most rapidly self-reproducing that Tom,
Dick, and Harry ever had in all history. A reliable
witness tells this : " On my father's plantation an aged
negro woman could call together more than one hun
dred of her lineal descendants, I saw this old negro
dance at the wedding of her great-granddaughter," ^
Let me repeat that slaves were not only money-
making laborers, but also things of valuable property,
which of themselves multiplied as dollars do at com
pound interest. Let the northern man unfamiliar with
slavery try to understand this one of its phases by sup
posing that he has orchards abundantly yielding a fruit
which is in good demand, and that the trees plant and
tend themselves, gather and store the fruit, set out other
orchards, and do all things else necessary to care for
the property and keep it steadily growing. Such trees
with their yearly produce and prodigious increase —
each by an easy organic or natural, and not by a diffi
cult artificial, process, relieving the owner from all but
the slightest attention and labor of superintendence —
would soon be the only ones in their entire zone of
production ; bringing it about that all other occupations
and property therein would be dependent upon this
main and really only industry. Such orchards would
be somewhat like the slaves in their automatic produo-
1 Cobb, Slavery, ccxviii (foot-note).

Antagonism of Free and Slave Labor 49
tion and accumulation, but they would be much inferior
as marketable property in many particulars.
Although the profits of slave-planting were consider
able, the greatest profit of aU was what the master
thought of and talked of aU the day long, — the natural
increase of his slaves, as he called it. His negroes
were far more to him than his land. His planting was
the furthest removed of all from a proper restorative
agriculture. Quickly exhausting his new cleared fields,
he looked elsewhere for other virgin soil to wear out.
The number of the slaves in the south was growing fast,
and the new lands in the older slave States were nearly
gone. To keep the hens laying the golden eggs of nat
ural increase, nests must be found for them on the cot
ton, sugar, and rice lands of the Territories, In other
words, the area of slave culture must be extended ; for
whenever there is no land for a considerable number of
our workers, it is evident that we have a surplus of
slaves; and the effect of that will be at the first to
lower the market value of our only property, and then
gradually to destroy it. So the instincts of the south
erners whispered in their ears.
We hope that we now have helped you to an under
standing of the active principles each of free labor and
of slave labor ; how by reason of them the interests of
north and south in dividing the public domain were in
irreconcilable conflict; and how it was natural that the
free States should band together against, and the slave
States band together for, slavery. Thus the country
split into two geographical though not political sec
tions, the political division which ripened later being as
yet only imminent and inchoate. That these sections
had been made by deadly war between free labor and
slave labor is all that we have to say here. The devel
opment went further, as we shall explain in the next

50 The Brothers' War
chapter — all of it under the propulsion of the two ac
tive principles. They were always the ultimate and
supreme motors. Often they are not to be seen at all.
Still more often what they did was disguised. To read
the facts of that time aright you must always and every
where look for their work. Do that patiently, and you
will detect every one of the many controversies over
matters affecting an interest of either section as such —
whether questions apparently of national politics, of
morals, or religion, in newspapers, pamphlets, reviews,
books, and all the vast contemporary literature, in the
pulpit, on the platform, and in every place and corner
of the entire land where policy and impolicy or right
and wrong were mooted — to be but a part of one or
the other of two great complexes of machinery, each
geared to its particular motor and kept going by its
mighty push.

CHAPTER IV
GENESIS, COURSE, AND GOAL OF SOUTHERN
NATIONALIZATION
NATIONALIZATION is the process by which
a nation makes itself The process may be
active for a long while without completion, as
we see in the case of Ireland ; it may form a nation, but
to be overturned and wiped out, as the southern con
federacy was ; or it may find its consummation in such
a powerful one as the United States, The most con
spicuous effect of the process we now have in hand is
to make one of many communities. But sometimes a
part breaks off from a nation and sets up and maintains
its independence as a country. Thus a portion of the
territory of Mexico was settled over from our States,
and after a while these settlers tore themselves loose
from Mexico and became the nation of Texas, We
shall tell you more fully in another chapter how the
separate colonies became nationalized into the United
States, and what we say here of southern nationalization
will illustrate to the reader that important transforma
tion, to understand which is of especial moment to us
in examining the brothers' war. But we must empha
size the characteristic feature of the nationalization of
the south. I have searched the pages of history in
vain for an example like it. The idiosyncrasy is that
the south was homogeneous in origin, race, language,
religion, institutions, and chstoms with the north, and
yet she developed away from the north into a separate

52 The Brothers' War
nation, I have long been accustomed to parallel the
case of Ireland's repulsion from Great Britain, but I al
ways had to admit that there was dissimilarity in every
thing except the strong drift towards independence and
the struggle to win it ; ^ for the Irish are largely differ
ent from the English in origin, race, language, rehgion,
institutions, and customs. The more you consider it the
more striking becomes this uniqueness of southern na
tionalization. Think of it for a moment. Thirteen
adjacent colonies; each a dependency of the same
nation; all settled promiscuously from every part and
parcel of one mother country, and therefore the settlers
rapidly becoming in time more like one another every
where than the English were who at home were clinging
to their several localities and dialects ; governed alike ;
standing together against Indians, French, and Spanish,
and after a while against the mother country; — where
can you find another instance of so many common ties
and tendencies, all prompting incessantly and mightily
to union in a political whole, which is ever the goal
of the nationalizing process. That the colonies did
grow into a political whole is not at all wonderful to
the historical student. The wonder is that after they
had done this a number of them just like the others in
the particulars above pointed out, which fuse adjacent
communities into a nation, turn away from the old
union and seek to form one of their own. The south
ern States all did the same thing with such practical
unanimity that even the foreigner may know that the
same cause was at work in every one of them. Mani
festly there was a nationalizing element in them which
was not in the others, and which made the former ho-
1 See p. 437 infra, where I have compared the struggle of Ireland for
autonomy during the last half of the eighteenth century with that of
the south narrated in this book.

Southern Nationalization 53
mogeneous with one another and heterogeneous to the
rest. And that element which differenced the south
from the rest of the union so greatly that it was, from a
time long before either she or the north had become
conscious of it, impelUng her irresistibly towards an in
dependent nationality of her own, all of us natives know
was the constructive and plastic principle of her slave
industrial and property system.
It is not the purpose of the foregoing expatiation to
prove to you such a familiar and well-known fact as that
slavery parted north and south and caused the brothers'
war. Its purpose is to arouse you to consider nationali
zation, and have you see how it acts according to a will
of its own and not of man, and now and then works out
most stupendous results contrary to all that mortals
deem probabilities. You ought to recognize that the
forces which produced the Confederate States were just
as all-powerful and opposeless as those which produced
the United States ; that in fact they were exactly the
same in kind, that is, the forces of nationalization.
To have you see that even at the time of making the
federal constitution the south had grown into a pro-
slavery section and was far on the road towards inde
pendence, it is necessary to correct the prevalent opinion
that there was then below Mason and Dixon's line a
very widespread and influential hostility to slavery. The
manumission of his slaves by Washington, the fearless
and outspoken opposition to the institution by Jefferson
and some other prominent persons, and certain facts
indicating unfavorable sentiment, have been too hastily
accepted by even historians as demonstrations that the
opinion is true. Here are the facts which prove it to
be utterly untrue. In 1784, three years before our
epochal convention assembled, Jefferson, as chairman
of an appropriate committee consisting besides himself

54 The Brothers' War
of Chase of Maryland and Howeh of Rhode Island,
reported to congress a plan for the temporary govern
ment of the West Territory. This region contained
not only all the territory that was subsequently covered
by the famous ordinance of 1787, but such a vast deal
more that it was proposed to make seventeen States out
of the whole. Consider this provision of the report, the
suggestion and work of Jefferson :
"That after the year 1800 of the christian era there shall be
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of said States,
otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall
have been convicted to have been personally guilty."
When the report was taken up by congress, Spaight
of North Carolina made a motion to strike out the pro
vision just quoted, and it was seconded by Reed of
South Carolina. On the vote North Carolina was
divided ; but all the other southern States represented,
to wit, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, voted
for the motion, the colleagues of Jefferson of Virginia
and those of Chase of Maryland out-voting these two
southerners standing by the provision. All the northern
States represented, which were the then four New Eng
land States, New York, and Pennsylvania, voted for the
provision. But as it failed to get the necessary seven
States it was not retained.
Thus it appears that at the close of the Revolutionary
war the interest of the south in and her attachment to
slavery were so great that by her representatives in
congress she appears to be almost unanimous against
the proposal to keep the institution from extending.
This action of the south shows that both Virginia in
ceding that part of the West Territory which was three
years afterwards by the ordinance of 1787 put under
Jefferson's provision which had been rejected when it

Southern Nationalization 55
had been proposed for all the territory, and the south
in voting unanimously for the ordinance, were not actu
ated by hostility to slavery. The soil of the territory
north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi to which
the ordinance applied probably may have been thought
by Virginians unsuited to tobacco, the then sole crop
upon which slave labor could be lucratively used. Be
that as it may, that the southern States in subsequent
cessions made not long afterwards guarded against
slavery prohibition must be kept in mind. When they
are, it is proved that always from the time that Jeffer
son's provision failed to carry in 1784, as has been told
above, the prevalent sentiment of the southern people
overwhelmingly favored slavery.
Let us illustrate from later times. Writers who claim
that the south, meditating secession, purposed to reopen
the African slave-trade, adduce some relevant evidence
which at first flush appears to be very weighty, if not
convincing. They show that A. H, Stephens of Georgia,
who afterwards became vice-president of the Confede
racy, in 1859 used language indicating that he thought
it vital to the south, in her struggle to extend the area
of slavery, to get more Africans ; and they further show
similar utterances made at the time by certain papers
and other prominent men of the south.
But the constitution ofthe Confederate States, adopted
in 1 86 1, contains this provision:
" The importation of negroes of the African race from any
foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories
of the United States of America is hereby forbidden, and con
gress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent
the same,"
Of course this solemn act unanimously voted for by
the members of the congress, Stephens being one of
them, counts incalculably more in weight to prove that

56 The Brothers' War
predominant southern sentiment was against reopening
the African slave-trade, than the counter evidence just
stated. Likewise all that Washington, Jefferson, and
other of their contemporaries may have done or said
against slavery is outweighed by the contemporary pro-
slavery legislation and measures dictated by the south.
It is very probable that during the time we are now
contemplating anti-slavery men were really as few in the
south as union men were after the first blood spilled in
,the brothers' war.
Recall the three compromises between north and
south, mentioned above, by which the union was formed,
and you will understand that the fathers were preaching
but to stones when they impugned slavery. And at
this point meditate the language of Madison in the
historic convention, which shows that he saw accurately
even then the permanence of slavery, and the unequiv
ocal geographical division it had made. He was dis
cussing the apprehension of the small States, New
Jersey, Delaware, and .Rhode Island, that under the
union proposed they would be absorbed by the larger
adjacent States. He affirmed there was no such danger;
and that the only danger arose from the antagonism
between the slave and the non-slave sections. To avert
this danger he proposed to arm north and south each
with defensive power against the other by conceding to
the former the superiority it would get in one branch of
the federal legislature by reason of its greater population
if the members thereof came in equal numbers from
every State, large or small, and at the same time giving
the south superiority in the other branch by allowing it
increased representation therein for aU its slaves counted
as free inhabitants. This prepares you for the language
which we now give from the report, and which we would
have you meditate :

Southern Nationalization 57
" He [Madison] admitted that every peculiar interest, whether
in any class of citizens, or any description of States, ought to be
secured as far as possible. Wherever there is danger of attack,
there ought to be given a constitutional power of defence. But
he contended that the States were divided into different interests,
not by their difference of size, but by other circumstances ; the
most material of which resulted partly from climate, but princi
pally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. These
causes concurred in forming the great division of interests in the
United States. It did not lie between the large and small
States. It lay between the northern and southern ; and if any
defensive power were necessary, it ought to be mutually given
to these two interests. He was so strongly impressed with this
important truth, that he had been casting about in his mind for
some expedient that would answer the purpose. The one
which had occurred was that, instead of proportioning the votes
of the States in both branches to their respective number of in
habitants, computing the slaves in the ratio of 5 to 3, they
should be represented in one branch according to the number
of free inhabitants only; and in the other according to their
whole number, counting the slaves as free. By this arrange
ment the southern scale would have the advantage in one house
and the northern in the other,"
Madison meant to say that the great danger of dis
union was that — we emphasize his statement by re
peating and italicizing the essential part — " the States
were divided into diff'erent interests . . . principally from
the eff^ects of their having or not having slaves. These
causes concurred in forming the great division of interests
in the United States."
How truly he expresses the economical antagonism of
the southern and northern States, although he hints
nothing of the nationalizing tendency of the former
which was bound in time to show itself as one of " the
effects of their having slaves."
It seems to me that Mr. Adams overeulogizes the

58 The Brothers' War
pohtical instinct and prophecy evinced by Madison at
this time. I cannot see that the latter does anything
more than merely recognize the fact then plain to all.
Note as proof this other passage quoted by Mr, Adams
from Madison in the convention, in which the material
words are given by me in italics : " It seems now well
understood that the real difference of interests lies, not
between the large and small, but between the northern
and southern States,"
If the historical expert but duly consider the impor
tant facts marshaUed in the foregoing he must find them
to be incontrovertible proofs that in 1787, when our
fathers were making the federal constitution, and for
some years before, southern nationalization was not
simply inchoate, but that it was growing so rapidly its
course could be stopped in but one way; that is, by
the extirpation of slavery, which was both its germ and
active principle. This was before the invention of the
gin. After that the lower south and west quickly added
a vast territory to the empire of slavery, and southern
nationalization received throughout its whole domain a
new, a lasting, and a far more powerful impetus. And
when the cotton States, as we call them, had really de
veloped their industry, the southern confederacy was
inevitable. The fact of this nationalization is indisputable. When
the confederates organized their government at Mont
gomery, everybody looking on felt and said that a new
nation was born. Why ignore what is so plain and so
important? Thus Mr. Adams most graphically con
trasts the two widely different northern and southern
civilizations which were flourishing side by side,^ and
with a momentary inadvertence he ascribes national de
velopment only to the civilization north of the Potomac
^ Charleston Address mentioned above, 15.

Southern Nationalization 59
and Ohio, and treats State sovereignty as anti-national.
The fact is that a nationahzation, the end of which was
southern independence, had been long active, as we have
perhaps too copiously shown, and the doctrine of State
sovereignty was really nothing but its instrument, nurse,
and organ. Every southern State that invoked State
sovereignty and seceded was shortly afterwards found in
the new southern nation. Had that nation prospered,
the doctrine would soon have died a natural death even
in the confederacy. Nationalization is the cardinal
fact, the vis major, on each side. The free-labor na
tionahzation of the north, purposing to appropriate and
hold the continent, fashioned a self-preserving weapon
of the assumption that the fathers made by the consti
tution an indissoluble union; the slave nationalization
of the south, purposing to appropriate and hold that
part of the continent suiting its special staples, assumed
that the fathers preserved State sovereignty intact in the
federal union.
The closer you look the plainer you will see that the
United States held within itself two nationalities so invete
rately hostile to each other that gemination was long
imminent before it actually occurred. The hostility be
tween the statesmen of Virginia and her daughter States
and those of the north, and especially New England, —
Jefferson on one side and Hamilton and Adams on the
ott,-, — the party following the former calling itself repub
lican and that following the latter calling itself federalist,
was really rooted in the hostility of the two nationalities ;
and a survival of this hostility is now unpleasantly vigo
rous between many northern and southern writers and
lecturers, each class claiming too much of the good in
our past history for its own section and ascribing too
much of the bad to the other. As a lady friend, a
native of Michigan who has lived in the south some

6o The Brothers' War
years, remarked to me not long since, as soon as one
going north crosses the Ohio he feels that he has entered
another country ; behind him is a land of corn-pone, bis
cuit, three cooked meals a day, and houses tended un
tidily by darkey servants ; before him is a land of bakers'
bread of wheat, where there is hardly more than one
warm meal a day, and the houses are kept as neat as a
pin by the mothers and daughters of the family. Greater
public activity of the county while there is hardly any at
all of its subdivisions, the representative system almost
everywhere in the municipalities, no government by
town-meeting and no direct legislation except occasion
ally, a most crude and feeble rural common school system,
distinguish and characterize the south ; buoyant energy
of the township in public affairs, government by town-
meeting instead of by representatives, a common-school
system energetically improving, distinguish and charac
terize the north. The manners and customs of southern
ers are peculiar. To use an expressive cant word, they
" gush " more than northeners. In cars and pubhc
meetings they give their seats to ladies, while northerners
do not. Southerners are quick to return a blow for in
sulting words, and in the consequent rencounter they
are prone to use deadly weapons; while northerners
are generally as averse to personal violence as were the
Greeks and Romans in their palmiest time. The battle-
cry of the confederates was a wild cheering — a fox-hunt
yell, as we called it; that of the union soldiers was
huzza ! huzza ! huzza ! From the beginning to the end,
even at Franklin and Bentonvihe, and at Farmville, just
two days before I was surrendered at Appomattox, the
confederates always, if possible, took the offensive ; the
union soldiers were hke the sturdy Enghshmen, whose
tactics from Hastings to Waterloo have generally been
defensive.

Southern Nationalization 6i
This battle yell, this impetuous charge after charge
until the field is won, marks the fighting of the Ameri
cans at King's Mountain — aU of them southerners;
and it is another weighty proof of the early coalescence
of the south as a community on its way to independence.
Many other contrasts could be suggested. Think
over the foregoing. They are the respective effects of
two different causes, — a free-labor nationahzation above,
and a slave-labor nationalization below. Mason and
Dixon's line. The latter — its origin and course — is
the especial subject of this chapter, I believe that the
proofs marshalled above demonstrate to the fair and un-
pisjudiced reader that southern nationalization com
menced before the making of the federal constitution,
and afterwards went directly on, gathering force and
power all the while, until it culminated in
" A storm-cradled nation that fell,"

CHAPTER V
AMERICAN NATIONALIZATION, AND HOW IT MADE
THE BOND OF UNION STRONGER AND STRONGER
GREECE was going down in her contest with
Macedon when she gave the world to come the
Achaean league, the first historical example of
full-grown federation. As Freeman says of such a fed
eral government : " Its perfect form is a late growth of
a very high state of political culture." ^ This historian
thus summarizes its essentials :
" Two requisites seem necessary to constitute federal govern
ment in this its most perfect form. On the one hand, each of
the members of the union must be wholly independent in those
matters which concern each member only. On the other hand,
all must be subject to a common power in those matters which
concern the whole body of members collectively," ^
No author has yet shown a better-considered and
more accurate appreciation of the benefits to different
communities of federal union. But the islander could
not conceive — even at the centre of the British empire
spread over the world — the advanced phase of Anglo-
Saxon federation in America and Australia, which for
want of a better name we may call, using a grand word
of our fathers, continental federation.
And Americans of every generation have misunder
stood the true nature of our union, and especially how
it was made and how it could be unmade. The fathers
1 Hist, of Fed. Gov., 2d ed., 59. 2 Id. 2,

American Nationalization 63
were as much mistaken as to the real authorship of the
declaration of independence, the articles of confedera
tion, and the federal constitution, as Burke and many
people of his time were as to the true causes of the
French revolution, or as the brothers were as to those
of their war. In all that the fathers did they were sure
that they acted as agents solely of their respective col
onies or States, which they beheved to be independent
and sovereign. Therefore they maintained that the
authorship ofthe three great documents just mentioned
was that of the separate States, when in truth it was that
of the union. When the latter, which had been long
forijiing its rudiments, came into something like con
sciousness, it at once spurred our fathers to make the
declaration of independence. The declaration corre
sponds to the later ordinances of secession. And this
union, gathering strength, led our fathers to make the
old confederation; and its articles and the belonging
government are closely paraUeled by the constitution
of the Confederate States and its belonging govern
ment. As southern nationalization brought forth the
southern confederacy, so it was American nationaliza
tion that caused secession from England, the declara
tion of independence, and the confederation which won
the Revolutionary war. To summarize the foregoing:
Southern nationalization evolved the southern union,
and American nationahzation evolved the American
union. The fathers, with the usual undiscernment of
contemporaries, by a most natural hysteron proteron
conceived the latter union to be the work, product, and
result of the constitution. In the intersectional con
tention, the south accepted the mistakes of the fathers
and rested her cause upon them, and the north, instead
of correcting them, substituted a huge and glaring mis
take of her own. Advocating the maintenance of the

64 The Brothers' War
constitution over all the States, she sought to refute the
doctrine of State sovereignty urged by the south with
the arguments of those who had opposed the adoption
of the federal constitution. Patrick Henry and Nathan
Dane — we omit the others — argued that the constitu
tion, if ratified, would reaUy wipe out State lines and
make the central government supreme in authority over
the States, and actually sovereign. Could the people of
the thirteen States have been made to beheve this, they
would have unanimously rejected the instrument, Wash
ington, Hamilton, Madison, and many others competent
to advise, stood in solid phalanx on the other side, and
the people were convinced by them that adoption would
have no such effect. They decided that the arguments
were not good, and the constitution was ratified. But
the discredited arguments were afterwards, by a very
queer psychological process, taken up by Story, Web
ster, and a great host, and paraded as unanswerable
refutation of the doctrine of State sovereignty, and
demonstration that by the constitution the United
States had acquired absolute supremacy over the differ
ent States,^ At a later place we will try to show you
how Webster's glory outshines that of every other actor,
except Lincoln, in the great struggle between north and
south. But here we must emphasize how, when sup
porting the fallacies of Patrick Henry and Nathan Dane,
he met the one real and signal defeat of his life, to which
the drubbing he received from Binney in the Girard
College case was a smaU affair — a defeat none the less
signal because at the time, and long afterwards, it was
and still is crowned as a glorious victory by thousands
upon thousands,
1 See the Republic of Republics, 4th ed. The references in the copi
ous index, under the names Dane, Henry, Story, Webster (Daniel, not
Noah), will suffice to put the student in the way to finding ample support
of the statements in the text.

American Nationahzation 65
The force-bill had just been introduced into the sen
ate of the United States, It provided for the collection
of the revenue in defiance of the nullification ordinance
of South Carolina, The next day, January 22, 1833,
Calhoun offered in that body his famous resolutions,
embodying his doctrine of nullification, under which he
justified the ordinance just mentioned. The i6th of
the next month, Webster discussed the two cardinal ones
of these resolutions at length. As he summarized them,
they affirmed :
" I . That the political system under which we live, and under
which congress is now assembled, is a compact, to which the
people of the several States, as separate and sovereign com
munities, are the parties.
2. That these sovereign parties have a right to judge, each
for itself, of any alleged violation of the constitution by con
gress; and in case of such violation, to choose, each for itself,
its own mode and measure of redress."
He had not long before contemplated making an ad
dress to the public in answer to Calhoun's pro-nullifica
tion letter to Governor Hamilton in the form of a letter
from himself to Kent ; and it cannot be doubted that he
had got himself ready for this ; nor can it be doubted that
in the twenty-five days' interim he had not only worked
over and adapted the unused materials of the address
mentioned, but he had most diligently made special
preparation for his speech — in short, it may be assumed
that he had bestowed upon the subject of the resolutions
the most searching examination and profound medita
tion of which, with his superhuman powers, he was
capable. In spite of all his conscientious labors, as I
am now especially concerned to impress upon you, he
injured and set back the cause of the union by defend
ing it with answerable arguments — nay, rather, with
arguments helping the other side.
S

66 The Brothers' War
At the outset he severely and sternly rebukes two
terms of Calhoun's, one being the use of constitutional
compact for constitution, and the other being the accession
of a State to the constitution. These terms are utterly
impermissible, and are to be scouted. If we accept
them, we must acquiesce in the monstrous conclusions
which the author of the resolutions draws from them.
That is really what Webster says. Note the confident
positiveness of his pertinent language, some of which
we subjoin:
" It is easy, qviite easy, to see why the honorable gentleman
has used it [constitutional compact] in these resolutions. He
cannot open the book, and look upon our written frame of
government, without seeing that it is called a constitution. This
may well be appaUing to him. It threatens his whole doctrine
of compact, and its darling derivatives, nullification and seces
sion, with instant confutation. Because, if he admits our instru
ment of government to be a constitution, then, for that very
reason, it is not a compact between sovereigns ; a constitution of
government and a compact between sovereign powers being
things essentially unlike in their very natures, and incapable of
ever being the same.
We know no more of a constitutional compact between sov
ereign powers than we know of a constitutional indenture of
copartnership, a constitutional bill of exchange. But we know
what the constitution is ; we know what the bond of our union
and the security of our liberties is ; and we mean to maintain and
to defend it, in its plain sense and unsophisticated meaning,"
This is enough of the exorcism of that malignant
spirit, constitutional compact. Now as to the other
mahgnant spirit. Webster says:
" The first resolution declares that the people of the several
States ' acceded' to the constitution, or to the constitutional com
pact, as it is called. This word ' accede,' not found either in
the constitution itself, or in the ratification of it by any one of

American Nationalization 67
the States, has been chosen for use here, doubtless, not without
a well-considered purpose.
The natural converse of accession is secession ; and, therefore,
when it is stated that the people of the States acceded to the
union, it may be more plausibly argued that they may secede
from it. If in adopting the constitution, nothing was done but
acceding to a compact, nothing would seem necessary to break it
up, but to secede from the same compact. But the term is wholly
out of place, , . , The people of the United States have used no
such forra of expression in establishing the present government.
They do not say that they accede to a league, but they declare
that they ordain and establish a constitution. Such are the very
words of the instrument itself; and in all the States, without
exception, the language used by their conventions was, that they
' ratified the constitution ; ' some of them employing the addi
tional words 'assented to' and 'adopted,' but all of them
'ratifying.' "
Note that I have italicized in the quotation certain
admissions of Webster, which, in case his premises
should be disproved, concede the cause to his adversary.
And we will now tell you how Calhoun did disprove
those premises.
He showed that Webster himself had in a senate
speech called the constitution a constitutional compact ;
and that President Washington, in his official announce
ment to congress, described North Carolina as acceding
to the union by the ratification she had at last made of
the constitution.
As to these two points Calhoun further sustained him
self with unquestionable authority and also argument
inconfutable by one who, like Webster, did not find the
true ratio decidendi, that is, the effect of evolution to
bring forth the nation.
The rest of Calhoun's answer will be considered a little
later. But what of it has already been given covers the

68 The Brothers' War
essentials ofthe controversy. In supporting his propo
sition that the States were sovereign when they made
the constitution, and kept their entire sovereignty intact
afterwards, he was too strong for his antagonist. And
yet had his knowledge of the facts been fuller, how much
better he could have done. He could have quoted from
all the great men who made the constitution and secured
its ratification language, in which accede is used again
and again in the same sense as it is in his resolutions.
Likewise, he could have quoted language in which
they designated the constitution as a compact or some
thing synonymous. Madison — to mention only one
of many instances — advocating ratification in the
Virginia convention, called the constitution " a govern
ment of a federal nature, consisting of many coequal
sovereignties'' What an effective argumentum ad homi-
nem could Calhoun have found in the provision of the
constitution ofthe State of Webster, to wit: that Massa
chusetts is free, sovereign, and independent, retaining
every power which she has not expressly delegated to
the United States,^
Webster also made blunders in construing the context
of the constitution, as well as the clauses specially in
volved, in contrasting the constitution with the articles
of confederation, and in his reading of our constitutional
history. These blunders were exhaustively, ably, re
lentlessly exposed.
We who are trained either in forensic or parliamentary
debate well know the conquering and demolishing reply.
Although, as we have just shown, Calhoun's reply could
1 See Republic of Republics, 204-212 (chap. viii. of Part III.) entitled
"Daniel Webster's Masterpiece of Criticism," for copious proofs of the
statements made in the text. Hamilton, Madison, John Jay, and Frank
lin are cited, and some eight or nine quotations from Washington are
made. The chapter is also instructive in showing State-rights utterances
of Webster made before and after the speech.

American Nationalization 69
have been far more effective than it really was, still its
success and triumph were so evident that when he
closed, John Randolph, who had heard it, wanted a hat
obstructing his sight removed, so that, as he said, he
might see "Webster die, muscle by muscle,"
Master the question at issue, and read the- two
speeches as impartially as you strive to read the dis
cussion of .^schines and Demosthenes, and if you are
qualified to judge of debate between inteUectual giants
you must admit that Webster was driven from every
inch of ground chosen by him as his very strongest,
and which he confidently believed that he could hold
against the world.
Yet the union men, who were hosts in the north and
numerous even in the south at that time, accepted
Webster's speech as the bible of their political faith,
and as its reward ennobled him with the pre-eminent
title of Expounder of the Constitution, They ignored,
or they never learned of, the pulverizing refutation. But
the State-rights men and the south generally understood.
Webster also understood. He did not make any real
rejoinder. And his subsequent utterances are in har
mony with the State-rights doctrine to which Calhoun
seems to have converted him,^ I fancy that with that
rare humor which was one of his shining gifts, he
dubbed himself in his secret meditations, "Expounder
because not expounding," Later I shall tell you how
Webster builded better than he knew, and that there
was, after all, in the speech that which fully justifies the
worship it received from the union men.
But there is something else pertinent to be learned
here. That the north generally found out only what
Webster said in the debate for his side, and never even
1 See Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 388, 389-392, 397-8 ;
and Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 207-211.

yo The Brothers' War
heard of what was said on the other, and that the south
became at once familiar with both speeches, proves that
each section had already formed its own belonging
and independent pubhc, and that the southern public
kept attentive watch upon all affairs of fact or opinion
interesting the other, while the northern public knew
hardly anything at all of the south. A large percentage
of the southern leaders had studied in northern schools
and colleges. In this and many other ways they had
been instructed as to the north. Such instruction con
tributed very greatly to southern supremacy in the fed
eral government until the election of Lincoln, We can
now see that the powers in charge, as a part of their
work, made the great northern public, which, as Lincoln
observed, was to be the savior of the union, stop its
ears to all anti-union sentiments or arguments. How
else can you understand it that the ante-bellum notices
of Webster, the memoir by Everett, the different utter
ances of Choate, and many, many other sketches, are
so utterly dumb as to Calhoun's great reply? And is
not the same dumbness of Curtis, Von Hoist, and
McMaster, writing after the war, due to the survival in
the north ofthe old constraint? a constraint so powerful
that, while Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in 1883, did concede
just a little to Calhoun, he stopped far short of the full
justice that I beheve he would now render were he to
traverse the ground again.
We must now go beyond what we have already hinted,
and show you plainly how both the union men and the
State-rights men assumed untenable premises, and how
the south, maintaining a cause foredoomed, vanquished
in the forum of discussion her adversary, maintaining
the side which fate had decreed must win. In no other
way can the reader be better made to understand the
incalculable potency of the forces which preserved the

American Nationalization 71
American union after its orators and advocates had ah
been discomfited; and in no other way can he better
learn what principles are to be invoked if he would
grasp the real essence of the union.
We emphasize the material and cardinal mistake of
the union men, thus phrased by Webster in the speech
we have discussed : " Whether the constitution be a
compact between States in their sovereign capacities,
is a question which must be mainly argued from what
is contained in the instrument itself."
This was to abandon inexpugnable ground. That
ground was the great body of pertinent facts, known to
all, which begun the making of the union before the
declaration of independence, and which, from that time
on to the very hour that Webster was speaking, had
been making the union stronger and more perfect. He
ought to have contended that a nation grows; that it
cannot be made, or be at all modified, even by a
constitution. Any constitution is its creature, not its
creator. How weak he was when he invoked construction of
the federal constitution as the main umpire. That
constitution had been always construed against him.
The three departments of the federal government had
each uniformly treated it as a compact between sover
eign States; and they kept this up until the brothers'
war broke out. Mr. Stephens, in his great compilation,^
demonstrates this unanswerably. But the State-rights
men had a stih greater strength than even this, if the
question be conceded to be one of construction. As the
author of the Republic of Republics shows by a moun
tain of proofs, the illustrious draftsmen ofthe constitution
and their contemporaries who finally got the constitution
adopted — aU the people, high and low, who favored
1 W^r between the States, two volumes.

72 The Brothers' War
the cause — declared at the time that the sovereignty of
the States would remain unimpaired after adoption,^
To sum up, the generation that drafted and adopted
the constitution, and all the succeeding ones who had
lived under it, agreed that the States were sovereign.
How could even Webster talk these facts out of exist
ence? At every stage of the intersectional debate the
cause of the south supporting State sovereignty became
stronger. And there were great hosts at the north who
understood the record as the south did ; and, while they
hoped and prayed that separation would never come,
they conscientiously conceded State sovereignty to the
full. It seems to me to be the fact that, although the
federal soldiers cherished deep love for the union, a
very great majority of the more intelligent among them
did not long keep at its height the emotion excited by
the attack on Fort Sumter, and soon settled back into
their former creed, holding, because of the reasons
summarized above, the States to be sovereign; and
while they thought it supreme folly in the south to set
1 The Republic of Republics; or, American Federal Liberty. By P. C.
Centz, Barrister, 4th ed., Boston, 1881. See what I said of it in 1882, Am.
Law Studies, §§ 943, 944. Subsequent examination' and comparison
have given me a still higher opinion of this book ; which in its well-
digested presentation of evidence exhaustively collected, and complete
demonstration of its main proposition, to wit, that in the opinion of the
draftsmen, also of all the advocates of the constitution, and of the people
ratifying, the States were sovereign before adoption and would so re
main afterwards, is unique, and far foremost, in the literature of the
subject. Compare this strong statement of Henry Cabot Lodge, uttered
in 1883 :
" When the constitution was adopted by the votes of States at Phila
delphia, and accepted by the votes of States in popular conventions, it is
safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and
Hamilton on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason on the
other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment by
the States and from which each and every State had the right peaceably
to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised." Daniel
Webster, 176,

American Nationalization 73
up the confederacy, they still believed that to do so was
but the exercise of an indubitable right of the States
creating it. From what I saw at the time, and the
many proofs that appeared to accumulate upon me
afterwards, this explains the unprecedented panic with
which the federal army abandoned the field at the First
Manassas, Consider just a moment. The federal army,
giving the confederates a complete surprise, turns their
position and drives them back in rout. The confeder
ates make an unexpected stand, fight for some hours,
and at last, assuming the offensive, win the field. The
troops on each side practically all raw volunteers, very
much ahke in race and character. But the federals had
much more than two to one engaged, as is demonstrated
by the fact that the confederates had only twenty-five
regiments of infantry in action, and they took prisoners
from fifty-five, . The more one who, like me, observed
much of the war, thinks it over, the more clearly he
sees that the flight from Manassas is not to be ex
plained because of the superior courage and stamina of
the southern soldiers. I beheve that the union men,
observing how brave and death-defying their brothers
on the other side were in facing disaster that seemed
irretrievable and odds irresistible, at last became con
vinced that these brothers, defending home and fire
sides, were right, and that they themselves, invading an
inviolably sovereign State, were heinously wrong; and
thus awakened conscience made cowards of all these
gallant men. And it is thoroughly established, I be
lieve, that everywhere in the first engagements of the
war, the southern volunteers, if they were commanded
by a fighter, showed far more spirit and stomach than
their adversaries. In the amicable meetings, often oc
curring upon the picket line, when we confederates
would with good humor ask the union men how it was

74 The Brothers' War
that we won so many fights, it was a stereotyped reply
of the latter, " Why, you are fighting for your country
and we only for ^13 a month." It was but natural that,
by reason of what has been told in the foregoing, the
south unanimously, and a very large number at the
north, should believe any State could under its reserved
powers rightfully secede from the union whenever and
for whatever cause it pleased.
We see now what the angry brothers did not see.
The absolute sovereignty of the States, and the right of
secession both de facto and de jure could have been
conceded, and at the same time the war for the union
justified. The unionists could well have said to the
south :
" Your independence is too great a menace to our interests
to be tolerated, and the high duty of self-defence commands
that we resist to the death. The status quo is better for us all.
Now that you have set up for yourself, we must tell you, sadly
but firmly, that if you do not come back voluntarily, we must
resort to coercion, — not under the constitution, for you have
thrown that off, but under the law of nations to which you have
just subjected yourself"
The man who of all southerners has given State sov
ereignty its most learned and able defence — Sage, the
author of " The Republic of Republics " — says : " To
coerce a state is unconstitutional; but it is equally true
that the precedent of coercing states is established, and
that it is defensible under the law of nations," ^
To have received the confederate commissioners as
representing an independent nation, and made demand
that the seceding States return to the union, would have
1 Republic of Republics, 4th ed., 23. The entire chapter entitled
" Secession and Coercion," id. 22-27, will repay consideration, setting
forth as it does what according to the author the brothers on each side
ought to have done under the law of nations.

American Nationalization y^
been a far stronger theory than that on which the war
was avowedly waged ; for it would have -taken from the
south that superiority in the argument which had given
her great prestige in Europe, and even in the north.
And lastly, under the law of nations, the federal govern
ment, after coercing the seceding States back, would
have had — even according to the theory of State rights
as maintained in the south — perfectly legitimate power
to abolish slavery. The statement that emancipation
was " sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted
by the constitution, upon military necessity," protests
so much that one sees that the highly conscientious
man hesitated and doubted. And well may he have
doubted ; for what warrant can be found in the consti
tution for destroying that property which it solemnly
engaged to defend and protect as a condition precedent
of its adoption? — that is, if the southern States were
still in the union and under the constitution, as was
claimed by all who justified the proclamation? But if
the southern States had gone out' of the union, they had
revoked their ratification and had thrown away all the
protection of slavery given by the constitution; and
while the constitution did not direct how the federal
government should act in the matter, the law of nations
gave fuU and ample directions. Its authority was not
stinted nor hampered by any rights recognized in the
constitution as reserved to the States under it. The
subsequent amendment, imposed as a condition of re
construction, shows that the people of the north seri
ously questioned if slavery had been abolished by the
proclamation and its enforcement by the union armies.
But this, strong as it was, would not have been the
true theory. The true theory — the real fact — is that
at the outbreak of the brothers' war, and long before,
the States had become more closely connected than the

76 The Brothers' War
Siamese Twins, — indissolubly united as integral parts
of the same organism, like the different trunks of the
Banyan tree ; and while the southern nationalization
was opposing the union forces with might and main, it
was really but an excrescence, with roots far more shal
low than those of the American union — a parasite like
the mistletoe, growing upon the American body politic,
fated to die of itself if not destroyed by its fell foe.
For, as we have explained, the sole motor of this south
ern nationalization — slavery — could no more maintain
itself permanently against free labor than the hand-
loom could stand against the steam-loom, or the draft-
horse can much longer compete with artificial traction
power. Now let us rapidly set in array the stronger supports
of this true theory. We should start with the impulse
to combine which adjacency always gives to communi
ties of the same origin ; and external compression and
joint interest to those of diverse origin, as we see in the
case of the Swiss, How clearly does our great Amer
ican sociologist trace the effect of this impulse in ancient
society. First a body of consanguinei grows into a
gens ; after a while, neighboring gentes of the same
stock-language form a tribe; then neighboring tribes,
as some of the Iroquois and Aztecs, form a confederacy.
At this point the development of the American Indians
was arrested by the coming of the whites, " A coales
cence of tribes into a nation had not occurred in any
case in any part of America," says the great authority,^
But we can easily understand what would have occurred
had the Indians been left to themselves. They would
have passed out of the nomadic state into settlements of
fixed abodes, local and geographical pohtical divisions
evolving from the old gentes and tribes, the contiguous
1 Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, 103.

American Nationalization 77
ones often uniting. History furnishes many examples
of neighboring communities coalescing into nations.
One of the most remarkable of ah is the environment
which has constrained peoples of four different lan
guages to coalesce into the little Swiss nation. Turning
away from prehistoric times and also ancient history,
let the student re-enforce the case of the Swiss, just al
luded to, with the modern nation-making in Italy and
Germany, These few of the many instances which can
be given show how and what sorts of adjacent commu
nities are prone to co-operate or combine for a common
purpose, and how such combination develops at last an
irresistible proneness to national union. Drops of liquid
in proximity to one another on a plane may long main
tain each their independent forms ; but bring them into
actual contact, and presto 1 all the globules have coa
lesced into a single mass. After the belonging part of
the evolutionary science of sociology has been fully de
veloped — which time does not seem very far off — the
subject will receive adequate illustration. Then all of
us will understand that, many years before Alamance
and Lexington, the colonies, in their defence of them
selves against the Indians and the French, in their in
tercommunication over innumerable matters of joint
interest, in the beneficent example of the Iroquois con
federacy and the advice of our fathers by the Iroquois,
as early as 1755, to form one of the colonies similar to
their own,i and in many other things that can be sug
gested, were steadily becoming one people, and more and
more predisposed to pohtical union. We shaU also see,
much more clearly than we do yet, that the Revolution
ary war, by keeping them some years under a general
government, imparted new and powerful impetus to the
nationalizing forces, which were working none the less
1 Morgan, Ancient Society, 132.

78 The Brothers' War
surely because unobserved. Our lesson will be com
pletely learned when we recognize that about the time
the war with the mother country commenced the glob
ules, that is, the separate colonies, had become actu
ally a quasi-political whole, — a stage of evolution so
near to that of full nationality that it is hard to distin
guish the two. It seems to me that the nation had come
at least into rudimentary existence when the declaration
of independence was made. Surely from that time on
something wondrously like a de facto national union of
the old colonies grew rapidly, and became stronger and
stronger ; and this to me is the sufficient and only ex
planation of the seismic popular upheaval that displaced
the weaker government under the articles of confedera
tion with one endowed by the federal constitution with
ample powers to administer the affairs of the nation now
beginning to stir with consciousness. And yet so bhnd
was everybody that in 1787 the delegates and their con
stituents all believed the convention to be the organ of
the States, when in truth it was the organ of the new
American nation. Prompted by a self-preserving in
stinct, this nationality deftly kept itself hid. Had it been
disclosed, the federal constitution could not have been
adopted ; and had a suspicion of it come a few years
later, there would have been successful secession. And
so each State dreamed on its sweet dream of dominion
until the caU to the stars and stripes rang through the
north. Then its people began darkly and dimly to dis
cern the nationahzation which had united the States and
become a hoop of adamant to hold the union forever
stanch. Of course to the south nothing appeared but
the State sovereignty of the fathers. Her ihuded sight
was far clearer and more confident than the true vision
of the north, and she magnified State sovereignty which
she thought she saw, and damned the American nation-

American Nationalization 79
ality preached by the north as antiState-rights, when at
that very time a nationality of her own had really put
all the southern States at its feet. It mattered not for
the thick perception of the north and the optical illusion
of the south, the American nation was now full grown ;
and by the result of the brothers' war it made good its
claim to sovereignty.
The historian must accurately gauge the effect wrought
by the wonderfully successful career of the United
States under the federal constitution in its first years.
War with France imminent, Pinckney's winged word,
" Milhons for defence, but not a cent for tribute," the
sword buckled on again by the father of his country —
and peace ; the extension of our domain from the Miss
issippi to the Pacific by the Louisiana purchase; the
victories won against the men who used to say scorn
fully that our fathers could not stand the bayonet, and
the still more surprising victories won with an impro
vised navy against the mistress of the seas, in the war
of 1812; the brilliant operations of Decatur against
Algiers; the military power of the Indians decisively
and permanently outclassed, until soon our women and
children on the border were practically secure against
the tomahawk and scalping knife ; and perhaps above
all the world-wide spaciousness, as it were, and the in
expressibly greater dignity and splendor of the public
arena, as compared with that of any single colony or
State, which was opened at once to every ambitious
spirit — these are some, only, of the feats and achieve
ments which gave the United States unquestioned
authority at home and incomparable prestige around
the world. And on and on the American nation rushed,
from one stage of growth into and through another,
until the result was that for some years before secession
State sovereignty, for all of the high airs it gave itself

8o The Brothers' War
and the imposing show of respect it extorted, had be
come merely a survival.
Thus did the American nation form, from a number of
different neighboring, cognate, and very closely-akin
communities, under that complex of the forces of growth
and those of combination which imperceptibly and re
sistlessly steers the social organism along the entire track
of its evolution. The nationalizing leaven was hidden
by the powers in charge of our national destiny in the
colonial meal, and it had in tirne so completely leavened
the whole lump that Rhode Island, and North Carolina,
trying hard to stay out, and Texas desporting joyfully
and proudly under the lone star in her golden independ
ence, could not break the invisible leading strings, which
pulled all three into the United States, Note how Ore
gon and California, though largely settled from the south
yet being without slavery, in their extreme remoteness
from the brothers' war adhered to the union cause. And
had the southern confederacy triumphed in the war, the
States in it would have staid out of the federal union
only the few years necessary for slavery to run its course.
When there was no more virgin soil for cotton, the
southern nation, which was merely a growth upon the
American nation, would have collapsed ¦ of itself, as did
the State of Frankland ; and that continental brotherhood
which brought in Rhode Island, North Carolina, and
Texas, would have commandingly reasserted itself. The
more you contemplate the facts, the more it is seen that
this continental brotherhood was and is the most vigor
ous tap-root and stock of nationality in all history. The
providence which at first gradually and surely mixed
the colonies into one people, then into a feeble and
infirm political whole, rapidly hardening in consistency,
and lastly into an indissoluble union, and which was
from the beginning more and more developing us into

American Nationalization 8i
a nation — this overruling evolution, and not constitu
tion or lawmaking organs, has been, is, and always
will be the ultimate and supreme authority, the oppose
less lawgiver, the resistlessly self-executing higher law
in America, creating, altering, modifying or abohshing
man-made constitutions, laws, ordinances, and statutes,
as suits its own true democratic purpose, often inscru
table to contemporaries.
The foregoing is the substance of the argument that
must now take the place of that made by Webster and
the unionists after him, which was convincingly confuted
by the south. It proves the complete and immaculate
justice of the war for the union.
This view differs from the other, which we admitted
above to be very strong, mainly in refusing to concede
that a State is sovereign and can legitimately secede at
will. But under it, it ought to be conceded that the
States in the southern confederacy were for the time
actually out of the American union by revolution. It
is not possible to say they were in rebellion; that is
an offence of individuals standing by an authority hastily
improvised and manifestly sham. It was not by the
action of individuals, but it was by the action of States,
veritable political entities and quasi sovereigns, that the
confederacy was organized. When these States were
coerced back, they could not invoke the protection
to their slaves given in a constitution which they had
solemnly repudiated. The United States could there
fore deal with them as it had with the Territories from
which it excluded slavery. While of course adequate
protection of the freedmen against their former masters
ought to have been provided, it should at the same time
have been made clear to the worid that slavery was
abolished solely because events had demonstrated it to
be the only root and cause of dismemberment of the
6

82 The Brothers' War
union. Such a familiar example as the often-exercised
power of a municipality to blow up a house, without
compensation therefor, to stop the progress of conflagra
tion, and many other seemingly arbitrary acts done by
society in its self-preservation, would have occurred to
conscientious people contemplating. And it would have
been a long flight in morals above the proclamation,
merely to have justified emancipation on the ground
that the existence of slavery was a serious menace to
the life of the nation.
One's logic may be often wrong, and yet his propo-
s'ition has been rightly given him by an instinct, as we
so often see in the case of good women, O this subhm-
inal self of ours, how it bends us hither and thither,
as the solid hemisphere does the little human figure
upon it, posing with a seeming will of his own ! Hence,
and not from our argument-making faculty, come not
only our own most important principles of action, but
also our very strongest persuasive influence. And it is
the subconscious mental forces moving great masses
of men and women all the same way — that is, the
national instincts — which are the all-conquering powers
that the apostle ofa good cause arouses and sets in array.
And while it is true that the mere logic of Webster's
anti-nuUification speech is puerile, the after world will
more and more couple that speech with the reply to
Hayne, and keep the two at the top — above every
effort of all other orators. In the reply to Hayne, in
1830, he had magnified the union in a passage which ever
since has deservedly led ah selections for American
speech books. And now, in 1833, when dismemberment
actually makes menace of its ugly self, the great wizard
of speech that takes consciences and hearts captive,*
1 " It used to be a remark often made by Chief Justice Lumpkin, who
was a man himself of wonderful genius, profound learning, and the first

American Nationalization 83
proclaimed to his countrymen that there could be no
such thing as lawful secession or nuUification, The
earnestness and the emphasis with which he said this
were supreme merits of the speech. And thenceforth
it was enough to the hosts of the north to remember
that the American, towering like a mountain above them
all, had in his high place solemnly declared that seces
sion is necessarily revolution. And, to one who is famil
iar with the hypnotizing effect of subconscious national
suggestion it is not strange that they scouted Calhoun's
demolishing reply, and treasured Webster's false logic
as supreme and perfect exposition of the constitution.
of his State, that Webster was always foremost amongst those with whom
he acted on any question, and that even in books of selected pieces, when
ever selections were made from Webster, these were the best in the book."
A. H. Stephens, War between the States, vol. i. 336.

CHAPTER VI
ROOT-AND-BRANCH ABOLITIONISTS AND FIRE-EATERS
FOR a long while opposition to slavery was mod
erate and not unreasoning. The first actual
quarrel over it between the sections was when
Missouri applied for admission to the union in 1818,
That was settled by the famous compromise of 1820.
The most of the anti-slavery men of that day stood only
against the extension of slavery. While many a one of
them beheved his conviction was dictated, independently
and entirely, by his conscience, it was in fact given him
because of his relation to the free-labor nationalization
claiming the pubhc lands for itself That was also true
of the great mass of northerners opposed to slavery
down to the very beginning of the war. They wanted
the Territories for themselves. The contest between the
United States and England for Oregon is a parallel case.
The American felt, if this territory falls to the United
States, I and my children and children's children can
get cheap land somewhere in it ; but if it falls to Eng
land, I and they are forever shut out. In the intersec
tional contest over the public lands northerners felt
that they would be practically excluded from any part
of them into which slavery was carried ; for infinitely
preferring, as they did, the free-labor system, to which
they had been bred, to the slavery system, of which they
had no experience, and against which they were preju
diced, they would never voluntarily settle where it ob
tained. This, the prevalent view, brought about the

Root-and-Branch Abolitionists 85
compromise of 1820, by which all the territory north
of 36° 30' was guaranteed to free labor, that is, to the
north, not because its inhabitants were burning with
zeal to repress the spread of what they thought to
be an unspeakable moral wrong, but because they
purposed thereby to insure a fair inheritance to their
own children.
So much for what we have called the first quarrel be
tween the sections over slavery. Let us now glance at
the stages following until the root-and-branch abolitionist
shows himself.
For some twenty years after the Missouri compromise
was made there was hardly any public agitation at all as
to slavery. In 1840 an abolition ticket for the presi
dency was nominated, but it received a support much
smaller than had been currently predicted. It is not
until January, 1836, when, upon Calhoun's motion in
the senate of the United States to reject two petitions
for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,
there ensued a prolonged and passionate discussion, that
we can say that the old free-soil practically begins to
pass into an abolition movement. Here moral attack
upon slavery seriously begins. If we think but a mo
ment we will understand it too well to explain it as an
arousal of conscience, which ought to have been aroused
many years before if slavery was indeed the terrible sin
the abolitionists now commenced to say it was. The
agitation of 1830, the year that Webster replied to
Hayne, and that of 1833, when he and Calhoun crossed
swords over nullification, mark a great advance of inter
sectional antagonism beyond that of the time of the
Missouri compromise. We can see now as we look
back what contemporaries could not see, that is, that
the two were avant couriers of the southern confederacy.
But some of the contemporaries did discern the fact —

86 The Brothers' War
not consciously, but instinctively. With these there was,
in subliminal ratiocination, a process somewhat as fol
lows: The southern confederacy, if it does come, will
disrupt the union, which assures, while it lasts, immu
nity of our country from frequent wars upon its own
soil, and fropi the heavy load of great armies kept up
even in the intervals of peace. This disruption will es
tablish in America all the evil conditions of Europe from
which our fathers fled hither. Slavery is the vis matrix,
the sole developing force, the life ofthis menaced confed
eracy. Let us abolish slavery, and preserve the union.
How accurately the common instincts — especially
those protecting our private interests — discern both
the favorable and unfavorable, becomes more of a mar
vel to me every year. To them the favorable is morally
right, the unfavorable morally wrong. If the latter
threatens great injury, they excite against it deep-seated
indignation as if it were a crime. How else can you ex
plain it that all the churches, accepting the same Christ
and worshipping the same God, were at last divided, the
northern churches impugning and the southern churches
defending slavery. Dwell upon this fact until you inter
pret it aright. On one side the most conscientious and
the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally
wrong; on the other the most conscientious and best
of the south unanimous that it is morally right. Then
think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists,
and the great public leaders; and at the last consider
that the entire people of one section prayed for, fought
and died for, slavery, while that of the other did the
same things^ against it. When you do this, you must
admit that our community, our country, the society
of which we are members, fashions our consciences and
makes our opinions.
The economic interest of the north was against slav-

Root-and-Branch Abolitionists 87
ery. It was her interest to get all the territory possible
for opportunity to her free workers. It was also a tran
scendent economic interest of hers that there be no
great foreign power near her to require of her that she
put thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to
idle in a standing army. On the other side the economic
interest ofthe south in slavery was so great it commanded
her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to preserve
slavery, if that should be necessary. Each side feels
deeply and more and more angrily that the other is
seeking to rob it of the means of production and sub
sistence — the property to which of all it believes its
title most indefeasible. It required some years to bring
affairs to this point; but it was accomplished at last;
and the north was ready for the root-and-branch aboh-
tionist and the south for the fire-eater. Of course all
this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under
the guidance of the directors of evolution, who generally
have their human servants to masquerade as characters
widely different from the true. When these servants
put on high airs as if they were doing their own will
and not that of their masters, how the directors must
smile. They have guaranteed animal reproduction from
one generation to another by the impulsion of a supreme
momentary pleasure, as Lucretius most philosophically
recognizes in his dux vitce dia voluptas. The passion
of anger is the converse of that of love. When consent
cannot settle some great controversy that must be set
tled, the passion of anger is so greatly excited by the
instigation of the directors that the disputants leave ar
guments and come to blows. In the ripeness of time
the Ransy Sniffleses ^ come forth. They say and do
1 Ransy Sniffles is a character in Georgia Scenes, who has long been
a proverb in the south for one who habitually provokes personal encoun
ters among his neighbors.

88 The Brothers' War
everything possible to bring on the impending mortal
combat. They never grasp the essence of the conten
tion, for it is their mission to arouse feeling, passion,
anger. They are resistlessly — most conscientiously
and honestly — impelled to make the other side appear
detestable and insultingly offensive in heinous wrong
doing. The most zealous and the most influential of
the root-and-branch abolitionists were young when they
vaulted into the arena. Garrison was twenty-six when
he started the "Liberator" in 183 1, Wendell PhiUips
was some six years younger than Garrison, and he was
about twenty-six when he made his d6but with a power
ful impromptu in Boston, in 1837. Whittier was two
years younger than Garrison, and he was early a
co-worker in the " Liberator." It is demonstrated by
everything they said that they were entirely ignorant
of the south and its people, of the average condition of
the slave in the south, and especially of the negro's
grade of humanity. They never studied and investi
gated facts diligently and impartially, desiring only to
ascertain the truth. They assumed the facts to be as it
suited their purposes, given them by the directors, of
exciting hatred of their opponents, — and it added
greatly to their efficiency that they fully believed their
assumptions. Knowing really nothing of the negro
except that he was a man, it was natural for them to
believe, as they did, that the typical, average negro
slave of the south was in all the essentials of good
citizenship just such a human being as the typical,
average white. If they did not go quite so far, they
surely claimed for him something so near to it that
it is practically the same. We shall, as suggested
above, treat this pernicious error more fully in later
chapters. The root-and-branch abolitionists have claimed ever

Root-and-Branch Abolitionists 89
since the emancipation proclamation became effective
that the overthrow of slavery was brought about by
them; and thousands upon thousands beheving it sing
them hosannas. But it is an undeniable fact that the
superior power of free labor in its irreconcUable conflict
with slavery was bound to do in America what it had
done everywhere else. And without the abolitionist at
all the days of slavery were numbered, and they were
few even if there had been no secession, and very few
if secession had triumphed. For free labor — its fell and
implacable foe — was on the outside steadily and surely
encircling it with a wall that hemmed it from the exten
sion that was a condition of its life ; and within its ring
fence necessarily it was rapidly exhausting all of its
resources. It was the mighty counteraction of free
labor that crushed slavery. The root-and-branch aboli
tionist thrown up by this movement which had set
forward irresistibly, long before he was ever heard of,
and who believed that he started it and was guiding it,
strikingly examples the proverb
" Er denkt zu schieben und ist geschoben,"
I believe that future history will give him credit only
for having a httle hastened forward the inevitable.
Another abolition misstatement ought to be cor
rected. Sumner fulminated against what he caUed the
oligarchs of slavery. And it was common at the north
to speak of southern aristocracy and southern aristo
cratic institutions. Of course the slaves had no political
privUeges, no more than they had in Athens, which has
always been deemed the most genuine repubhc ever
known. There was in the old south no ohgarch, or
anything like him, unless you choose to call such a
man as Calhoun an oligarch, whose influence over his
State was entirely from the good opinion and unexam-

90 The Brothers' War
pled confidence of the free citizens of all classes, which
he had won. There was no aristocracy, except such a
natural one as can be found in every one of our States,
as is Ulustrated by the Adamses in Massachusetts, the
Lees in Virginia, and the Cobbs in Georgia. In those
days property was much more equally distributed than
now ; and it was easy for the energetic and saving poor
young man, ofthe humblest origin, to make his way up.
In all my day there was universal suffrage, and it was
political death to propose any modification. I ex
plained nearly thirty years ago how southern conditions
prevented the development of anything like the benefi
cent New England town-meeting system.^ But for all of
that the entire spirit of southern society was democratic
in the extreme, far more so than it is now with the
nominating machinery everywhere in the south except
South Carolina, controlled by corporation oligarchs.
When the root-and-branch abolitionist inveighed against
oligarchy and aristocracy, and aristocratic institutions
in the south, he was just as mistaken as he was in de
nouncing what he asserted to be the guilt in morals of
slaveholding. The more I study the abolitionists whom I distin
guish as root-and-branch, the more completely self-de
ceived as to facts, the wilder and more emotional I find
them to be, I have just mentioned some of their mis
representations ; and in later chapters I shall dwell upon
their cardinal mistake as to the place of the negro in the
human scale, I have not sufficient space for more of
these things, I will give just one example of their wild
ness. They put in circulation that Toombs had said
he expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the
foot of Bunker Hill monument, — a slander which they
persisted in renewing after he had solemnly and pubhcly
1 See infra, p. 436.

Root-and-Branch Abolitionists 91
denied it.^ In their excited imaginations they were
sure that the south was cherishing a scheme by which,
under the help of the court that made the Dred Scott
decision, slavery was to be estabhshed and protected by
law everywhere in the north. The only parallel I can
think of to this utterly groundless panic is that of some
poor souls in the Confederate ranks in front of Rich
mond in 1862, who, when they learned that Jackson
had got in the enemy's rear, expressed lively fears that
he was going to drive McCleUan's army over them.
And the fire-eaters, — how they got important facts
wrong ! They habitually said that the northern masses
were too untruthful and dishonest for us of the south to
stay in the partnership without disgrace and loss of self-
respect, I heard of one who was wont gravely to assert
that prostitutes and ice were all that the south was de
pendent upon the north for ; and these were only lux
uries which it was better to do without. Perhaps the
height of falsification by the hotspurs was the assertion,
made everywhere again and again, that northerners
were such cowards that, even if they were spurred into a
war in defence of the union, any one average south
erner would prove an overmatch for any five of them.
It is now high time that each section turn resolutely
away from these fanatics, and the literature which they
have made or informed, to seek right instruction as to
slavery, the struggle over it, the characters of the
masses on each side and of their leaders, and all other
belonging details, in the real facts, E.specially must we
understand the internecine duel between free labor and
slavery, and what was the purpose of the directors of
evolution placing the fanatical abolitionist and the fire-
eater upon the stage. When we grasp that purpose
1 See what he said February 20, i860, in the United States senate, to
Clark, repeating the charge, as reported in the " Globe."

92 The Brothers' War
clearly, how pretentious do we understand their claims
and self-laudation to be, and how clearly we see that
they are like the fly on the cart-wheel that became so
vain of the great dust it was raising, and also like the
little fice egging on the big dogs to do their fighting. I
have still vivid recollections of hearing in amicable in
terviews of hostile pickets these characters denounced
for keeping out of the war which, as was then said, they
had caused, — the fanatical abolitionists denounced by
the federals, the fire-eaters, original secessionists, the
blue cockade wearers, by the confederates.

CHAPTER VII
CALHOUN
A FTER John Caldwell Calhoun, who was born
ZA March i8, 1782, the birth-year of Webster, had
JL A become large enough to go to the field, the
most of his time until he was eighteen was spent in
work on the plantation. His father had never had but
six months' schooling. There were no schools in that
region except a few " old field " ones, where the three
R's only were taught. To one of these John went for a
few months. The boy learned to read, and manifestly he
had acquired some habit of reading. In his thirteenth
year he was sent to school to his brother-in-law, Moses
Waddell, who was an unusually good teacher. He
found a circulating library in the house. This was
his first access to books. , He read old Rollin, and
he probably moused about in Robertson's History of
America and Life of Charles V, and Voltaire's Charles
XII. Having laid Rollin aside, he assaUed Locke's
famous Essay; but when he got to the chapter on
Infinity his health had become bad, doubtless due to
his change from active to sedentary habits and from
physical to mental activity. So he was taken back to
his work at home. His father had died in the mean
while, and his mother, who had great business talent,
taught him, as we are told, "how to administer the
affairs of a plantation." ^ It wUl appear in the sequel
1 W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun's Early Life, Calhoun
Correspondence, 69.

94 The Brothers' War
that he was superbly trained.^ When he attained the
age of eighteen the family had become convinced that
he ought to be got ready for a profession, John, know
ing himself to be the mainstay of his mother, and having
resolved to be a planter, at first would not hear to this.
But the family persisted. This doubtless influenced him
to turn the subject carefully over in his mind ; and the
decision which he made showed an understanding of his
own peculiar talents and needs, and also a prescience of
his future which, when his youth, small opportunity of
observation, and want of schooling are remembered, are
very wonderful. He gave this family, who were not well-
to-do, to understand he would not accept a limited and
makeshift education. Naturally they asked what sort
did he mean, and he answered, " The best school, col
lege, and legal education to be had in the United
States,"^ Then they asked, How long did he think
all this would take, and he promptly answered seven
years. To the average reader it seems that the time
necessary to carry this unschooled lad through the
course he proposed had been egregiously underesti
mated by him ; but to the family, as they thought of
the appertaining annual expenses, it must have looked
very long. They had to give in. That irrefragable in
fluence over his people which showed itself as soon as
he came upon the public stage begins here. Some one
long afterwards said of him, that if he could but talk
with every man he would always have the whole United
States on his side. It is more than probable that in the
five years after he had left WaddeU's school he had, in
1 The inscription on her tombstone states— so I have been informed
— that she died in May, 1802. In a short while afterwards he put the
mother of his future wife in her place and bestowed on her the highest
filial love.
2 W. Pinkney Starke, Account of Calhoun's Early Life, Calhoun
Correspondence, 78,

Calhoun 95
plantation management and other interests of the family,
convinced them that he always acted or advised wisely.
Another comment is in place here. Study of the record
of his early hfe convinces you that very soon after, if
not before, the commencement of his legal studies, he
decided to make law only a stepping-stone by which to
enter public life and also acquire the means to plant. I
cannot help inferring that this was — somewhat vaguely
it may be — his intention already formed when he dic
tated terms to the family as just told. It is not at all
impossible that to him who afterwards astonished the
world by the sureness of his prophecy there had even
then been revealed the career awaiting; and so he re
solved to get ready for college in two years, and pass
the rest of the seven where, besides competent instruc
tors, he would have cultivated society, libraries, and the
best of opportunities to qualify himself for public life.
Be our conjecture true or not, in two years after he had
opened his Latin grammar he entered the junior class
at Yale, and two years later he graduated with credit.
After reading law in an office he took a year's course at
the Litchfield law school in Connecticut, and then he
went into an office again for a while. Some time in
June, 1807, he hung out his shingle at Abbeville Court
house, as it was called up to the time of reconstruction.
A few days afterwards in that month occurred the attack
on the Chesapeake, and when the news came it caused
a public meeting in the town. Some good report of
him must have been bruited about in the community in
advance of his coming. It is almost certain that his
education had greatly developed those powers of con
versation mentioned above, and that many hsteners had
greatly approved his views of the outrage, and the patri
otic indignation he uttered over it. It is not stretching
probability too far to assert that, young as he was, he

96 The Brothers' War
was by far the ablest man that could be found in the
locality to advise upon the burning question which had
arisen so suddenly. He was selected to draft appro
priate resolutions and present them. There is no record
of these or of his speech. But as we know that the
resolutions carried, and that tradition still reports ad
miringly of the speech, we may be sure that his per
formance in both was extraordinarily good. Although
there had been a strong popular prejudice in the county
— or district, as it was then called — against lawyer rep
resentatives, October 13, 1807, less than four months
after the meeting just described, he was elected to the
legislature at the head of the ticket.
In that day presidential electors were appointed by
the State legislatures. Shortly after the session of this
legislature to which Calhotin had been elected opened,
there was an informal meeting of the republican members
to make nominations for president and vice-president.
The first was unanimously given to Madison. When the
other was up, Calhoun declared his conviction that there
was soon to be war with England. At such a time there
should be no dissension in the party. He gave strong
reasons why George Clinton should not be nominated,
as had been proposed ; and he suggested John Lang
don of New Hampshire as the proper man. The thor
ough acquaintance with the grave situation which he
manifested, the due respect he showed Clinton while
opposing his nomination, and the ability with which
he discussed the question, advanced him at once to a
place among the most distinguished members of the
legislature, " Several important measures were originated by Mr.
Calhoun while in the legislature which have become
a permanent portion of the legislation of the State,
and he soon acquired an extensive practice at the

Calhoun 97
bar," 1 He kept in the very midst of the pohtical swim.
His reputation as an honest, true, and able adviser had
become so great and influential that the people, in their
warm approval of the strong measures he advocated as
preparation for the threatened war, pushed him out as
their candidate for congress and elected him most tri
umphantly in October, 1810, The first session of this,
the twelfth congress, commenced November 4, 181 1,
Clay, then speaker of the house, evidently expecting
much of him, gave him the second place in the com
mittee on foreign relations. There came before the
house a measure contemplating an increase of the army
in view of the war which appeared to many to be nearer
than ever, John Randolph was against it. In March,
1799. a year before Calhoun started to school, Ran
dolph, then not twenty-six years old, had fearlessly met
the great Patrick Henry in stump discussion, and had,
in the opinion of his auditors, got the better of it. He
was elected to congress in this year. Steadily since
then he had developed, until he was now one of the
most prominent figures upon the national stage. While
his powers of discussion of a subject were great, the
power that especially characterized him was that of non
plussing his antagonist with a snub or a sarcasm. Ran
dolph made an earnest speech, Calhoun replied. It
is not enough to say of this speech that it evinces full
mastery of the subject. It presents every important
view most effectively, satisfactorily answering every
thing which had been said on the other side. And
it is especially happy in the wise use made at each
proper place of the commands of morality and patri
otism, Mr, Pinkney has instructively and entertainingly illus-
1 Starke's Account of Calhoun's Early Life, Calhoun Correspond
ence, 87. 7

98 The Brothers' War
trated this speech by his excerpts.^ To them I here
add another, which I would have you consider, — Ran
dolph had strenuously insisted that the cause of this
war, said by the other side to be impending, should first
be defined ; and until this plain duty was done there
should be no preparation. To this Calhoun said :
" The single instance alluded to, the endeavor of Mr. Fox to
compel Mr. Pitt to define the object of the war against France,
will not support the gentleman from Virginia in his position.
That was an extraordinary war for an extraordinary purpose.
It was not for conquest, or for redress of injury, but to impose
a government on France which she refused to receive — an ob
ject so detestable that an avowal dared not be made,"
This is a thrust which Randolph especially could
appreciate. The more I examine this first speech of a very young
member of congress upon a question of such transcend
ent importance to the people of the United States, the
more sound, able, complete, — to sum up in one word, —
the more statesmanly it appears, I am confident that
whoever will weigh it carefully will agree with me. He
will not be surprised to learn that it carried the house
decisively. Even in Randolph's own State it drew great
praise. But its fame went abroad everywhere, and it
was revealed to America that she had found among her
public men another giant.
In the year 1800 Calhoun was a lad of eighteen, with
out even a complete common school education. Rep
resent to yourself clearly what he had accomphshed in
the interval from the year last mentioned to Decem
ber 12, 1 8 II, when, not yet thirty, he made the speech
we have just considered. If aiiy pubhc man of America,
burdened with such disadvantages, has surpassed, or
1 Life of John C. Calhoun. By Gutasvus M. Pinkney, of the Charles
ton, S. C, Bar, Charleston, S. C, 1903.

Calhoun 99
even equaUed, this meteoric stride, I do not now recall
him, I am not emphasizing especially that he got to
congress in such a short while. What I do especially
emphasize is that he so early won place as an eminent
statesman. In these eleven years he lost no time at all
in idleness, or probation, or waiting.
January 8, 18 11, some three months after his election
to congress, he married his cousin, Floride Calhoun —
not a first cousin, but a daughter of a first cousin. His
letters of courtship, not to her, but, in the old style, to
her mother; his only letter to .her, written shortly be
fore the marriage ; and other letters from and to him
afterwards, all of which you can read in the Corre
spondence, — show him to be such a lover, father, brother,
son-in-law, brother-in-law, grandfather, etc, as every
body wants. Some South Carolinian, adequately gifted,
ought to tell befittingly the tale of Calhoun's beautiful
domestic life,
I must now mention some other facts which will fur
ther enhghten you as to the man,
I was fourteen when Calhoun died. For four or five
years before, and afterwards until I went to the brothers'
war, I heard much of Calhoun from relatives in Abbe
ville county and the Court House, I still recall most
vividly what a paternal uncle habitually said of the
brightness and unexampled impressiveness of Calhoun's
eyes, and the charm and instructiveness of his conver
sation. In Georgia there was not a public man whose
course in politics commended itself to all of my acquaint
ances, I had become accustomed to hearing much dis
paragement of Toombs and of Stephens, with whom I was
most familiar. But my South Carolina relatives, and
every man or woman of that State whose talk I listened
to; every boy or girl with whom I talked myself, yea,
all of the negroes, — always warmly maintained the

loo The Brothers' War
rightfulness of Calhoun's politics, national or State, I
thought it a good hit when a Georgia aunt of mine
dubbed the Palmetto State " The Kingdom of Cal
houn," and AbbeviUe Court House " its capital." This
universal political worship was a great surprise to me.
But there was a still greater one to come. That was,
that according to all accounts, and without any contra
diction, in spite of his living away from home the most
of his time, he yet gave his planting interests and aU
else appertaining the very best management, and with
such unvarying financial success it would be unkind to
compare Webster's money-wasting and amateur farming
at Marshfield, In this community, where he seemed to
be known as well as he was before he removed to Fort
Hill, some sixty miles distant, in 1825, he had become a
far greater authority in business than he had even at
tained in politics. His acquaintances all sought his
advice, which they followed when they got it; thus
making this busiest of public servants their agricultural
oracle. The reader will find in Starke's memoir and the Cor
respondence ample proofs of that dihgent attention of
Calhoun to his home affairs which made him the excep
tionally successful planter that he was. Starke hap
pily calls him " the great farmer-statesman of our
country." ^
Now let us see where he made his mark as an able
business man in another place. He was Monroe's sec
retary of war from 181 7 to 1825, When he entered
the office he found something like $50,000,000 of un
settled accounts outstanding, and jumble in every branch
of the service. He soon brought down the accounts to
a few milhons. And he reduced the annual expendi
ture of four to two and a half milhons, " without sub-
1 Calhoun Correspondence, 88.

Calhoun i o i
tracting a single comfort from either officer or soldier,"
as he says with becoming pride. He established it, that
the head of every subordinate department be respon
sible for its disbursements. His economy was not par
simonious. He was especially popular at West Point,
for which he did great things, and with the officers and
men of the army.
And if one chose to look through the belonging parts
of the Correspondence and the other accessible perti
nent records, he will find ample proofs that he was ever
alert to all the duties of his office, performing each one,
whether important or trivial, with the height of skill and
dUigence, Consider, as to his career in the war department, this
language of one ofthe most inveterate of his disparagers :
" Many of his friends and admirers had with regret seen him
abandon his seat in the legislative hall for a place in the presi
dent's council. They apprehended that he would, to a great
extent, lose the renown which he had gained as a member of
congress, for they thought that the didactic turn of his mind
rendered him unfit to become a successful administrator. He
undeceived them in a manner which astonished even those who
had not shared these apprehensions. The department of war
was in a state of really astounding confusion when he assumed
charge of it Into this chaos he soon brought order, and the
whole service of the department received an organization so
simple and at the same time so efficient that it has, in the main,
been adhered to by all his successors, and proved itself capable
of standing even the test of the civil war," ^
Now let us glance at his magnificent success in win
ning for the United States the vast territory of Texas
and Oregon. The latter had long been in dispute
between us and England. Ever since 1818 it had been
jointly occupied under agreement. We wanted all of
1 Von Hoist, John C. Calhoun, 41.

ro2 The Brothers' War
it; and of course as our settlements in the west ap
proached nearer and nearer, our desire for it mounted.
And England wanted all of it too. Soon after Texas
achieved her independence she applied for admission
into our union, but as the settlers had carried slavery
with them free-soil opposition kept her out. Texas got
in debt, and the only thing for her to do was to tie to
some great power willing to receive her, England, see
ing her opportunity, was trying to propitiate Mexico in
order, with the favor of the latter, to get Texas for her
self. Of course the south wanted Texas to come in, but
the free-soilers did not. And the north wanted Oregon;
and although its soil and climate did not admit of slavery,
the south was against its acquisition unless the conces
sion be made that it be permitted to slavery to occupy
all the suitable soil of the Territories, As early as 1843
Calhoun, with his piercing vision, saw the situation
clearly. If the dispute as to Oregon provoked war,
England could throw troops thither from China by a
much shorter route than ours, the latter going as it did
from the States on the Atlantic coast around Cape
Horn. That would be bad enough for us. But sup
pose England gets Texas, A hostile power, with a
vast empire of land, will spring up under the very nose
of the States, where our adversary will acquire a base of
operations in the highest degree unfavorable to us.
Then England will rise in her demands as to Oregon,
and perhaps win all of it from us. In an affair of inter
dependent contingencies it is of the first importance to
do the right thing instead of the wrong thing first.
Texas was ripe, Oregon was not. Calhoun saw the first
thing to do was to annex Texas, For when England
cannot secure that base of operations in Texas she wiU
shrink from making Oregon a cause of war, and while
she is hesitating, Oregon — which is near to us and far

Calhoun 103
from her — is steadily filling with population in which
settlers from the United States more and more prepon
derate ; and at the same time the populous States are
fast approaching. After a while the inhabitants wiU all
practically be on our side, and they will have hosts of
allies to the eastward in supporting distance, which
would give us an invincible advantage in case war for
Oregon does come. This is what Calhoun styled " mas
terly inactivity" on our part, and which, had it been
fully carried out as he advised, Oregon would now
extend much further north than it does. To sum up in
a line, he saw that activity as to Texas and inactivity as
to Oregon was each masterly.
But the hotheads of the south and the fanatical wing
of the anti-slavery men at the north rose up, obstructing
his way like mountains. At the same time there was
lack of vision in even the leaders of each section who
could rise to patriotism above prejudice, Polk blun
dered in not continuing Calhoun as secretary of State,
in which place he had made so good a beginning that
it soon accomplished the annexation of Texas. In his
inaugural Polk asserted that our title to Oregon was
good,' and to be maintained by arms if need be ; and he
went further away from " masterly inactivity " in his
first annual message. He evoked great popular excite
ment, and " Fifty-four forty or fight ! " and " AU of Ore
gon or none ! '' came forth in passionate ejaculations in
every corner of the land, Calhoun had been called
from retirement to take Texas and Oregon in hand, and
when Polk made a new secretary he went back into the
retirement for which he greatly longed. The record
shows that the best men of aU parties, north and south,
felt that as Tyler's secretary he was the man of all to
manage the two matters so vitally important to the
United States, and they deeply regretted that the place

I04 The Brothers' War
was not continued to him by Polk, And now instead of
the happy settlement they had been sure the master
would effect, the country was face to face with a war
that portended direful disaster to each section. The
eyes of patriots turned to Calhoun again; and as he
cannot be secretary, he must be in the senate. And a
way being made, he was seated in due time. It needs
not to go into much detail. The situation had changed
greatly. The especial thing to do now was to avoid
war. And as a resolution to terminate the joint occupa
tion had been passed by congress, and as the ire of
Great Britain had been greatly aroused, there must at
once be a settlement of the Oregon controversy. And
so the controversy was compromised and averted, this
good result being mainly due to the efforts of Calhoun,
Even Von Hoist calls his speech of March i6, 1846,
great. It will live forever. It is paying it gross dis
respect to treat it as mere oratory, even if one concede
to it the highest eloquence. It voices the ripest wisdom
of the ablest practical statesman dealing with a most
momentous public affair, in a crisis delicate and perilous
in the extreme. The vindication of the true course of
action is majestic. But to my mind the great achieve
ment of the speech is his sublime philanthropic depre
cation of war between England and America. When
the papers told us at the outbreak of our war with Spain
that all the British subjects on the warships of the latter
had thrown up their places, it seemed to me that nothing
else could so fairly omen co-operation of England and
America in the near future to democratize and make
happy the world. And I believe that that inexpressi
bly sweet token of Anglo-American brotherhood would
have been postponed at least a half-century, if not much
longer, had it not been for that speech.
This speech likewise discomfited pro-slavery and

Calhoun 105
anti-slavery fanatics alike, and won the hearty approval
of the wisest and best of every part of the country.
Calhoun's self-education merits the closest attention.
Railroaded through school and college, as he was, his
tuition was necessarily defective in some important
particulars. In the main he spelled accurately, but the
Correspondence shows that he wrote " sylable," " in-
disoluably," " weat " for wet, " merical " for miracle,
" sperit," " disappinted," " abeated," etc. It is doubtless
to be regretted that he did not have larger familiarity
with polite literature. Admitting these faults, still we
must know he had been uncommonly studious and
thoughtful to win his degree in four years after his start
to school ; but his systematic study, careful observation,
and hard thinking really commenced with his entrance
of public life, and were kept up to his very death.
Note this pertinent excerpt from Webster's memorial
speech, in which I italicize a passage happily describ
ing his studies:
" I have not, in public nor private life, known a more assid
uous person in the discharge of his appropriate duties, I have
known no man who wasted less of life in what is called rec
reation, or employed less of it in any pursuits not connected
with the immediate discharge of his duty. He seemed to have
no recreation but the pleasure of conversation with his friends.
Out of the chambers of congress, he was either devoting himself
to the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to the immediate sub
ject of the duty before him, or else he was indulging in those
social interviews in which he so much delighted."
From his first speech in congress to the end oif his
life you note that he has always mastered the pertinent
facts, literature, and guiding principles of whatever he
has to do with, whether in speech or action. This in
dicates continuous, most industrious, and most wise
self-instruction, I beheve it was Mr. Parton who said

io6 The Brothers' War
that Jefferson was the best educated man of his time.
His full equipment from aU belpnging learning and
science was surpassed only by the versatility with
which he instantly solved all new questions. But Cal
houn's was more of a special training than Jefferson's.
Having for some years learned by doing, — doing after
the best study and reflection, consistent with due
promptness, that he could give each thing he had to
do, — his capital of knowledge and developed faculty
had become all-sufficient. Stephens, a profound student
of both Jefferson and Calhoun, makes this comparison:
" Amongst the many great men with whom he associated,
Mr. Calhoun was by far the most philosophical statesman of
them all. Indeed, with the exception of Mr. Jeflferson, it may
be questioned if in this respect the United States has ever pro
duced his superior." *
Government — that is, good democratic government
— he studied all his life with rare devotion. His two
special works,^ and the parallel parts of his speeches,
warmly commended by such a thinker and friend of
democracy as John Stuart Mill, are sufficing proof. In
all the long tract from Plato and Aristotle down to the
popularization of direct legislation, which commences
with the publication of Mr, Sullivan's pamphlet a few
years ago, there is to be found nobody who has pene
trated so deeply into the secrets of those principles by
which alone true democracy must be maintained. With
what clear vision does he read us lessons from the
unanimous veto of the Roman tribunes; the political
history of the twelve tribes of Israel; the balance of
interests in the English constitution and our own, in
tended to guarantee what he calls government of the
1 War between the States, vol. i. 341.
2 A Disquisition on Government, and A Discourse on the Constitu
tion and Government of the United States, Works, vol. i.

Calhoun 1 07
concurrent majority. His iUustration from the confed
eracy of Indian Tribes is to be especially emphasized as
demonstration of his industry in collecting his materials
and of his great insight.^
I must give still another example, which I am sure
will yet benignly enlighten America,
Ever since Adam Smith feU into my hands in early
manhood I have had a strong predUection for political
economy. My conviction during the brothers' war that
proper managenient ofthe currency of the confederacy
was indispensable to the success of our cause initiated
me into an earnest study of the science of money.
And later intense interest in the greenback question,
and afterwards the silver question, added to the im
petus. The longer I observed the more plainly I saw a
few private persons controlling the coinage, the green
backs, and the national bank currency of purpose to
monopolize government credit, and also fix the interest
rate and the price level, at any particular time, as suited
their selfish interests. The remedy became clear, —
government must retake and fulfil all its money func
tions. Especially must it keep the country supplied
with a volume of money which never becomes either
redundant or contracted. How to do this properly
brought up the question. What is money? What is it
that makes a sheep, or cow, or coin, or piece of paper,
money? For the true answer to this question is the
very beginning and foundation of all monetary science,
I took up Ricardo again, who, with a solitary exception
mentioned a little farther on, had, from the time I
turned into him during my study of the confederate
currency, of all the economists by profession, showed to
me the best understanding of the real nature of money ;
and of course John Stuart MUl, Jevons, Carl Marx, and
1 Works, vol. i. (A Disquisition on Government) 72.

io8 The Brothers' War
others of less note, were examined. The result con
firmed Ricardo in his primacy; although I felt that the
true nature of money was assumed — rather vaguely —
by him, and not clearly expressed as it ought to be, I
believed myself familiar with all the important work of
Calhoun. Somehow I had overlooked his contributions
to this subject, A few brief quotations from the more
unimportant of these I found in certain American
books, which made me read the pertinent speeches.^
It was a most inexpressible surprise to me to find that
he had perfected Ricardo, Briefly stated, this is the
true doctrine according to Calhoun. It is not legal-
tender laws, nor is it intrinsic value, which makes even
gold go as money. Well, what is it? Calhoun was not
the first to answer it, for others had given the true
answer; but they ran away from it as soon as they
made it. He divined the full satisfactoriness of the
true answer, which he demonstrated to be true by a
method as nearly mathematical as the case admits of.
And he lightens up what was dark before by showing
that that is money, and good money, whatever it may
be, — gold, silver, paper, property, what not, — which
the government receives in payment of its dues. The
practice of the government, — not laws, nor the market
value of different materials of money, — this is the great
thing. If the United States should refuse to receive
gold for its dues, that would so greatly lessen the
demand for gold as money that the coin would depre
ciate and drop out of circulation. Nothing — not the
precious metals, not diamonds of the first water, not ra
dium, not the bills of the best bank, not greenbacks, not
treasury notes — can maintain themselves as money if
1 They were made in the United States Senate, one, September 19,
1837, on the bill authorizing issue of treasury notes ; the other, October 3,
1837, on his amendment of the bill just mentioned.

Calhoun 1 09
the government will not receive it. This is the first half
of the subject, Calhoun adds the other by showing that
whatever the government makes money, its volume can
always be kept of the proper quantity, — which proper
quantity varies with the needs of commerce, — so as to
avoid the too much or too little. His illustration from
the treasury notes of North Carolina, which could not
be a legal tender under the federal constitution, but
which circulated briskly and buoyantly and stayed at par
for many years, because they were received without
discount by the State, and also because their volume
was kept within bounds, will yet greatly help the cause
of honest money.
In the achievement just told Calhoun not only ex
celled the economists of his day, but he is yet in ad
vance of all of the present except Del Mar,^ — the only
economist who has excelled Ricardo in divining the
essence of money. These two alone explain clearly
and fully why it is that bankers keep such tenacious
grip upon the money function of government — they
thereby so shape its practice that their wares shall be
money, with all the incidents of profit therefrom, and
no others shall, Del Mar never quotes him ; and I al
most know he has never studied his views upon this
subject. America will yet have a " rational money," a term
which Prof Frank Parsons has happily chosen as the
name of his invaluable book.^ To win it she must fight
1 His " Barbara Villiers " and his " History of Money in America" are
very important. But his most valuable addition to the few books which
have taught true monetary doctrine is his " Science of Money." While in
this he does not state the fundamental principle of good money as clearly
as Calhoun does, yet he assumes it most accurately and builds upon it
everywhere. " " Rational Money," published by C. F. Taylor, 1520 Chestnut Street,
Philadelphia. The author does not show the deep insight and genial

no The Brothers' War '
many battles with the money power. When this war of
the people is waging by the people for the people, the
doctrine of Calhoun will be the banner of the right.
After the sordid money oligarchy is overthrown and
the United States is blessed with a people's money, that
benign deliverance will add prodigiously to the fame of
Calhoun. My space does not admit of teUing you how deeply
Calhoun loathed the spoils system. That must be
borne in mind, and taken into account in any true esti
mate of him as a statesman.
I deem it especially important to have you consider
his standing with the people of his State. Literally his
word was law in South Carolina. Hayne in 1832, and
Huger in 1845, resigned their seats in the national sen
ate to give place to him. Everybody in his State al
ways wanted him to lead, and everybody always wanted
him to lead according to his own will. This unwonted
influence, utterly without precedent, was due to the ac
curate measure which the masses had taken of him.
As he lived and aged among them they knew him bet
ter and better to be irreproachable in private and public
life, the ablest of the able, the most diligent of the
diligent, and the truest of the true as a representative
or official, and of that severe and lofty virtue which
scorns all popularity that is not the reward of righteous
ness. And so he became example, model, worship, to
all classes. The forty years politic^ ascendency of
Pericles in the Athenian democracy is the only befit
ting historical parallel which I can think of. Familiar
with the State from boyhood, I have long thought its
originality of Calhoun and Del Mar ; but he has presented the entire
subject with a judgment so sane in accepting the true and rejecting the
false in the belonging theory, that the book is the very best of existing
compilations.

Calhoun in
people the most advanced of the south. In spite of the
revenge wreaked upon her in war, and in spite of the
direr devastation of the twelve years of negro rule fol
lowing the fall of the Confederate States, that little
community, with her dispensary and her system of
really direct nomination,^ to say nothing of her wise
1 To be nominated in the South Carolina primary, a candidate for
governor or any other State place must receive a majority in the whole
State, one for congress a majority in the district, one for a county place
a majority in the county. Where no candidate receives a majority a
new primary is held only to decide between the two who got the largest
vote. The primary first mentioned is a State primary, held on the last
Tuesday of August. At this date, the crop — to use planting parlance —
having been laid by for some six weeks, the voters have had ample
opportunity from reading the papers, talks with one another, and hear
ing speeches to inform themselves fully. Just across the Savannah in
Georgia, the State democratic executive committee, so called, being the
faithful organ of the railroads, has since 1898 put the primary in the
early days of June, in busiest crop-time. This precludes any real canvass.
It also keeps thousands from voting ; and so the always full turnout of
railroad regulars and workers — which is but a relatively small portion of
the body of electors — wins a plurality. The committee allows a plurality
to nominate, as of course a plurality can be had raore easily than a ma
jority. To be sure of the State senate, nominations to it are made by a
convention instead of a primary. And conventions in the congressional
districts nominate candidates for tbe lower house.
Contrasting the results — in South Carolina nomination is really the
voice of the people ; In Georgia the people seem to get, while the rail
roads really get, the governor, and, as everybody now expects, the
railroads and liquor men always have at least twenty-three of the forty-
four senators.
I believe that the Swiss-like grip of the people of South Carolina
upon their liberties, shaming Georgia so greatly as it does, is mainly due
to the influence of Calhoun. That influence is still benignly powerful,
even where unrecognized,
I think that if the dispensary law were so altered as to give each
county the purchase of its liquor by, say, its supervisor, nominated by
this primary, the opportunity of graft, now discrediting the administra
tion of the law with many, would be effectually closed. There would
then be everywhere a trustworthy official, of their own election, to keep
the people advised as to proper prices and cost. It would be to lose all
chance of re-election for the official to cheat the public by colluding with
the liquor sellers.

112 The Brothers' War
management of aU her material resources, is teaching
the nation lessons of the highest wisdom. These are
the people from whom Calhoun won a crown more re
splendent than any other of our States has ever be
stowed upon a loved son. How eloquent were her last
offices. Read Mr, Pinkney's extracts from the " Carolina
Tribute," narrating the reception of his mortal remains in
Charleston : ^ the novel procession of vessels, display
ing emblems of mourning, the solemn landing at noon,
an imposing train moving amid houses hung with
black, " a Sabbath-like stillness " resting on the city,
" The solemn minute gun, the waU of the distant bell,
the far-off spires shrouded in the display of grief, the
hearse and its attendant mourners waiting on the spot,
alone bore witness that the pulse of life still beat within
the city, that a whole people in voiceless woe were
about to receive and consign to earth all that was mor
tal of a great and good citizen,"
Appropriately and impressively Mr, Pinkney closes
his description of this forever memorable demonstration
by quoting Carlyle's " How touching is the loyalty of
men to their sovereign man," ^
Some men reserve out of the pillage of their fellows a
great fund to signalize their graves. Stronger cars must
be made, bridges strengthened, and too narrow passages
avoided by long circuits in order that their huge piles
be transported to the conspicuous spot selected in a
fashionable cemetery. How the funerals which a weep
ing people give a Calhoun, Liebknecht, Pingree, Altgeld,
and other true ones dwindle such monuments into small
ness and contempt!
I must add something here to what has been said in
the foregoing of Calhoun's speeches. Somebody must
after a while do for him what the compilation called
1 Lite of John C, Calhoun, 225-229. 2 jd.

Calhoun 113
" The Great Speeches and Orations " has done so well
for Webster. His very greatest effort is that against the
force biU, dehvered in the United States senate Febru
ary IS and 16, 1833, As an appeal in behalf of the
rights of the minority against the oppressive majority
it is unequaUed. AU through it, from its most befitting
exordium to the righteous indignation of the closing
sentence, there are passages which " the world will not
wUlingly let die," No one who has ever given it atten
tion can forget the paragraph defending Carolina against
the charge of passion and delusion ; that demohshing as
by a tornado the assertion of a senator that the bill was
a measure of peace ; the far-famed one as to metaphysi
cal reasoning ; what is said as to the nature of the con
test between Persia and Greece ; the rupture in the tribes
of Israel graphically expounded ; the first mention of the
government of "the concurring majority" as distinct
from and far better than that of the absolute majority;
the lesson to us of the Roman tribunes. To read this
speech becomingly, purge yourself of all prejudice ; by
an adequate effort of the historical imagination see all •
the main things of the then situation, and put yourself
fully in Calhoun's place, so that you cannot fail to feel
all of his deep earnestness. You wiU have succeeded
when you can rightly appreciate this outburst :
" Will you collect money when it is acknowledged that it is
not wanted ? He who earns the money, who digs it from the
earth with the sweat of his brow, has a just title to it against
the universe. No one has a right to touch it without his con
sent except his government, and this only to the extent of its
legitiraate wants. To take more is robbery ; and you propose
by this bill to enforce robbery by murder."
When I pronounced that against the force biU, the
greatest of his speeches, I was not unmindful of his last,
8

114 The Brothers' War
that of March 4, 1850, not four weeks before his death.
I can hardly class it as a speech. It was a revelation of
the woe in store for America if the abolition movement
was not checked. Its analysis and demonstration of the
preponderant power of the north, and its retrospection
over the progessive stages by which the former equi
librium of the sections had been destroyed, are as clear
sighted as its prediction. Never in all history has an
actor in a revolution described its course behind him
so understandingly, nor its future course with such
true prophecy.
Let us give you the fewest possible selected brief pas
sages that will do something towards possessing you of
the core of Calhoun's valedictory to the United States
and the South,
This is first in order : " How can the union be saved ?
There is but one way by which it can with any certainty;
and that is by a full and final settlement, on the princi
ples of justice, of all the questions at issue between the
two sections. The south asks for justice, simple justice,
and less she ought not to take. She has no compromise
to offer but the constitution, and no concession or sur
render to make,"
The vital concern of his section against abolition, and
what it must do to avoid it, he tells in these passages:
" [The South] regards the relation [of master and slave] as
one which cannot be destroyed without subjecting the two races
to the greatest calamity, and the section to poverty, desolation,
and wretchedness, and accordingly she feels bound, by every
consideration of interest and safety, to defend it,"
" Is it not certain that if something is not done to arrest it
[the abolition movement], the south will be forced to choose
between abolition and secession?"
If the south must choose secession, he justifies her by
the example of Washington, with a calm and repose

Calhoun 115
that prove his deepest conviction of its rightfulness, and
with a power that cannot be confuted. He says :
["The Union cannot] be saved by invoking the name of the
illustrious southerner whose mortal remains repose on the west
ern bank of the Potomac, He was one of us — a slaveholder
and a planter. We have studied his history, and find nothing
in it to justify submission to wrong. On the contrary, his great
fame rests on the solid foundation that, whUe he was careful to
avoid doing wrong to others, he was prompt and decided in
repelling wrong, I trust that, in this respect, we have profited
by his example.
Nor can we find anything in his history to deter us from
seceding from the union should it fail to ifulfil the objects for
which it was instituted, by being permanently and hopelessly
converted into a means of oppressing instead of protecting us.
On the contrary, we find much in his example to encourage us
should we be forced to the extremity of deciding between
submission and disunion.
There existed then as well as now a union, — that between
the parent country and her then colonies. It was a union that
had much to endear it to the people of the colonies. Under its
protecting and superintending care the colonies were planted,
and grew up and prospered, throtigh a long course of years,
until they became populous and wealthy. Its benefits were not
limited to them. Their extensive agricultural and other pro
ductions gave birth to a flourishing commerce which richly
rewarded the parent country for the trouble and expense of
establishing and protecting them, Washington was born and
grew up to manhood under that union. He acquired his early
distinction in its service ; and there is every reason to believe
that he was devotedly attached to it. But his devotion was a
rational one. He was attached to it, not as an end, but as a
means to an end. When it failed to fulfil its end, and, instead
of affording protection, was converted into the means of op
pressing the colonies, he did not hesitate to draw his sword and
head the great movement by which that union was forever

1 1 6 The Brothers' War
severed, and the independence of these States established.
This was the great and crowning glory of his life, which has
spread his fame over the whole globe, and will transmit it to the
latest posterity,"
With what moving entreaty does he thus adjure the
victorious north:
The north " has only to wish it to accomplish it — to do jus
tice by conceding to the south an equal right in the acquired
territory, and to do her duty by causing the stipulations relative
to fugitive slaves to be faithfully fulfilled, to cease the agitation
of the slavery question, and to provide for the insertion of a
provision in the constitution, by an amendment, which will re
store to the south, in substance, the power she possessed of
protecting herself before the equilibrium between the sections
was destroyed by the action of the government. There will be
no difficulty in devising such a provision — one that will pro
tect the south and which at the same time will improve and
strengthen the government instead of impairing and weaken
ing it,"
" The responsibility of saving the union rests on the north,
and not on the south. The south cannot save it by any act of
hers, and the north may save it without any sacrifice whatever,
unless to do justice and, to perform her duties under the con
stitution should be regarded by her as a sacrifice,"
This sleepless watchman since 1835 had again and
again blown the trumpet as the sword of disunion was
coming upon the land. Now, the grave yawning before
him, he sees that sword nearer and sharper, and con
scious that it is his last public duty he sends forth to aU
his country a blast of warning more earnest and more
solemri than ever. Warning that the bloodiest of all
wars is coming, and that between brothers. Warning —
it is the whole of this dread deliverance. Here is the
first paragraph :

Calhoun 1 1 7
" I have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of
the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by sorae timely
and effective raeasure, end in disunion. Entertaining this
opinion, I have on all proper occasions endeavored to call the
attention of both the two great parties which divide the country
to adopt some measure to prevent so great a disaster, but with
out success. The agitation has been permitted to proceed, with
almost no attempt to resist it, until it has reached a point where
it can no longer be disguised or denied that the union is in
danger. You have thus had forced upon you the greatest
and the gravest question that can ever come under your con
sideration, — How can the union be preserved ? "
And this is the last paragraph :
"I have now, senators, done my duty in expressing my
opinions fully and candidly on this solemn occasion. In doing
so, I have been governed by the motives which have governed
me in all stages of the agitation of the slavery question since
its commencement. I have exerted myself during the whole
period to arrest it with the intention of saving the union, if it
could be done, and if it could not, to save the section where it
has pleased providence to cast my lot, and which I sincerely
believe has justice and the constitution on its side. Having
faithfully done my duty to the best of my abiUty both to the
union aiid my section, throughout this agitation, I shall have
the consolation, let what will come, that I am free from all
responsibility," Had abolition been in charge of men, Calhoun, claim
ing, as appeared to them, the most palpable rights
under current views of justice, under the constitution,
under the law, and under patriotic duty, would have pre
vaUed, He never understood, no more than the aboli
tionists themselves did, that providence was making an
instrument of abohtion to remove the only danger to
the American union, and that providence was not under
human constitutions, laws, and convictions of duty. As

ii8 The Brothers' War
you meditate this superhuman achievement of the true
citizen in his last stand for his doomed section, does it
not help you to appreciate better the high saying of the
Greeks, that the struggle of a good man against fate is
the most elevating of all spectacles?
The speeches that wiU find place in the selection sug
gested above will not enrapture the reader with the
proud diction, learning, ornateness, and exquisite finish
of Webster, but he will find them everywhere to be
proofs of the dictum of Faust:
" Es tragt Verstand und rechter Sinn
Mit wenig Kunstsich selber vor;
Und wenn 's euch Ernst ist, was zu sagen,
Ist 's nothig, Worten nachzujagen ? " '^
He will also note that many of the wisest and most
eloquent passages are almost the extreme of choice,
but chaste and severe, expression. Here read aloud the
passage as to Washington quoted above from the speech
of March 4, 1850, and you will hardly dissent.
America owes it to Calhoun to publish a cheap edi
tion of his best speeches, and also of his " Dissertation
on Government."
A word as to the " Dissertation " and the " Discourse
on the Constitution of the United States," The project
of these two books lay close to his heart for many years.
He intended them as his last admonitions to the people
of the great republic. Doubtless the special object of
his retirement was to finish them, but he had to return
to the senate. What we have of the books was written
in the little leisure which he snatched from the pressure
of public duties, domestic affairs, and ill-health. The
resoluteness with which, in the midst of these difficulties,
1 Heyward thus translates : " Reason and good sense express them
selves with little art. And when you are seriously intent on saying some
thing, is it necessary to hunt for words ? "

Calhoun 119
he worked at the self-imposed task proves a lofty and
unselfish love. He did not finish them to his satisfac
tion, Darwin did not do that with his epoch-making
" Origin of Species," for he found there was no need to
do so, I believe that, as the essentials of the belonging
part of evolution are aU to be found in the " Origin of
Species,'' so all the essentials of Calhoun's great doctrine
of government are fully set forth in his two books. To
me the " Dissertation " seems complete. I note with
pleasure that, though slowly, it is steadily climbing to
the lofty height which is its due place in the world's
estimation. And the " Discourse " — of which he did not
live to finish the final draft — surely leads all the pro
ductions of the State sovereignty school. The provi
dence which opposed his wishes was kind to his country,
to the world, and to himself in calling him from his
desk ; for it allowed him to get Texas and Oregon for
us, to give mankind his Oregon speech, and his last, and
thus to finish his good Work and make his fame full.
The foregoing is intended to influence my readers to
turn away from Von Hoist, who wrote Calhoun's life,
with the smoke and dust of the brothers' war still in his
eyes, and from Trent, who merely says ditto to Mr,
Burke, to Stephens, to the great Webster, to the touch
ing " Carolina Tribute," to the happy and appreciative
sketch of Pinkney, to the man himself and his grand
career, in order to find the facts and principles by which
one of America's very greatest ought to be judged.
And I do hope that they now begin to discern that
Calhoun was nothing at aU of a doctrinaire, nor chop-
logic, nor fanatic, nor professional politician, nor igno
rant and over-zealous partisan, but was the very height
of practical talent and an extraordinarily successful man
of affairs, of more than Roman integrity, conscientious
and diligent beyond almost all others in the duties of

I20 The Brothers' War
his place, and a foremost statesman of wide and pro
found culture. Whether I have accomphshed my de
sign or not, let me beg you to read for yourself with
careful attention what Webster said of him in the United
States senate just after his death. Remember two things
as you read: (i) The speaker and the dead had been
opposed to one another in politics for more than twenty
years, the former being the great exponent of free-labor
nationalization and the other the great exponent of
slave-labor nationalization ; (2) nobody ever weighed
his public utterances more carefully than did Webster,
and that he would not say anything which he did not
believe, even as a politeness.
Let us now try to follow with proper discernment
this man whom we hope we have proved to be good
and wise through his titanic defence of the cause which
fate had decreed must fail. As our explanation of how
evolution, and not the north on one side nor the south
on the other, brought forward the crisis in which
slavery, the sole menace of American dismemberment,
was to perish, is so nearly complete, we can be much
briefer in the rest of the chapter.
The true beginning here is with the proposition that
everything which Calhoun did as the southern leader
was prompted by a righteous conscience and the high
est and most unselfish patriotism. He was the very first
to discern the full menace of abolition to the welfare of
the people he represented. And when years afterwards
the situation became darker and more serious, and more
and more importunately put to him the question. If ab
olition can be avoided only by leaving the union, what
ought the south to do? he answered to himself, with
the fuUest approval of his conscience, she must go out ;
for manifestly it is her paramount duty to protect her
citizens against any such invasion of their rights as abo-

Calhoun 121
Iition. But he had no illusion as to peaceable secession ;
and he likewise worshipped the union, believing with
deepest conviction that it is far better for neighboring
communities to be federated than independent. And
the memories of the great American history were as
sweet to him as they were to Webster. To sum up,
only one thing in his opinion could justify secession.
That was control of the federal government by the aboh-
tionists. If that comes, the south must seek her inde
pendence, even if it is beyond a sea of blood.
Abolition was on its way then to overturn the sup
ports of comfort and domestic peace in the south, as it
afterwards did. Suppose Webster had seen the immi
nence of such a dreadful evil to New England, would
he not have felt that his duty to his section was now the
great thing? My brother who wore the blue, ought he
not to have so felt? If the union had been turned into
a course which would not only impoverish and beggar
the people of New England, but would for long years
actually deprive the masses of those modes of business
and labor by which they were subsisting themselves and
their families, can it be thought that Webster, with his
exalted admiration of the fathers, who endured all priva
tions to win liberty from their oppressors, would not
have been heart and soul for secession?
The only actual difference between the two great
patriots was that to Calhoun the dread alternative of
looking outside the union for defence and protection of
home and fireside was commended by a cruel fate, while
a kind fate withheld it from Webster.
I shall corroborate the foregoing by some pertinent
excerpts from Calhoun's speeches in the United States
senate. And as my purpose is to build everywhere in
this book, as far as possible, upon only the most obvi
ous facts and to vouch therefor the most accessible

122 The Brothers' War
authorities, I take the excerpts from quotations made
by Von Hoist:
" It is to US a vital question. It involves not only our liberty,
but, what is greater (if to freeman anything can be), existence
itself. The relation which now exists between the two races in
the slaveholding States has existed for two centuries. It has
grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength. It
has entered into and modified all our institutions, civil and
political. None other can be substituted. We will not, can
not, perrait it to be destroyed, , . . Corae what will, should it
cost every drop of blood and every cent of property, we must
defend ourselves ; and if compelled, we should stand justified
by all laws, human and divine ; ... we would act under an
imperious necessity. There would be to us but one alternative,
— to triumph or perish as a people." *
" To destroy the existing relations would be to destroy this
prosperity [of the southern States] and to place the two races in
a state of conflict, which raust end in the expulsion or extirpation
of one or the other. No other can be substituted compatible
with their peace or security. The difficulty is in the diversity
of the races. . , , Social and political equality between them
is impossible. The causes lie too deep in the principles of our
nature to be surmounted. But, without such equality, to
change the present condition of the African race, were it pos
sible, would be but to change the form of slavery." *
" He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive that the
subversion of a relation which raust be followed with such disas
trous consequences can be effected only by convulsions that
would devastate the country, burst asunder the bonds of union,
and engulf in a sea of blood the institutions of the countiy. It
is madness to suppose that the slaveholding States would
quietly submit to be sacrificed. Every consideration — interest,
duty, and humanity, the love of country, the sense of wrong,
hatred of oppressors and treacherous and faithless confederates,
and, finally, despair — would impel them to the most daring
1 Von Hoist, John C. Calhoun, 133. 2 Id. 141.

Calhoun 123
and desperate resistance in defence of property, family, country,
liberty, and existence." ^
The student unfamUiar with the confederate side of
the brothers' war can find the whole of it clearly stated
in these short passages re-enforced by the cognate ones
quoted above from the speech of March 4, 1850, The
maintenance of the then existing relations between white
and black was vital both to liberty and existence. Be
cause of the world-wide diversity of the two races they
cannot be socially or politically equal (a subject which
we will deal with specially after a while). And it was
the duty of the south to fight to the bitter end " in de
fence of property, family, country, liberty, and exist
ence," This is the marrow of the quotations. They
convincingly show not only the grasp of the statesman,
but the prescience of the prophet, as has been plainly
proved by the brothers' war and what followed in its
track. Opposition to the tariff, which in his judgment fa
vored the manufacturing at the expense of the staple
States, seems to have been the first thing that led Cal
houn to take a pro-Southern stand in politics.^ It
finally produced the famous nullification episode, which
we have already somewhat discussed. In this his plat
form was simply anti-tariff. But the current, without
his being aware of it, was carrying him resistlessly and
rapidly on into the anti-abolition career in which his life
ended. It was the petition presented in 1835 to con
gress against slavery in the District of Columbia which,
1 Von Hoist, John C. Calhoun, 148.
2 As illustrating his anti-tariff progress, see what he says in his letter
of July, 1828, to James Monroe, Correspondence, 266; what in that to
his relative. Noble, of January, 1829, id. 269, 270 ; in that to Samuel L.
Gouvernour, of February, 1832, id. 310, 311 ; and what as to benefit from
having concentrated opinions in south, in that to his brother-in-law, td-
3i3> 314-

124 The Brothers' War
it seems, was the first thing that opened his eyes to the
menace of abolition. Note his wonderful foresight.
Compare him with Cicero just before the outbreak of
the war between Pompey and Caesar; or with Demos
thenes before Philip discloses his purpose towards
Greece ; or with Carl Marx, predicting the future of co
operative enterprise. Cicero almost foresees nothing —
he mostly fears ; Marx is utterly mistaken. The divina
tion of Demosthenes is far superior, and it is clear ; yet
it is belated when it comes. But Calhoun sees with
" appalling clearness," as Von Hoist says, all the storm-
cloud from which tempest and tornado will ravage the
entire land, just as its first speck shows on the horizon ;
and nobody else will see that. If this abolition move
ment is not stopped in its incipiency, it will soon get
beyond all control. This he says over and over in his
public place. What a horrible spectre of the future
haunted him for the rest of his life ! The south in her
self-defence forced out of the union, and then perhaps
overcome in war. After her braves have perished, and
their dear ones at home have been plunged in the
depths of want, the triumphant abolitionists will have
the former slaves to lord it over them.
His conscience commanded him to stand by slavery
as the fundamental condition of his people's well-being;
it also at the same time commanded him to strain all
his energies to save the union by making it the pro
tector instead of the assailant of slavery. This was the
insuperable task which the powers in the unseen put him
in the treadmiU to do. From the time he commenced
the discussion of the anti-slavery petitions until his ex
clamation over the " poor south," on his death-bed, life
was to him but a deepening agony of solicitude and
utmost effort, — solicitude for his country and section,
effort to avert the danger that became greater and more

Calhoun 125
awful to him every day. He strove after remedies
under the consthution. The more he recalled the suc
cess of the single stand of South Carolina against the
tariff, the prouder he became of being the author of
nullification. Its dearness to him was that it was peace
able as well as efficient. The better opinion of the
State-rights school is that nullification is an absurdity,
and that South Carolina's only true remedy against the
tariff was to secede if it were not repealed. But he
knew better than everybody else that secession meant
internecine war between the sections, and this influenced
him to exalt peaceable nuUification above bloody se
cession. It needs not to consider each barrier, whether party
combinations, admission of new slave States, legislation,
etc, that he tried to erect against the incoming oceanic
wave. But we must briefly consider the amendment
of the constitution which he proposed. He wanted the
north and the south each to have a president, as he said,
" to be so elected, as that the two should be constituted
the special organs and representatives of the respective
sections in the executive department of the government ;
and requiring each to approve all the acts of congress
before they shaU become laws,"^ Do this, he urged,
and neither section can use the powers of government
to injure the other, for whatever proposed law menaces
a section will be vetoed by its president. It profits the
student of the science of government to consider the his
torical examples which Calhoun adduced here. They
are indeed so apt that the hearing which has ever been
denied him should be granted him at least academically.
He says: "The two most distinguished constitutional
governments of antiquity both in respect to permanence
1 Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States,
Works, vol. i. 392.

126 The Brothers' War
and power had a dual executive, I refer to those of
Sparta and Rome."^
It is interesting to be informed that those same wise
Iroquois from whom our fathers probably got the pre
cedent of the old confederation, put in practice some
thing very like what Calhoun advises. We append both
the account and instructive comment of Morgan :
" When the Iroquois confederacy was formed, or soon after
that event, two perraanent war-cliiefships were created and
named, , , , As general comraanders they had charge of the
military affairs of the confederacy, and the command of its joint
forces when united in a general expedition. , , , The creation
of two principal war-chiefs instead of one, and with equal power,
argues a subtle and calculating policy to prevent the domination
of a single man even in their military affairs. They did without
experience precisely as the Romans did in creating two consuls
instead of one, after they had abolished the office of rex. Two
consuls would balance the military power between them, and
prevent either from becoming supreme. Among the Iroquois
this office never became influential." ''¦
But Calhoun lays much more stress upon another
example, — that of the protection which the Roman
plebeians got in tribunes elected from their own order
alone, which tribunes could veto any act of the law
making organs, aU of which were then actuaUy in the
hands of their oppressors, that is, the order of patricians;
the result being that in course of time the plebeians
achieved equality.^
Of course the inevitable could not be put off. And
1 Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States,
Works, vol. i. 393.
2 Ancient Society, 147, 148,
8 A Disquisition on Government, Works, vol. i. 92-96. Compare for
Calhoun's treatment Benton's report of his conversations, and the perti
nent excerpts he gives from Calhoun's speech in the United States
Senate of February 15 and 16, 1833, Thirty Years' View, vol. i. 335 sj.

Calhoun 127
yet ought we not to admire the inventive genius of the
statesman who of aU proposed the remedy that promised
the best? And ought we not also to cherish in affec
tionate memory this last and high effort of Calhoun to
avert a dreadful brothers' war at hand, the end and
consequences of which nobody could then forecast?
The situation of Rome granting tribunes to the plebs
was widely different from ours. That was a case of
giving a veto to one class only, and to a class which
belonged to the entire body politic, Calhoun proposed
not a single veto, but two ; neither one to be given such
a class as we have just mentioned, but a veto to each
one of two geographical divisions, in one of which there
was a developed, and in the other a nascent and almost
complete, nationality, these two nationalities already
closed with each other in a life and death grapple. His
hope must have been to confine the combatants to an
arena which could be effectually policed by the civil
power, and in which all fighting except with buttoned
foils be prevented. We may be almost sure that his
heart broke when that presentiment which often comes
to the dying as clear as sunlight revealed the bloody
war that was quickening its approach.
O the unutterable pathos of his hfe from 1835 to
1850! During this time he was like the mother ofa
boy whom consumption has marked for its own. In
advance of all others she reads the first symptom, nay,
she anticipates it. AU those who believe that they
know him as weU as she does, laugh at her fears with
unsympathetic incredulity. But her eyes never fail to
see grim death at the door, although bravely she hopes
against hope, and fights, fights, fights. Inexorably, re
lentlessly the end, which others now begin to discern,
comes on, but until the last breath of her dariing she
has ever some suggestion of change of place or climate,

128 The Brothers' War
of a new remedy, of something else to be done. It is
the supreme tragedy of her trial that whUe outwardly
she is all self-gratifying love, inwardly she is all self-
consuming misery. We say the love of a mother is
greater than aU other. But we know that she loves her
country better than she does her chUd, Patriotism
is as yet the strongest love of all. Realize that our
exalted patriot was tending and nursing the cause of his
country. Think of the noble Lee, his career of victory
over, wearing away the winter at I^etersburg, hourly
expecting his line, so tensely stretched in order to face
overwhelming odds, to break; think of him after it does
break, on the retreat, when he has discovered that his
supplies have gone wrong ; and think of him when he
must yield the sword as ever memorable as Hannibal's,
The world has given Lee, and will long give bim, rains
of gracious tears. But he was never plagued with Cal
houn's sharpened eyes to future disaster, and he was
confident that he would reach the mountains almost
until the very moment of surrender. Think rather of
the great sufferers for high causes, — Bonnivard, wearing
a pathway over the stone floor of his prison ; Lear, of
all of Shakspeare's heroes, in the deepest gulf of mis
fortune ; and especially of Calvary and the crucifixion,
for Jesus travailed for his brothers and sisters. It is
here you must look for the like of Calhoun. For fifteen
years that " mass of moan " which was coming to his
dear ones pierced his ears plainer and plainer and made
his heart sicker and sicker, and during this long bloody
sweat he gave the rarest devotion and self-sacrifice to
his country which he feared more and more was to
plunge over the precipice. As we recall the scene of
his death it makes us rejoice to know that the cross he
had borne so long has at last been cast off and he has
entered into the rest of the martyr-patriot. Then it

Calhoun 129
occurs to us that he carried with him his affections, —
too lofty not to be immortal, — and we cannot believe
that the sad spirit ever smUed until Wade Hampton,
twenty-six years afterwards, re-erected white domination
in South Carolina,
Dixie wiU never forget that one who of all her sons
loved her best and suffered for her the most. And it is
my conviction that each noblest soul of the north will
after a while revere in Calhoun the American paraUel
to the moral grandeur of Dante, of whom Michaelangelo
said he would cheerfully endure his exile and all his
misfortunes for his glory.

CHAPTER VIII
WEBSTER
CALHOUN was the pre-eminent champion of the
southern cause in the union, while Toombs was
that of southern nationalization seeking inde
pendence, Webster was the pre-eminent champion of
American nationalization seeking continental union.
Toombs and Webster are therefore in antithesis; and
it will be well for me to begin the chapter by anticipat
ing some of the characteristics of the former, who wiU
be treated at large later on, and briefly contrasting the
t^vo. By nature Toombs was so prone to action that even
in his daily recreation — talk with the nearest to him
was by far the most of it — his immense and tireless
outpouring of fine phrase, wisdom, and wit was the in
creasing wonder of all who knew him, Webster's prone
ness was to repose, almost ipdolence. He often seemed
lethargic. His activity could be excited only by the
pressure of necessity. This difference between the two
showed itself very markedly in their several careers.
Toombs, coming to the bar in the last year of his non
age, took the profession at once to his heart, settled in
his native county, in a lucrative field of practice, over
came aU hindrances of natural defects and insufficient
training seemingly by a mere act of wiU, and in four or
five years his coUecting a thousand-doUar fee in an ad
joining county was no very uncommon thing. When
he was twenty-eight he was a fully developed lawyer

Webster 131
and advocate on every side — law, equity, and criminal
of the courts of that prosperous planting community,
then overrunning with cases of importance, and his
annual income from pracrice was $15,000. Webster
went up much more slowly. He read long and indus
triously; was not called untU he was twenty-three ; for
the next two and a half years was content with an in
come of $600 or $700; and then for nine years at Ports
mouth his average income was $2,000 yearly. Even
when Webster at thirty-four removed to Boston he
was hardly as a lawyer the equal of Toombs at twenty-
eight; and I believe that the latter was always the
superior lawyer. The greater reputation of Webster is
due to the greater reputation of his cases, and of the
tribunal wherein he long held the lead.
We see a like difference between the two in congress.
Webster .shirks the routine duties of his place to gain
opportunity for practice in the United States supreme
court, Toombs stays away from all courts during the
session, and gives every measure before the body to
which he belongs its proper attention, study, and labor.
But the performance by him of all the many duties of
representative or senator, whether little or great, with
unparalleled diligence, ability, and splendor, has been so
completely obscured by the few of Webster's great
congressional exploits, that it is not now cared for by
anybody. The greater lawyer and the greater congressman has
been accorded the lesser renown. This is because of
the relation which each one bore to the two publics
which I have tried to make you understand, — the
southern public and the northern public. Toombs's legal
career was mainly in the courts of his own State, It
was not much heard of outside, in even the southern
public, unril his extraordinarily meritorious discharge of

132 The Brothers' War
congressional duties involving a mastery of law was
observed. Although some of Webster's cases in State
courts were celebrated, his greatest ones, to be con
sidered in a moment, were won in the United States
supreme court, in the eyes of both publics watching
intently. The highest accomplishments of Toombs in
the non-sectional parts of his congressional career were
almost matters of indifference at the time to both
publics, becoming steadily more absorbed in pro- and
anti-slavery politics ; and what he did in the other part
of it excited the hostility of the northern public, and
brought him obloquy instead of good name. The few
memorable deeds of Webster in congress were victorious
vindications of the cause dearest of all to the northern,
that is, the free-labor, public. That public has at last not
only conquered, but it has annexed the other as a part of
itself. And so Toombs's fame as a lawyer and states
man has been left so far behind that it can hardly hope
ever to have impartial and fair comparison with that of
Webster, Just one more parallel, and I shall proceed with my
sketch. Each one of the two, in order to accept his
mission of leadership, was plainly made by his destiny
to abandon a previously cherished doctrine for a new
and contrary one, Toombs was once an ardent union
man, Webster was once almost a secessionist. In his
Taylor speech, made in the United States house of
representatives July i, 1848, speaking of the then
expected acquisition of territory, Toombs said :
"All the rest of this continent is not worth our glorious
union, much less these contemptible provinces which now
threaten us with such evils. It were better that we should
throw back the worthless boon, and let the inhabitants work out
their own destiny, than that we should endanger our peace, our
safety, and our nationality by their incorporation in our union."

Webster 133
The silly embargo measures, making war upon our
own citizens instead of our enemies, had deeply injured
New England interests. On their heel came the second
war with England, into which the government of France
had, as Mr, Lodge says, "tricked us ... by most
profligate lying," 1 This war paralyzed the producrion
and occupations of Webster's people.
A speech made by him July 4, 1812, is "a strong,
calm statement of the grounds of opposition to the
war," ^ Mr. Lodge quotes and emphasizes a passage as
proof that Webster, although a federahst, and the ma
jority of his party in New England were — to use the
words of the same author — " prepared to go to the very
edge of the narrow legal line which divides constitu
tional opposition from treasonable resistance," ^ was then
standing by the union with might and main. This quo
tation, separated from its circumstances and the imme
diate sequel, strongly supports the contention. The
speech being printed, circulated widely among those fed
eralists who were gravitating so strongly towards " trea
sonable resistance," By reason of it Webster was chosen
as a delegate to a convention, held the next month.
This man, whom Mr, Lodge would have us believe to
be so fixedly counter to the then uppermost revolu
tionary sentiment of his party, was chosen to be their
mouthpiece. He wrote their report — the "Rocking
ham Memorial " — in the form of a letter to President
Madison. Mr. Lodge thus contrasts the report and the
speech. " In one point the memorial differed curiously
from the oration of the month before. The latter
pointed to the suffrage as the mode of redress; the
former distinctly hinted at and almost threatened seces
sion, even while it deplored a dissolution ofthe union as
a possible result of the administration's policy," * Then
1 Daniel Webster, 50. ^ /^. 45, 46. ' Id. 46, * Id. 48.

134 The Brothers' War
the biographer most confidently states that in the speech
Webster was declaring his own views, but in the other
document he was declaring those of members of his
party. But the average American will be sure that those
familiar with the speech at the time did not strain its
counsels as far away from their own as Mr. Lodge does,
otherwise they would not have elected him as delegate ;
and further, he never would have made their report for
them unless he had been known to entertain their own
sentiments,^ The popular wave that he had thus mounted carried
the draftsman of the " Rockingham Memorial " into con
gress, where, while British armies were actually treading
our soil, he voted against the taxes proposed for na
tional defence, Mr, Lodge does not go the full length,
of sustaining this conduct,^ The severe comment of an
other biographer will be cordially approved by average
readers, northern and southern,®
The facts properly considered show that from the
speech of July 4, 18 12, on, Webster, although he stood
aloof from the Hartford convention movement, was in
full sympathy with the federalists of New England, whom
the national government by its unrighteous oppressions
had driven to contemplate disunion as a possible meas
ure of self-protection.
This attitude of Webster towards the union was en
tirely contrary to that which afterwards became his
power and glory among his countrymen. We wish it
noted that as he changed with the people of New Eng-
1 In his Encyclopedia Americana article Mr. Carl Schurz strains as
hard as Mr. Lodge does in his biography to conceal the real position of
Webster. I commend the homespun reasoning of this paragraph to all
such. 2 Daniel Webster, 59.
s McMaster, Daniel Webster, 88.

Webster 135
land from anti-tariff to pro-tariff politics, he likewise
changed with them in their principles as to the union ;
and that Toombs went with the south, in an opposite
direction, that is, from embrace to rejection of the union.
Having in the foregoing brought out the prominent
characteristics of Webster's nature and career, and hav
ing also impressed you that he, like aU other great
statesmen, could lead only by foUowing his people, I will
cursorily trace him from stage to stage through his de
velopment. He was selected in infancy, if not before
by providence, to be made not the expounder of the
constitution, but the invincible defender of the union.
When his activity begins, he is at first to consolidate
the union by the management of some great law cases,
and delivery of occasional addresses to popular assem
blies ; and afterwards in his high place as United States
senator he is to demonstrate to the northern public its
complete guaranty of their highest material interests,
and. set it in their hearts above all things else. Thus did
providence assign to him the preservation of the greatest
of all democracies, to the end that there be no break in
the future course of human improvement.
Before his activity begins the powers train him.
They gave him a long education, and a slow growth as
a statesman. He could never remember when he had
been unable to read. His feeble physique while a child
shielded him from the labor required of the other chil
dren, and permitted him to enjoy books. Early he
soaked his mind in the King James version of the bible
and other good Enghsh standards. As he grew apace
his opportunities of reading were far better than those
of Calhoun, who never saw even a circulating library
until he was in his thirteenth year, and soon was taken
away from that. These opportunities he used in his
leisurely way. His mind was strong and his memory

136 The Brothers' War
good, and he digested and kept under command what
he read. His schooling and college course were in
the main continuous. He got to Dartmouth at fifteen,
where he spent four years. Here he made the reputa
tion of being the best speaker and writer of all the stu
dents. In his study for the law he took ample time.
And in his first years of practice he had much leisure.
Besides reveUing in the Latin classics, Shakspeare,
Milton, Pope, and Cowper, and much history, he was
keenly observant of what was going on about him.
We know how Jeremiah Mason gave him lessons both
in law, rhetoric, and elocution to his great advancement.
We know too that his interest in current political ques
tions was vigilant. He took his seat in congress May,
18 13, being then a little over thirty-one. His speech
against a bill to encourage enlistments made January
14, the next year, shows, as Mr, Lodge says, that " he
was now master of the style at which he aimed." ^ Of
this peculiar style I shall say something after a while.
Mention of his greatest exploits in consolidating the
union is now in order.
The first of these is his conduct of the Dartmouth
college case in the United States supreme court. It is
entirely out of place for me to give even the briefest
notice of the details which fill Mr, Shirley's unique
book.'^ Little more than emphasis of the effect of the
decision to knit more closely the bonds of union be
tween the States is required. This effect will be consid
ered more carefully when we comment on Gibbons v.
Ogden, which finishes the important work commenced
in the other. It needs only to remind the reader now
that the protection of contracts against impairing State
1 Daniel Webster, 52.
"- Dartmouth College Causes. — Mr. Lodge's narrative, Daniel Web
ster, 74-98 — is a very helpful introduction to the book just mentioned.

Webster 137
legislation has contributed probably more than any
thing else to the prosperous development of American
internal trade and commerce, — a most potent factor
in consohdaring the union, — and that this protection
originates in the Dartmouth coUege decision. But there
is something special to be said of Webster as to the
case. He did not stress the constitutional point — that
upon which the judgment was finally placed — either in
his law-brief or argument. The victory is aU due to
his consummate management of the court, especially
of the chief-justice. The latter really found the true
ground of the decision. But the powers had Webster
in hand, and it suited their purposes to crown their
Liebling with the credit of the decision. When he
foun(5 out the reasons given for the ruling he had won,
I fancy that a good angel of his destiny whispered in
his ear he ought to have discerned that the weal of all
classes of his entire country, and not merely that of its
colleges, was at stake in his case, and he must never
in the future overlook such an opportunity again. In
his Hanover fourth of July speech, made when he was
only eighteen years old, to quote from the authority
we make so much use of, " the boy Webster preached
love of country, the grandeur of American nationality,
fidelity to the constitution as the bulwark of nationality,
and the necessity and the nobility of the union of the
States." 1 Mr. Lodge impressively adds, " and that was
the message which the man Webster delivered to his
fellow men." ^ His Fryeburg fourth of July speech,
made not long afterwards, was in the same strain.
After the powers had thus started him in the way they
wanted him to go, we have noted above how he was
carried by the federalists of New England into a move
ment hostile to the union. This brief wandering from
1 Lodge, Daniel Webster, 22. '^ Id. 22.

138 The Brothers' War
his destiny, as it were, is to be compared with his neg
lect to grasp the point in the Dartmouth college case
which was in the exact line of that high destiny. This
shows how even the greatest genius must stumble and
grope before it has found the right road. I think the
Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, First Part of Henry VI,
and the Sonnets of Shakspeare are like examples.
The Plymouth oration, delivered in 1820, begins a
new and very important stage of Webster's career. As
Virginia was the mother of the southern States, so New
England was in large measure the mother of the north
ern. The latter was the very fountain of the free-labor
nationalization. And as she was known to be excep
tionally advanced in intellectual as well as material de
velopment, she was to all the free States both their
great example and highest authority. Hardly anybody
has even yet fully taken in all the permanent good
which New England has done for herself at home and
for her children and scholars outside. Of course stiU
less of it was understood in 1820. But in the Plymouth
oration Webster set forth so much of it, the effect upon
New England was magical. It was as if he had raised
a curtain concealing great riches and treasures of her
merit and glory, the existence of which had not been
suspected. New Englanders all fell in love with him,
and accorded him the foremost place among their
counsellors. The anti-slavery spirit of the speech deserves special
notice. I do not mean to emphasize the oft-quoted pas
sage denouncing the African slave-trade ; for everybody
in the south — even the smuggler and the few purchasers
who encouraged him — had been against legalizing it,
for reasons mentioned above, from a time long before
the southern States showed a desire in the constitu
tional convention to stop the trade at once. I mean

Webster 139
his mention of slavery in the West Indies. I do not
think that he had the south in mind, stressing as he
does the absenteeism of the masters and the mortgages
of their lands for capital borrowed in England. But
much else that he says of the evil effects of slavery
could be easily applied, at least in some measure, to
the system as it then existed in the south, such as, for
instance, the backwardness to make permanent improve
ments or endow coUeges, His contrast of New Eng
land with the West Indies is intended to show that a
free-labor community is far superior to a slave-labor
community in the most important elements of a good
and progressive civilization. His convicrion of this truth
is serious and undoubring. And those few words, " the
unmitigated toil of slavery," which show that he erro
neously beheved that the slave toiled as hard as the
wage-earning laborer, evince a strong moral revulsion
on his part.
We summarize as to the Plymouth oration. It made
Webster really the political leader of New England,
which — the animosity excited by the embargo and the
late war having become a forgotten thing of the past —
is now both in command of and also in the van of the
free-labor and anti-slavery nationalization, destined by
the powers to perpetuate the union.
We have told you how Webster — being at the time
the very antipodes of what he was afterwards when he
talked with Bosworth as to the Rhode Island case —
missed the true and cardinal point in the Dartmouth
college case, and how the powers, after having Marshall
to establish it, gave all the glory of the great accom
plishment to Webster. We come now to Gibbons v.
Ogden, argued in 1824, in which the latter made far
more than ample amends for his shortcoming, and
taught even the great Marshall how to decide.

140 The Brothers' War
New York State had given Fulton and Livingston for
a term exclusive steam navigation of all its waters, and
Webster was to maintain that the grant impugned the
federal constitution and was therefore invalid. The
question was res integra, without analogies , which often
help us forlorn advocates who cannot find a precedent
and are utterly without any literature suggesting the
ratio decidendi. I know I cannot explain to a layman
how such cases as these bewilder and paralyze the typi
cal Anglo-American judge, who has walked all his life
by precedent and not by sight. Further, Webster's
side antagonized prevailing sentiment and, it would be
hardly too much to say, the public conscience ; either
one of which generally sways courts more powerfully
than the law-brief, argument, and appeal of complete
advocates. The only thing which Webster could op
pose to these formidable odds was just a clause of a
sentence of the constitution, this clause being only of
twelve words when even the belonging context is read
into it,^ and appearing to be, we cannot say surplusage,
but neither well-considered nor of any particular force.
Out of this he constructed such a perfect and wise doc
trine of the immunity of our interstate commerce from
local attack and restraint that every succeeding genera
tion has admired its wisdom more, and subsequent ad
ditions and extensions of importance are all manifest
conclusions from the premises which he made good.
Reading and reflecting for writing my " American Law
Studies " familiarized me with a few instances in which a
man has left a lasting impress upon the development of
the law (some of which instances wiU be mentioned in a
moment). Thus I was led to meditate Webster's work
in this case ; and it becomes an increasing wonder to
1 The twelve words meant are, " The congress shall have power to
regulate commerce among the several States."

Webster 141
me. Read what his biographer tells of the unfavorable
circumstances of the preparation for the argument and
how he overcame them by superhuman effort. Read
also his own account as given by Harvey, how Wirt,
his associate, older and of much more experience in
that court, disparaged the ground upon which he said
he should stand, and proposed another ; and how Mar
shaU drank in every word of Webster's argument, and
afterwards virtually reproduced it in the opinion.
But the great thing is what he did for the law. The
current distribution of the common law under its larger
heads was made by Hale and Blackstone after that of
the contemporary civilians, which is founded upon that
ofthe Institutes of Justinian. This book is but a repro
duction of that of Gaius. So we may assert of this last
mentioned author that it is his systematization which
still obtains both in the English and Roman law, that is
to say, the entire law of the enlightened world, ^ A few
English chancellors perceptibly moulded equity ; Mans
field almost created English commercial law; in our
country, Hamilton, in one argument overturned the
doctrine of tacking securities, and in another remade
the essentials of libel; our great text-author Bishop,
with his treatise often worked over in new editions, is
really the enacter of the American law of divorce ; and
Marshall's additions to our federal law will never be
forgotten. By what he did in Gibbons v. Ogden, Web
ster has won a proud place in the small company of
great law-givers.
And he is entitled to a liberal share of the glory
which the Dartmouth college decision has won, for
without him Marshall would have had no opportunity.
To estimate the prodigious effect of the rulings in
1 Huschke ought to have stated this fact at page 19 of his edition of
Gaius, in order to give the latter his full posthumous glory.

142 The Brothers' War
these two cases, try to realize to yourself what would
be the consequences to American trade and commerce
if the States were not effectually kept from infringing
contracts or granting monopolies of transportation. Try
to realize the loss, the inconvenience, the trouble, the
vexation, all the evil that would have unavoidably
befallen us if these two companion decisions and the
subsequent ones following them as precedents or ex
tending them as analogies, had not made practically the
whole of American inland business a unit — to use Web
ster's word — under the protection everywhere of the
same impartial law. The longer you think it over the
more confirmed will be your opinion that from no other
cause has the evolution away from the old independence
of States towards a permanent union and a single organ
ism of perpetually federated communities been more
furthered. The unification of production and distribu
tion thus given resistless impulse has almost of itself
alone worked the unification of all our States. So look
ing back from the standpoint of to-day we may be sure
that the powers had Webster by his accomplishment in
the cases now in mind, to build for perpetual union far
better than he knew.
It needs not to dwell upon the Bunker Hill oration,
made June 17, 1825. It-is, as I beheve, the most famil
iar as a whole of aU speeches to Americans, It did not
stop with adding greatly to the influence he had won
over New England by the Plymouth oration ; it revealed
him to the whole country as its supreme orator. Bear
in mind its theme, remembering how large a part the
battle of Bunker Hill was in founding our union.
The plainest manifestation that providence ever made
of its favoritism to Webster was its having Adams and
Jefferson both to die on the same day of all the year
the most commemorative of each. By the eulogy of

Webster 143
the two patriots which Webster made the next month
he attained the height of his popular celebrity. His
subject was no longer one that principally concerned
New England and the north, but it was the co-opera
tion of both sections in making the United States.
Slowly, but surely, he has climbed to the top of author
ity, whence he ever draws audience and attention from
north and south, both in the present and for ages after
the brothers' war.
These three popular speeches just noticed are unique
in oratory, not in their general character, but in the
nobUity of the subjects, the ripeness of the occasion,
the profound wisdom of treatment, and the extraordi
nary elevation and perfection of style.
Another stage begins in 1830 with the reply to Hayne.
What Webster says therein, recommending brotherly
love between the sections, and commending the union,
he reproduced with grateful variation in many memo
rable passages of later speeches. The original and
reproductions are the most precious gems of our litera
ture, ranking in excellence even above Poe's poetry,
America's best.
The speech of 1833 against Calhoun's nullification
resolutions, that which won for Webster the cognomen.
The Expounder of the Constitution, belongs to the next
succeeding stage, wherein he rose from supreme pane
gyric to invincible defence of the union. As we have
already given in a former chapter this performance
its due praise, we need not say more of it.
This chapter would not be complete if we failed to
glance at the essentials of Webster's greatness as an
oratoV, and to point out the means used by the powers
to give him his extraordinary excellence. He did not
stale himself by discussing trivial matters. When he
rose, people knew that he had an important message,

144 The Brothers' War
and they ought to attend. In harmony with this was
his uniform seriousness, gravity, and becoming dignity
of manner ; and even in his merry-making humor, as in
stanced in describing Hayne leading the South Carolina
mihtia, he never stooped. He spoke to the sound com
mon sense and the regnant conscience of the masses.
His propositions, his iUustrations, his argument went
home without effort to every one who thought at aU
and who cared for moral virtue. The entire country has
heard with great acceptance that Davy Crockett said to
him, " Mr, Webster, you are not the great orator people
say you are ; for I heard your speech, and I understood
every word of it," Whether this be an invention or not,
it well characterizes his easy inteUigibility, Herbert
Spencer could have exampled the main proposition of
his able essay on style by Webster's best efforts, and
every part and parcel of them — statement of proposi
tion, necessary explanation and narrative, distinctions,
illustrations, reasoning, invocation of feeling — appeal to
the sense of justice, I often feel that he is not more
majestic in any particular than the always manifest
meaning of what he says. In this he reminds of Bacon,
He chose only the most important subjects ; he be-
fittingly addressed always the higher nature of his
hearers ; and he always spoke with a transparent clear
ness. But all this does not indicate more than the mere
beginning of true eloquence. The greatest teachers —
those who win and keep the admiration of the world
— have, as their worshippers teach us, gifts of expression
commensurate with the desert of their communications.
Remember Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, Vergil, Cicero,
Dante, Bacon, Goethe, and above all Shakspeare. As
the reader hangs over them he becomes more and more
unconscious of what we caU, rather vaguely, their style.
Their diction, in unhackneyed use of hackneyed words, in

Webster 145
metaphors that flash like electric sparks, in appropriate
ness of varied rhythm, and all appertaining jewels, be
comes to him but a belonging of the much more
precious sense. As it must impart that without impedi
ment it is unconsciously made as like it as the protecting
coloring of animals is made hke that of the objects
amidst which they lurk. There has been but one other
which admits of comparison in world-wide secular im
portance with Webster's theme — that which inspired
" Tu regere imperio populos, Roinane, memento."
We have learned how the ^neid was prized above all
other poetry, not only by the Romans themselves, but,
long after they had become a mere name and memory,
by the different nations of Europe. Plainly it was be
cause Vergil, in that " stateliest measure ever moulded
by the lips of man," had fitly celebrated the greatest
factor delivering from barbarism, and spreading civiliza
tion abroad, that had yet appeared in history, — the
Roman empire. The American union, immeasurably
exceeding that empire in immediate good to miUions at
home, and in fair promise to all the earth, was Webster's
subject. It got from him an appropriate style. The
variety of ornament in his language reaches all the way
from the modest violets of the Anglo-Saxon common to
Bunyan and King James's version, up to the most gor
geous trappings which are part and parcel of the sense
in the best passages of Paradise Lost, There is also a
variety of idiom. He uses that of the field or street, or
of the gentleman or of the scholar, as best suits. He
affected short sentences, and also pure English words.
He told Davis to weed the Latin words out of his speech
on Adams and Jefferson. But when occasion calls he
can revel in that latinity of our tongue which, as De
Quincey has noted, becomes intense with Shakspeare,

146 The Brothers' War
when he is soaring his strongest. If you are inclined to
dispute this, look over the last two sentences of the re
ply to Hayne. How you would lower this sublime pero
ration into the dust, if you replaced the Latin with native
derivatives, or changed the long for short sentences in
what is now above aU example in English or American
oratory, and can be paraUeled in structure, " ocean-roU
of rhythm," and exquisite words only by the most
famous paragraphs of Cicero and Livy, As our last
word here, Webster always imparts the wisest counsel
as to the American union in phrase all-golden, and his
eloquence is entitled to praise beyond all other, because
it is always what his high subject demands.
As I have to do mainly with the permanent and last
ing in Webster, I can merely allude to his physical
endowments, described with such rapture by March,
Choate, and many others of his time, and well summa
rized by Mr. Lodge, I must remind the reader how it
accorded with the purpose of the powers to bestow upon
their favorite majesty of form, mien, and look, a voice
that suggested the music of the spheres, action that
would have been a model to Demosthenes ; in short, a
physique for the orator superior to any on record.
These things helped him mightily in his day.
Apparently I finished with Webster's education some
pages back of this. But the more important part of it
has not as yet been touched upon ; and it is incumbent
upon me to tell it, because of the lesson we ought to
learn from it.
The largest and most characterizing part of our edu
cation — perhaps it would more accurately express my
meaning to say our culture — each one of us gets from
his associations, from his contact with the people of aU
sorts around him in his infancy, boyhood, and manhood
often as far on as middle age, if not sometimes farther.

Webster 1 47
We get it by imitarion, unconscious and conscious, and
by absorprion from what we see, hear, and read, etc.,
which absorption is often most active when we are least
aware of it. Now let us consider the community of
which Webster was the product.
In the Plymouth oration, as we have already sug
gested, he exhibits the exceptional progress and acqui
sitions of New England. What other community ever
showed greater courage against danger or greater en
ergy against obstacles, and such wise building-up of a
new country in a strange land? The Pilgrim Fathers
could not have liberty and their own religion at home,
and for these they went into the wilderness. There
they kept the savage at bay. With soil and climate
both unfavorable they wrought out general plenty and
comfort. They prospered in industry. They equalized
as far as they could all in property rights. And these
liberty-lovers gave the regulation of local affairs to the
town meeting, of which Webster says : " Nothing can
'exceed the utility of these little bodies. They are so
many councUs or parliaments, in which common inter
ests are discussed, and useful knowledge acquired and
communicated." Jefferson, the great apostle of popular self-govern
ment, most earnestly longed to see all America outside
of New England divided into such townships as hers.
But to return to the Pilgrims, They established
schools and churches everywhere. Free education was
maintained by taxation of all property.
Let us sum up. Here was a country in which every
body had been well trained in the available ways of self-
support and also of saving and accumulating, — the very
first essential to make good citizens. Such citizens were
required to administer their public affairs themselves;
and thus they received the very best political education

148 The Brothers' War
and training in a school of genuine democracy, — which
is the next essenrial. The children of each generation
were schooled better than those of the former, the col
leges and universities constantly did better with the
students, and hbraries open to the public both multi
phed and enlarged, — the third essential. And educa
tion and business were rationally mixed, until in Web
ster's time it might be said with truth that the average
New Englander worked with a will, and wisely, every
day to maintain himself and family, and also found leis
ure to add something of value to his store of knowledge.
Here is another essential. The moral and rehgious at
mosphere became purer and purer, and more and more
on all sides good intention was conspicuous in the light,
and evil intention hid itself deep in the dark. This is
the last essential.
The foregoing is made up from the Plymouth oration,
Webster was too near to discern all the intellectual and
moral advancement and the opulent future promise of
his own community, the proper fruit of the conditions
just summarized.-^ Let us indicate by only such a pau
city of examples as we have room for. Able and fully
furnished lawyers everywhere. Think of Story, a most
1 We support our statement in this sentence by quoting below in this
footnote two passages which stand a page or two apart in the Plymouth
oration, italicizing one word in the former, and one word and a clause in
the other, which, if Webster had taken accurate note of the intellectual
ferment then active throughout all New England, he would have made
much stronger ;
" We may flatter ourselves that the means of education at present
enjoyed in New England are not only adequate to the diffusion of the
elements of knowledge among all classes, but sufficient also for respect
able attainments in literature and the sciences."
" With nothing in our past history to discourage us, and with some
thing in our present condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope,
that, as it is our fortune to live in an age when we may behold a wonder
ful advancement of the country in all its other great interests, we may see
also equal progress and success attend the cause of letters."

Webster 149
dihgently attending judge and one of the best; also
finding time both to be the first law professor and most
fertile and eminent author of the age, exhausring Eng
lish and American sources and authority in his books,
and crowding them with a civU law learning to be sur
passed only by that of the Roman jurists of Germany ;
let Ticknor, whom we may caU the founder of the post
classical school of literature in our country, suggest the
students of modern languages who followed in an illus
trious line, — let him suggest also the famous historians,
such as Prescott, Bancroft, Hildreth, Motley, Parkman,
really representatives of the school just mentioned, using
methods that got into the American air first from Tick
nor ; let Channing suggest the pulpit, — Channing, who
raised religion from the gloom of dogma and orthodoxy
into a life of angelic joy ; what can one say to describe
Emerson in a breath, — the teacher to us all of fit aspi
ration, right thinking, noble expression, the highest vir
tue and truest religion, and who lived, as Dr, Heber
Newton has lately told, the most perfect of lives as a
man ; Hawthorne, showing the world sick with its yearn
ing for moral redemption that even a disgraced, lone,
and friendless woman can by a subsequent life of unre
served confession, purity, and love to her neighbors
turn a horrible brand of guilt into a jewel more pre
cious and brilliant than diamond, — how his consum
mate achievement rebukes the sixty years' dilatoriness
of Goethe over his unfinished Faust ; and divine poets,
Whittier, Longfellow, LoweU, and Holmes, — the last
two conspicuous in letters, LoweU being in my judg
ment the greatest American man of letters ; I have said
nothing of the statesmen and orators, beginning with
Fisher Ames and John Adams, — and there are others
in every high round of the intellectual life known all
over the land whose names I must omit.

150 The Brothers' War
In this enumeration I have intentionally looked some
what forward ; for what is in one particular generation
. you cannot find out until its effects are plain in the next.
I want to accentuate it that Webster belonged to a soci
ety which had made some of the extraordinary figures
whose names are given, and was making the rest of
them. When the view just suggested has been taken,
and if in comparing New England with any other com
munity — even with Athens, Florence, England, or Ger
many, in their best eras — periods of time be equalized
and differences of population be properly allowed for,
it will appear that the conditions moulding Webster
were more energetic in productivity than can be found
elsewhere. And if, in this comparison, the relative gen
eral condition of the masses in each community be duly
taken into the account, the result will be far more favor
able to New'England ; for a high level of the masses is a
much better proof of a fecund culture than merely many
striking individual instances.
Thus we bring out the point that Webster was born,
grew up, and lived in a nursery prohfic in men and
women of extraordinary powers and virtues. How in
significant is the muster-roll of any other part of our
country ! I compare that of the south because I am
familiar with it, and one can with better manners dis
parage his own section than another. The ante-bellum
southern treasures of art and literature except speeches,
pohtical and forensic, can be counted on the fingers
of one hand without taking them all. The poetry of
Poe, a few essays of Legard, especially that on Demos
thenes, Calhoun's Dissertation on Government, and
Toombs's Tremont Temple lecture, are aU that are pre
eminent ; and some of the historians of our literature
insist that Poe was southern only in his prejudices, and
not in his making. To turn away from authors, how

Webster 1 5 1
few can be found to compare in education, polish, and
literary or scientific accomplishments with average New
Englanders of their several professions or occupations.
Toombs, in the diamond-like brUliance of his extempore
effusion in talks or speeches, is as solitary in the south
as CatuUus, the greatest of the spontaneous poets of his
nation, was in the Rome of his day.
Webster absorbed and absorbed, assimilated and as
similated, aU the better elements of this marvellous New
England" culture, which I am painfully conscious of hav
ing most insufficiently described above, until at last he
mounted its eminences in his profession, in the politics
of democracy, aesthetic taste, and especially statesmanly
eloquence. So assured was his stand upon these emi
nences that all the wisest and most refined of the sec
tion spontaneously and involuntarily did him obeisance,
recognizing in him their ideal of wisdom and counsel
befittingly expressed. We can stop to give only two
examples, Edward Everett is the one American master
of grand rhetoric. He heard the reply to Hayne, and,
as he says, he could not but be reminded throughout
of Demosthenes' making the unrivalled crown oration.
Choate, profoundly versed in the law, the incomparable
forensic advocate and popular speaker, daily flying
higher with inspiration drawn from Demosthenes and
Cicero — he poured out his admiration in many utter
ances that have already become classic. Webster was
made in and by New England, and not for herself alone.
The toast, "Daniel Webster, — the gift of New England
to his country, his whole country, and nothing but his
country," to which he responded December 22, 1843,
teUs but the truth. No American other than a New
Englander ever had what one may term such a greatness
breeding environment as he. And passing in review aU
the famous children of those famous six States, whether

152 The Brothers' War
they spent their lives at home as Choate, or developed
elsewhere as Henry Ward Beecher, it is my decided
opinion that Daniel Webster as fruit and example of her
culture is New England's greatest glory.
There remain now but a few prominences of Webster
for me to touch upon.
His speech of March 7, 1850, was fiercely denounced
by the root-and-branch abolitionists. Horace Mann
called him a fallen Lucifer, Sumner charged him with
apostasy. Giddings said he had struck " a blow against
freedom and the constitutional rights of the free States
which no southern arm could have given." Theodore
Parker could think of no comparable deed of any other
New Englander except the treachery of Benedict Arnold.
Whittier condemned him to everlasting obloquy in a
lofty lyric, which from its very title of one word through
out was reprobation more stinging than the world-
known lampoon of Catullus against Julius Csesar. The
effect of this tempest has not yet all died out ; and in
many quarters of the north Webster is still regarded as
a renegade. His defenders, however, multiply and be
come more earnest and strong. Let us consider this
speech with the serenity and riper judgment which
should mark the historical writer of to-day.
First and foremost let us grasp the wide difference of
the situation from that at the beginning of 1833, Then,
the question was only remotely a pro-slavery or southern
one, A southern president, the most popular American,
of great firmness of purpose and extraordinary courage,
had taken a decided stand against the movement of one
southern State hostile to the general government, — a
stand the more decided because he cordially hated
Calhoun, who was leading the movement. The south
ern leaders outside of that State did not approve of nul-
hfication; most of them believing it was an absurdity

Webster 153
for a State to contend she could stay in the union and
at the same time rightfully refuse to perform a condi
tion of that union. It seemed that no southern State
except Virginia would stand by South Carolina in the
event of a collision between her and the United States,
We can well understand that Webster could then see
no danger to the cause he loved above all others, that
is, the union, in uncompromisingly demanding that the
revenue be coUected, and with force if necessary.
Nullification was palpably unjustifiable, even under
the doctrine prevalent in the south. We have explained
how Calhoun's extreme desire for ijeaceable remedies
only, led him to champion this illogical measure. The
theory of State sovereignty demanded that, instead of
the nullification ordinance. South Carolina pass an ordi
nance of secession, conditioned to commence its opera
tion at a stated time if the objectionable duties had not
been repealed. The situation in 1833 was that all the
north and nearly all of the south were arrayed under a
southern leader against only one southern State, mak
ing a demand which was plainly untenable in either
one of the two differing schools of constitutional con
struction. But the situation, in 1850, was a south solidly united,
not upon such an obvious heresy as nullification, but
aroused as one man to protect the very underpinning of
its social structure. It was standing confidently upon
the doctrine of State sovereignty, which, as the histori
cal records aU showed, was the creed of the generation,
both north and south, that made the constitution. As
we have already told, Calhoun in 1833 probably con
vinced Webster that the States were sovereign. That
did not mean that the force-bill was wrong ; it meant
only that if South Carolina chose, she could rightfully
secede. And we may say that this great argument of

154 The Brothers' War
Calhoun, demolishing as it does the premises of Webster,
was really irrelevant, for it did not support his own prop
osition. Now in 1850, as Webster saw it, the south was
justified by the constitution, however foolish might be
her policy, and he was too conscientious to oppose what
he believed right and just. In addition to this claim by
the south of State sovereignty as abstractly right, his
conscience told him that some of her practical demands
were just. It had been provided not only that aU of
Texas south of 36° 30' be admitted with slavery, but
further that four other States be made out of the same
territory. Although Webster was a free-soiler from
first to last, his conscience told him peremptorily that
the only honest course of congress as to the provision
mentioned, which was really a solemn contract with
Texas, was to perform the contract in good faith. This
advice, of course, aroused the ire of the abolitionists, who
had united upon the position that no other slave State
should ever be admitted into the union. And he boldly
said that the south was right in her complaint that there
was disinclination both among individuals and pubhc
authorities at the north to execute the fugitive slave
law. Meditate these serious words:
" I desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men at the
north, of all conscientious men, of all men who are not carried
away by sorae fanatical idea or some false irapression, to their
constitutional obligations. I put it to aU the sober and sound
minds at the north as a question of morals and a question of
conscience, What right have they, in their legislative capacity
or any other capacity, to endeavor to get round this constitu
tion, or to embarrass the free exercise of the rights secured by
the constitution to the persons whose slaves escape from them ?
None at all ; none at all. Neither in the forum of conscience,
nor before the face of the constitution, are they, in my opinion,
justified in such an attempt."

Webster i r r
I must believe that as time roUs on the outcry against
this position of Webster's, so unshakably founded in
conscience and reason as the posirion is, must not only
cease, but turn to words of praise and commendarion.
The northern fanatics who tried to abolish slavery by
repudiating such solemn contracts as the resolurion of
March i, 1845, respecting the admission of Texas, and
the fugitive slave restoration clause of the federal consti
tution, while purposing to stay in the union, were just as
moraUy wrong as were the southern fanatics who pro
posed to stay in the union and enjoy its benefits and not
pay the taxes necessary for its maintenance.
One other passage of this speech has been strongly
attacked. Webster opposed applying the Wilmot pro
viso to California and New Mexico, where, as he said,
" the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of
the formation of the earth . . . settles forever with a
strength beyond all terms of human enactment, that
slavery cannot exist." To apply the proviso would be,
as he added, to "take pains uselessly to reaffirm an
ordinance of nature," and " to re-enact the will of God ; "
and its insertion in a Territorial government bill would
be " for the mere purpose of a taunt or reproach."
Mr. Lodge, reprehending most severely, confidently as
serts that though these Territories were not suited to
slave agriculture, yet that their many and rich mines
could have been profitably worked by slaves.^ He
stresses the fact that certain slave owners declared that
they would, if they could, so work these mines. This
disringuished author is to be reminded of how cheaply
Seius could replace any one of his slaves that he worked
to death in Ilva's mines. Let him re-read the Captivi of
Plautus, — not to mention many other ancient records
just as instructive, — and realize that in that time it was
1 Daniel Webster, 318-321.

156 The Brothers' War
not only one race that furnished slaves, but that every
free human being was in lifelong danger of faUing to a
master. The prisoners taken in the incessant wars kept
the slave markets glutted, A few months' work of one
of his slaves would bring the master enough to pay the
purchase money and leave a considerable sum to his
credit with the banker. The Spaniards worked their
mines with Indians to be had for the catching in near-by
places. And Mr, Lodge mentions mining with the labor
of criminals and serfs. In all the instances that he has
in mind the worker can be had for his keep or a little
more than that. But to have mined with the slaves of
the south, — that was widely different. There was no
way to get such a slave except to rear or hire or buy
him in a protected market. Does Mr. Lodge really be
lieve that Seius would have permitted his eight hundred
slaves to sicken in the mines of Ilva if each one had been
worth at least ;^ 1,000 in the market? Really the lead
ing industry of the south was slave rearing. The profit
was in keeping the slaves healthy and rapidly multiply
ing. This could be done at little expense in agricul
ture, where even the light workers were made to support
themselves. But had a planter gone into a mining sec
tion, where he could get no land, for corn to feed his
slaves and stock, and for cotton to bring him money,
he would have found no margin of profit whatever
in mining. I was reared in the gold-bearing district
of Georgia, I can remember old Mr. John Wynne, a
wealthy cotton planter living in Oglethorpe county,
some six or seven miles from my father's, who, when —
to use plantation parlance — he had laid by his crop at
the middle or end of July, would work his gold mine
until cotton-picking became brisk about the middle of
September, He made money out of his gold mine, with
out injuring his other far more valuable mine, that is, the

Webster 157
natural increase of his negroes. And I heard of other
such mine workers. But you could not have tempted
one of these shrewd business men to settle with his
slaves outside of a cotton-making district in order to
mine. Had either Mr. Clingman or Mr, Mason — men
tioned by Mr, Lodge — made the trial, he would have
soon returned to his old neighborhood a sadder and
wiser man.
The negro's work as a slave in the coal and iron
mines of the south never commenced untU after the
thirteenth amendment freed him. Since then he has
done much cruelly hard work as servus poenae — a slave
of punishment — in these mines, for convict lessees, hav
ing no other interest in him than to get all the labor
possible during his term.
So it is clear that Webster, in contending that the
conditions in these Territories were prohibitive of
slavery was as statesmanly and perspicacious as he
was generally in other matters.
His detractors charged that the entire speech was a
bid for the support of the south in his eager struggle
for the presidency. That he passionately longed for
the chair was manifest. But his was not the sordid
ambition of the professional place-hunter. He had a
heaven-reaching aspiration to show America what a
president should be in those angry times. He must
have been conscious that he was the only man of gifts
to do the great deed. What an appropriate climax that
would have been for the invincible defender of the union,
who, when replying to Hayne twenty years before, had
outsoared Pindar in eulogizing South Carolina leading
the south, and Massachusetts leading the north, in the
same breath; and who, neither from prepossession in
favor of his native community or resentment because of
attack upon it by those of the other section, had ever

158 The Brothers' War
been removed out of brotherly love for all his country
men ahke. If you can do an all-important thing for
your fellows which you believe no one else can do, and
are without ambition for opportunity, are you not a
poor grovelling creature? Webster, knowing that se
cession could not be peaceable, and seeing it become
more and more probable, racked with fears for the
union, and aghast at the menace of fraternal bloodshed,
like Calhoun, he cheated himself with a futile remedy.
We have told you of Calhoun's proposal to disarm the
combatants. In his amiability Webster believed with
his whole soul that he could as president make his
countrymen love one another as he himself loved them,
and that he could pour upon the waters now beginning
to rage oil enough to safe the ship of union through the
tempest soon to be at its height. It was an aspiration
high and holy, deserving of eternal honor from all
America, You cannot read this great speech of March 7
aright if you do not discern that Webster was seriously
alarmed. When you see that a dear one's malady is
fatal, you will not confess it to others, — not even to
yourself. His excited exclamations, " No, sir ! no, sir !
There will be no secession ! Gentlemen are not serious
when they talk of secession," cannot deceive a reader
whose wont it has been to look into his own heart.
Webster did not see the future with the superhuman
prevision of Calhoun ; but he had observed the course
of things in that stormy session. Is it to be believed
that he had overlooked the tremendous significance of
Toombs's speech of December 13, and of the wUd plau
dits it brought from the southern members? And try
to conceive what must have been the effect upon him of
that most solemn and the saddest great speech in all
oratory of Calhoun just three days before. Read the
7th of March speech by its circumstances and it is re-

Webster 159
vealed to you, as by a flashlight, that Webster had
peeped behind the curtain which he had prayed should
never rise in his hferime. Horror-struck as he was, he
would not despair of his country, — he wotdd not beheve
that the brothers' union was about to turn into a broth
ers' war. Oh, let nobody dishonor his better self by
seeing in this glorious speech, which our best and most
lovable have placed in their hearts beside Washington's
fareweU address, the bid of a turncoat. Rather let us
learn to understand its supreme statesmanly reach ; its
impartiality towards and just rebuke of the orator's own
section and its merited castigation of the other coura
geously given, while affection for both is kept upper
most; its grand dignity, moral height, and pre-eminent
patriotism. Let us also learn properly to estimate the
disfavor with which he regarded ever afterwards during
the rest of his life the active anti-slavery men of the
north, whom he could not understand to be other than
bringers of the unspeakable calamity he would avert.
And let us give him his due commiseration for missing
the nomination, and reahzing that the hopes of saving
his country which he had cherished so fondly were all,
all shattered. When we do our full duty to him we will,
northerners and southerners alike, agree that Whittier's
palinode ought to have gone full circle before it paused.
What is Webster's highest and best fame ? In answer
we think at once of the reply to Hayne, its loftiness
throughout, its eagle ascensions here and there, and
most of all the organ melodies at the grand close, be
side which the famous apostrophe of Longfellow is
harsh overstrain. The next moment we feel he is
higher in his profound love for his whole country than
in his unequaUed eloquence. He and Lincoln were the
supereminent Americans who could never, never forget
that the people of the other section were their own full-

i6o The Brothers' War
blood brothers and sisters. They are the supreme
exponents of that American brotherhood, more deeply
founded and more lasting than either one of the nation
alizations which we have explained, out of which a
continental is first, and then a world-union to come.
To save our union was also to do the better deed of
saving that brotherhood. For this each strove in his
own way, I believe that the people of the world-union
will pair them in Walhalla, and set them above aU
other heroes, crowning Webster as the monarch of
speech which prepared miUions with faith and fortitude
for the crisis, and crowning Lincoln the monarch of
counsels and acts in the crisis. It will be understood
that neither was called away before his mission was
finished. The greatest work of each was example of
the love with which we should all love one another ;
and that was complete.

CHAPTER IX
"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN"
THE misrepresentations in "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
ofthe character ofthe negro and his usual treat
ment in southern slavery have been taken as true
bythe best-informed and most unprejudiced everywhere
outside of the south. The quotations which I make
above from Prof. Barrett Wendell's bahnbrechend work
on American hterature^ show a rare and exemplary free
dom from sectional bias. But he is a most convincing
witness to the statement with which I begin this chapter,
as I shall now show by two other excerpts from the same
book, making it appear that even Professor WendeU
has accepted without question the misrepresentations
mentioned. In these excerpts I itahcize the important
statements, and I follow each with a contradictory one
of my own, I invite close attention to what Professor
WendeU says on one side and I on the other, for they
make up issues of fact that must be rightly settled be
fore the historical merit of the work which is the subject
of this chapter can be accurately judged.
This is the first excerpt :
"Written carelessly, and full of crudities, 'Uncle Tom's
Cabin,' even after forty-eight years, remains a reraarkable piece
of fiction. The truth is that alraost unawares Mrs. Stowe had
in her the stuff of which good novelists are made. Her plot,
to be sure, is conventional and rambling; but her characters,
even though little studied in detail, have a pervasive vitality
which no study can achieve ; you unhesitatingly accept them as
1 Ante, 28-30.

1 62 The Brothers' War
real. Her descriptive power, meanwhile, was such as to make
equally convincing the backgrounds in which her action and her
characters move. What is more, these backgrounds, most of
which she knew from personal experience, are probably so faith
ful to actual nature that the local sentiment aroused as you read
them may generally be accepted as truer ^ ,
I say as to the characters in the novel that the negroes
are monstrous distortions, being drawn in the main with
the leading peculiarities of whites and without those of
negroes ; and that as to her most representative southern
whites Mrs. Stowe is utterly untrue to fact by making
them all anti-slavery. I say as to the " backgrounds,"
that she knew as little of them as she did of the negroes.
I expect to demonstrate that the "personal experience"
claimed for her by Professor Wendell was scanty and
inadequate in the extreme.
I now give the second and last excerpt : " She [Mrs,
Stowe] differed from most abolitionists in having ob
served on the spot all the tragic evils of slavery'' ^
I do not dispute that her opportunity of learning
southern slavery, small as it was, was very far superior to
that of the other prominent abohtionists except Seward,
who had taught school in the black belt of Georgia,^ I
maintain that she knew but little of southern slavery, and
they less ; that what both they and she conscientiously
and most confidently beheved to be their knowledge of
this slavery, the slave, and of the slaveholder, was but a
prodigious mass of delusion and prejudice,
I shall show, I think, that, instead of observing, she
merely fancied and imagined, and that, to say the least, it
1 A Literary History of America, 354. 2 7^
* Consider his virtual confession when Mrs. Davis good humoredly
taxes him with saying in his speeches hard things of slavery which he
knew from actual observation to be fictions. Memoir of Jefferson Davis,
voL i. 581.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" 163
is very misleading to allege that this fancying and imagin
ing of hers was done " on the spot."
By the words, "all the tragic evils of slavery," Profes
sor WendeU evidently means that the evils of southern
slavery to the slave were both very many and very
great, I shall show, I beheve, that the condition of the
average negro in southern slavery was far better than it
was in Africa whence he came, and far better than it is
now since he has been freed. There are occasionally in
cident to every human condition — even to the relation of
parent and child — some tragic evils of its own. In the
native home of the negro in West Africa aU the women
and nearly aU the men are slaves of brutally cruel
savages, without any protection of law whatever. The
social organism is in the very lowest stage; and there
is complete inability to evolve into a better one as the
stationariness of ages proves. In the new south, certain
causes which I have described at length in the last two
chapters of this book have, ever since emancipation, been
steadily and with acceleration depressing the average
negro; and the rise of the few who have managed to
acquire some property, or to get a good industrial educa
tion, only brings out more conspicuously the misery and
wretchedness of the mass. It is correct to say that
there was a vast multitude of tragic evils to the negroes
in West Africa ; and it is also correct to say that there
is now the same to them in the south; but it is not
correct to say that the tragic evils of southern slavery
to the slave were frequent or general. The truth as to
southern slavery ought to be known everywhere, which
is, that it raised the negro very greatly in condition, and,
now that he has been taken out of it, his progress has
been arrested, and he is relapsing.
The great proposition of Mrs. Stowe and of the root-
and-branch abolitionists was that slavery in the south

164 The Brothers' War
was such a flagrant and atrocious wrong to the negro,
that every human being was commanded by conscience
to do everything possible to help him if he should try
to escape from his master. Combating this proposition,
without any concession whatever, I think it well that we
try at the outset to ascertain how southern slavery
affected the negro, whether crueUy or beneficially. To
do this, his condition in his native land, his condition
while a slave in America, and, lastly, his condition after
his emancipation, must be compared. I beg my reader
to follow me attentively as I now review and contrast
these three conditions. First, as to his condition in
Africa. Here is what Toombs said of him to a Boston
audience, January 24, 1856:
" The monuments of the ancient Egyptians carry him back
to the raorning of tirae — older than the pyraraids ; they furnish
the evidence both of his national identity and his social degra
dation before history began. We first behold him a slave in
foreign lands ; we then find the great body of his race slaves in
their native land ; and after thirty centuries, illuminated by both
ancient and modern civilization, have passed over hira, we still
find him a slave of savage masters, as incapable as himself of
even attempting a single step in civilization — we find him there
still, without government or laws of protection, without letters
or arts of industry, without religion, or even the aspirations
which would raise him to the rank of an idolater ; and in his
lowest type, his almost only mark of humanity is, that he walks
erect in the image of the Creator. Annihilate his race to-day,
and you will find no trace of his existence within half a score
of years ; and he would not leave behind him a single discovery,
invention, or thought worthy of reraerabrance by the human
family." *
If my reader deems Toombs's picture overdrawn let
him consult those parts of the recent work of a most
1 Lecture in Tremont Temple, Stephens, War between the States,
vol. i. 637, 638 (Appendix G).

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 1 65
dihgent and conscientious investigator describing the
negroes of West Africa, and note what is there told of
heathen practices stih surviving, — slavery of women to
their polygamic husbands, pitiless destruction of useless
members of the family, robbery, murder, cannibahsm,
the utter want of chastity.^ We quote this as to slavery,
which is especially important here :
" Slavery, having existed from time immemorial, is bound up
with the whole social and economic organization of West African
society. There are, broadly speaking, three kinds of slaves :
those captured in war, those purchased from outside the tribe, —
usually from the interior, — and the native-born slaves. All
alike are mere chattels, and by law are absolutely subject to the
master's will without redress. But in practice a difference is
made, for obvious reasons, between native-born slaves and cap
tives taken frora hostile tribes. The latter are numerous, and
the severest forms of labor fall to their lot. They are treated with
constant neglect, and cruelly punished on the slightest provocation.
Their lives are at no time secure ; they serve as victims for the
sacrifice ; when sick they are driven into the jungle ; in times of
scarcity they starve. " '
The master has the power of life and death over all
slaves.^ The same author adds : " The pawning of persons for
debt is exceedingly common. If the debt is never paid in
1 The Negro in Africa and America, by Alexander Tillinghast, M. A.,
N. Y., 1902.
This really scientific work, very complete though very brief, is as indis
pensable to whomsoever would enlighten the country upon the race ques
tion, as is the latest and best text-book to the lawyer considering a case
under the law treated therein.
Mr. Page's " The Negro : The Southerner's Problem," N. Y., 1904, has
not the scientific merit of the last. But it most ably advocates the side
generally taken by the south.
Both books are free from blinding passion and prejudice.
2 Book cited, 88. The italics are mine.
s Id. 88.

i66 The Brothers' War
full, the pawn and his descendants become slaves in
perpetuity," ^
Surely the reader who has attended to these details
which I have given from Mr, Tillinghast will admit that
the southern master transferred the African into a con
dition far better than any he could find at home. In
the south two agencies gave him beneficent favor to
which he and his fathers had always been strangers.
The law of the land protected his life and shielded
him from cruelty; and his high market value made
it the interest of his American master not to over
work or under- feed and clothe him. And he was in
troduced into the first stage of monogamic life, which
he developed steadily and rapidly until he was freed.
In this he was travelling the only true road up from
barbarism. If he could have but stayed in it until,
after some generations — perhaps centuries — chaste
wives and mothers had been evolved, he would have
stood firmly on the threshold of permanent civihzation
and improvement.
Whatever evil of southern slavery to the negro my
readers, prompted by the root-and-branch abolitionists,
may suggest, they will find on reflection that it would
have been far greater to him and more frequent had
he remained in Africa. Separation of members of the
family has been repeatedly emphasized as a most horri
ble evil of slavery in the south. Such separation was
incalculably more cruel and frequent in West Africa
than it ever was among the negro slaves in America.
And how have the root-and-branch abohtionists mended
matters ? What do we see in the new south, now that
slavery, the great rupturer of family circles, is no more,
and a master no longer can part parent and chUd, or
husband and wife ? Before the end of the brothers' war
1 The Negro in Africa and America, 88, 89. Italics mine, again.

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 1 67
there had not been a single separation of a family among
my father's slaves. At much expense and inconvenience
he had bought the husband of one and the wife of an
other in order to keep each one of these two pairs united.
In 1866, Bob, a boy of sixteen, who, because of his obedi
ence and merry-making gifts, had always been a greatly
indulged pet, signahzed his new-found freedom by steal
ing from the house of one of our neighbors some articles
of considerable value. He fled from justice, and, never
seeing his parents or his brothers and sisters again, died
among strangers. In 1868, Lewis abandoned his wife
Esther and their young child, and went to a distant town.
Some ten years afterwards, BiU, a brother of Bob, and
several years younger, convicted of an unmentionable
crime, received a ten years' chain-gang sentence. Not
long before this the body of one of his two wives who
was at the time out of his favor was found in a well.
Reputable whites living near were convinced that he
had murdered her. If that be true, it should count as
a separation. While he was serving out his sentence
his remaining wife married again, and this should be set
down also as a separation. Bob, Lewis, Esther, and Bill
were slaves of my father. He did not own twenty in
all. This example shows how, as to the same negroes,
southern slavery operated to prevent separation of
families, and how freedom has operated to encourage
and stimulate it. It is not an exceptional example.
My maternal grandfather and a maternal aunt owned
each many more slaves than my father did. Some of
my father's near neighbors had slaves in considerable
number. In aU of these slaves, while I knew them, there
never was a separation of a family except by death or
the voluntary act of parties to a marriage? But when
they were freed in 1865 separation at once became rife,
and it has always been active. What I have just told is

1 68 The Brothers' War
fairly representative of the new south throughout the
cotton States,
There were now and then sales made of slaves which
sundered man and wife, and parent and child ; but such
were extremely few, and their proportion was steadily de
creasing under two potent influences. Restraint of them
by the law had commenced and was growing. But
the stronger influence was custom and pubhc opinion.
Before approaching sales at public outcry by sheriffs or
representatives of a deceased, and also before private
sales, the slaves to be sold were given opportunity to
find their new masters. There was generally a neighbor
who owned husband, wife, parents, or children, or wanted
a cook, washerwoman, seamstress, boy to make a carpen
ter, striker, or blacksmith of, somebody careful with stock,
etc, and the upshot would be that the man selected
by the slave had got him. The seller had natural feelings.
His wife and all of his children would do their utmost to
get such new masters as the negroes preferred, I shall
always cherish in memory the affectionate regard which
the mother of the household and all the family habitually
showed to their slaves. As I write, a sweet reminiscence
comes of how the children would always clamor and
mutiny against the most merited punishment of their
nurse by father or overseer. There is no doubt that the
slave steadily won larger place in the domestic affections,
and that his treatment by each generation of masters
was more kind and humane. And as a part of this
amelioration the percentage of forced separation of .slave
families was aU the while becoming less.
Let us devote a moment to the negro trader, as he
was caUed, and his slave-pens, which were the subjects
of much and heated invective. The first suggestion in
order here is that there were such in West Africa, far
more frequent and far exceeding in cruelty any ever

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" 169
known in the south. To take the African away from
the latter and turn him over to the former was great
.kindness to him. I remind my readers, in the next
place, that the factors constantly minimizing separation
of slaves from other members of the family — law, public
opinion becoming more sensitive, custom becoming more
merciful, and the sway of the domestic affections stronger
— were pari passu humanizing every incident of the
commerce in slaves as property. Lastly, the negro
trader and the pen, by reason of the small number of the
slaves to whom they caused real suffering, were mercy
and prosperous condition itself beside the convict gangs
and pens which emancipation has put in their place, as
will come out more clearly in a short while.
His use of the lash was a dire accusation of the mas
ter. The reader thinks at once of the relevant words in
a famous passage so often quoted from one of President
Lincoln's messages : " If this struggle is to be pro
longed tiU . , , every drop of blood drawn by the lash
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword," This
was said March 4, 1865, a month and five days only
before General Lee's surrender, and when all the great
battles of the brothers' war had been fought, — a war by
far the most sanguinary in the world's history. Blood
did sometimes foUow the blow of the lash, but not often.
The overseer who could not correct without breaking
the skin always lost his place. When the statement of
Mr, Lincoln just commented on is compared with the
actual fact, it appears to be one of the most extravagant
hyperboles ever uttered.
Before I have my readers to look at the actual facts I
want to say a preliminary word. The parent was en
joined by Solomon not to spare the rod. The rod was
permitted to the master of the apprentice, the school
teacher, the drill officer, and others. It was often used

170 The Brothers' War
with great severity. As we see from the Decameron
husbands were wont to correct their wives by beating
them with sticks. Whipping on the bare back was a
common execution of the judgment of a criminal court.
Our insubordinate convicts are strapped. The usual
punishment of a slave's disobedience was to whip him,
A switch was not generally used, because by reason of
his thick and tough skin and lower nervous develop
ment — to use a common expression — it would not
hurt him. It was a familiar thing to me in my child
hood to hear some negro tell of the use of a switch on
him by women or feeble men, how the blows could
scarcely be felt, and yet with what outcry and clamor he
pretended that each one gave him great pain. The
cowhide, but far more frequently the whip, took the place
of the switch. The former was more and more dis
credited, because it could seldom be laid on hard enough
without cutting the skin. The whip had a flat lash at
the end, with which, as the strap or paddle now used on
our convicts, a stinging blow could be hit that would not
draw blood.
An ordinary correction of a negro did not cause him
as much pain as your child, with his far superior sensi
tiveness, receives when you give him the rod. Large
and heavy as the overseer's whip looked, the negro, with
his high- degree of insensibihty to physical pain inherited
from his African ancestors, who for a hundred generations
or more had bestowed upon one another all kinds of cor
poral torture, cared far less for it than the abohtionist
who insisted on making him merely a black white man,
could ever understand. How littie of both mental and
corporal suffering the lash causes the average negro is
strikingly shown by the fact that ever since his emanci
pation, when he is detected in a serious offence, he is
prone to propose that he be whipped instead of being

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" 171
carried to court. If his offer is accepted he strips off his
clothes with alacrity, exclaims the conventional "O,
Lordy ! " under every faU of the whip ; and when the
contract number of lashes has been given he goes away
with the look and air of one who has just learned that
he has drawn a lottery prize of thousands; and his near
est and dearest, his wife and children, aU his sweethearts,
congratulate him cordially, and the entire negro commu
nity rate him as rarely fortunate. This is enough here
of the lash ; but a word or two more will be appropriate
when we give the chain-gang attention.
" Run, nigger, run, patroller get you."
The riotous merriment of this air can be fully appreci
ated only by one who has heard Cuffee sing it at the
quarters while picking his banjo. It completely con
futes the charge often made that the patrol law was a
cruel one. To the negro, the execution of that law was
more of fun and frolic than punishment. Let this air,
and all the others to which the slaves used to dance, be
meditated by those, if there are such, who inchne to
believe that Professor DuBois has really detected, as he
seriously contends, in the negro melodies of the old
south deep sorrow over slavery. If miserable conditions
give character to musical expression, the songs, if any,
that now come forth spontaneously from the mass of
southern negroes — that is, from those of the lower class,
which class will be described later herein — ought to be
• sadder than the tears of Simonides,
My reader who has his memory stored with the raw-
head and bloody bones fiction of abolitionists who had
never set foot on an inch of slave territory, probably
thinks of bloodhounds, and wonders if I wiU be frank
enough to mention them. He has been made to believe
that runaway slaves often had the flesh torn from their

172 The Brothers' War
bones by these dogs, I witnessed several chases of
runaways, and in every one, when the negro was over
taken by the dogs, he was in a tree far above their
reach. Think about it, and bring it home to yourself.
Put yourself in the runaway's place, you would surely
understand as well as a common house cat does how to
avoid pursuing dogs. Negro dogs, as they were called,
were bred to be far more slow than fox dogs. The
tricks of the runaway would put the latter at fault so
often that they could hardly ever catch him. Further,
the packs of negro dogs were usually too small to over
power a stout negro. He was often armed with a scythe-
blade for use if overtaken where he could not find a tree.
When he could keep ahead no longer he preferred tak
ing refuge to fighting with the dogs. He knew he could
kill or disable only the few that would rush in recklessly,
and that the others would stay too far from him to be
hurt and yet keep him at bay. He was now going to
be caught, and he would think it better not to pro
voke the ire of the owners by killing or injuring their
dogs. The negro hunted the 'possum and 'coon by night and
the hare — the rabbit, as everybody called it — on Sun
days, half-holidays, and Christmas, either with his young
master or without him, and always with the dogs;
which he thus learned to control, A negro woman
cooked the corn-bread and pot-liquor, with which they
were fed by her or some other slave. They were always
waiting near when the slaves ate by day in the fields or
at all hours of night in their cabins, and many a bit was
thrown to them. Usually there was the greatest friend
ship between the dogs on the plantation, those intended
for chasing runawdys included, and the negroes. It was
great entertainment for a negro, at the command of his
master, to give the young negro dogs a race, as it was

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 173
called. These races were frequent, and they were the
entire training of the dogs for their business, A hunting
dog when lost will track his master. And many a run
away was caught by dogs which he was in the habit of
feeding and hunting with. The average negro of those
days, prowhng so much at night as he did, necessarily
- became a most expert dog-tamer. How often I have
been diverted with this sight I A strange negro, coming
on some errand, intrepidly opens the front gate and en
ters the yard of a dwelling, A savage dog dashes for
ward. Just as the dog couches near for his spring, the
negro, by a very quick movement, takes off his hat and
extends it to the dog. The latter turns his eyes away
from the negro, looks at the old, soiled wool hat, smells
it, and then retires, nonplussed.
As a general rule a negro was safe from the bite of
dogs. Running away was not frequent. The almost
insuperable difficulty of final escape from the dogs pre
vented it. And it was in practice a most mild means of
prevention, I suppose that I knew and heard of the
catching of some twenty odd slaves in the contiguous
parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene coun
ties, which constituted the locality with which I was
famUiar, and in not a single case was one injured by the
bloodhounds. The dogs that are now turned loose after
our convicts are of far more savage temper than were
the negro dogs of the old south ; and consequently the
human game, when come up with,, is more prompt to go
up a tree than was the old slave.
There was much less lack of food and raiment among
the slaves than among the class known as the white
trash. It was considered a business blunder not to keep
them supplied always with more food than they wanted.
They were in better physical condition than the average
white laborer now shows.

174 ' The Brothers' War
And they were not worked hard. Even in the long
est days of the year, when the hattie with the grass was
fiercest, at night the quarters were resonant with mirth,
song, and dancing as soon as the mules had been
watered, stabled, and fed.
The foregoing is a report, from my observation on the
spot, of " all the tragic evils of slavery " to the negro in
the south, I have been at pains to make it as true as
can be, I purpose to follow it now with a hke report of
all the gladsome blessings to him of his freedom.
His true and fast friends, the abohtionists, equahzed
him per saltum to his master as a voter and office
holder. This single measure was sure to make deadly
enemies of white and black in the south, and to bring a
war of races in which the superior one was bound to
conquer and become absolute. This war did come, and
was fought out. Profound peace has reigned for some
years, and the negroes now contentedly stay away from
the polls, and manifest no aspiration whatever for office
and place.
His same friends gave the ex-slave equality with his
old master under the criminal law. He had this in
slavery only when charged with a capital offence ; and
if he was charged with a graver one of the non-capital
offences, such as breaking and entering a dwelling,
steahng something of considerable value, he was brought
before a statutory court of justices of the peace, and if
upon his summary trial he was convicted, his punish
ment was usually a short term in jail, the sheriff to give
him so many lashes each day until he had received the
full number adjudged in his sentence, I never heard
of one that was seriously injured by this kind of punish
ment. It never gave him any permanent mental
anguish. His conscience approved whipping as the
most fit punishment for every offence. The crimes of

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 1 75
negroes mentioned above in this paragraph were very
infrequent. Their many peccadillos were in practice
wholly ignored by the law, and given over to private
and domestic jurisdiction. Cuffee would sometimes
indulge a sudden craving for fresh meat by appropri
ating a shoat or grown Iamb, or he would gratify a
watering mouth by stealthy invasion of melon patches
or sweet potato patches and banks. And he was prone
to other small larcenies. If caught, — which was very
far from always happening, — he was whipped ; and that
was the last of it. Now he must replace the bounty of
his master which sheltered, clothed, and fed him com
fortably all his life by living from hand to mouth. His
forecast utterly undeveloped, and more and more losing
the work habit, there is often but one way for him to
avoid starving or freezing, and that is to get the neces
saries of life by various acts which are crimes in the law.
It is but a scanty supply that he thus manages to get.
His year is nearly always, from beginning to end, but an
alternation of short feasts upon the cheapest fare, and
prolonged fasts. Yet in the eye of the stern and severe
law how many gross offences does he commit by doing
only the things which, if he did not do, he could not
keep soul and body together. And so he is brought
before every court of any criminal jurisdiction, and when
convicted, as he generally is, for he is nearly always
guilty, — ¦' not in conscience, but guilty under the law
which his emancipators have put him under, — often he
cannot find a friend to pay his fine, and he must work
it out in the chain-gang. The city has its chain-gang,
the county has its chain-gang, and the State works or
farms out its convicts. The percentage of whites among
these convicts is very small. Often when you en
counter a gang at work you cannot find a single white
person in it. These negro convicts are many, many.

176 The Brothers' War
As fast as one's time expires his place is filled by
another. Disease, decay of energy from irregular food
supply, growing habits of idleness, and other things in
the train, bring forth tramps more plentifully, and from
these the chain-gangs are more and more largely re
cruited. These slaves of punishment work under the
eyes of guards furnished with the best of small-arms
loaded to kill. The most of them work in shackles. If
they do not work as their superintendents think they
ought, they are strapped, I have seen them working in
the rain, as I never saw required of slaves. At night
they are put to sleep in a crowded log-pen, all of them
chained together, the chain being made fast to each
bunk. The guards are practised marksmen, known to
be men who will promptly and resolutely " do their
duty," This hell-like life constantly keeps each convict
watching for opportunity to make a dash for liberty.
If the guards have anything like fair shots when he
starts, one more unmarked and soon forgotten grave is
dug and filled in the paupers' burial ground, and that is
the earthly end of this poor derelict of the human race.
Suppose he gets safely away from the guard. In a few
minutes the unleashed dogs are yelping on his track.
In the old days even the negro dogs were fed and
tended by slaves, and almost every dog in the land
seemed to love negroes. But these bloodhounds in the
convict camps have been bred into a deadly hatred of
every negro. Escaping Cuffee is usually caught. Then
more of the paddle, heavier shackles, chains at night
stronger and more taut, and the bosses harder to satisfy-
as he works under greater hindrances — these make his
lot more hell-hke than it was before.
It is a melancholy proof of the insufficient dietary and
bad hygiene of the common negroes that these convicts
fatten in spite of their cruel hardships.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" 177
The long-term convicts, farmed out to coal and other
mine owners and various manufacturers, and private
employers, I know but httie of from observation. But
what I hear makes me believe that their condition is
worse than that of those just described. This is to be
expected, for two reasons. First, they are worked for
profit by persons whose only interest is to get the
largest possible product out of their labor. The labor
exacted by the owner, bear in mind, would not be severe
enough either to impair the market value or check vig
orous reproduction of his slaves. Second, the places
where these convicts are worked are more or less retired,
and thus the employer escapes scrutiny nearly all the year.
Think of a negro who, receiving a twenty years' sentence
for burglariously stealing a ham when he was hungry, is
put to work in the coal mine ! Who ever hears of him
afterwards ? He is soon forgotten by his wife, who takes
another husband, and by his children either skulking
here and there to shun the officer, or toUing in a chain-
gang. Here is indeed a bitter slavery — bitterer by far
than any West Africa ever knew. There the slave does
not labor underground and out of the sun so dear to
him. His manumission comes mercifully in many ways,
long before the expiration of twenty years — the sacrifice
may need a victim ; he may starve ; he may fall sick and
be cast out in the bush. But the mine slave — the mine
boss will not whip him hard enough to give him even
short rest from his work, work, work ; he shall always
have enough of raiment, food, and sleep to keep him
able to work, work, work ; when he gets very sick the
mine doctor wiU patch him up and send him back to his
work, work, work; he wiU work, work, work out his
twenty years in this hell hole. Miss Landon in her im
mortal invective against child labor exclaims :

178 The Brothers' War
" Good God ! to think upon a child
That has no childish days.
No careless play, no frolics wild.
No words of prayer and praise ! "
This factory child that never knew any of the proper
joys of a child is without either sweet memory or un-
avaihng wish. But the mine slave, the most of whose
former life was passed in the open air, how he pines for
the splendor of his loved sun by day ; how in his bunk
he recalls his rounds by night when the Seven Stars, the
Ell and Yard and Job's Coffin were his clock and the
North Star his compass. Each part of the revolving
year whispers to him when he is at work or dreaming,
Christmas suggests the jug with the corn-cob stopper,
the 'possum cooked brown, the yams exuding their
sugary juice, the banjo picker and his song, the fiddle
playing a dancing tune, and the floor shaking under the
thumping footfalls; the cold weather following suggests
the 'possum and 'coon hunt; the early spring brings
what he used to call the corn-planting birds and their
lively calls ; and on and on his thoughts go over mock
ing-bird, woodpecker, early peaches and apples, full or
chards spared by frost, the watermelon, sohtary and
incomparable among all things for a negro to eat, his
Sunday fishings and rabbit hunts, his church and society
meetings, this and that dusky love who fooled him into
believing that he was dearer to her than husband or any
other man, especially some yellow girl, his nonesuch,
exceeding all other women as the watermelon excels all
other produce of tree or vine, — on and on his thoughts
go over what he can never have again, I need not say
a word for the white victims of child labor, for their
race is rousing for their rescue, and I know its power
to achieve. But I do feel that it is my duty to put
that friendless, forgotten, long-term negro convict in

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 1 79
the minds of my southern readers. If he must be a
convict, do not farm him out to mine operators or
where he wiU be worked behind any screen. Put all
our convicts, both felony and misdemeanor, upon the
pubhc roads until they need only a httle working now
and then, say I, There the convicts will not be worked
for profit, nor in secret.
The total of the negro's suffering in southern slavery
from aU causes falls in amount far below that alone
which has come upon him because he was stupidly sub
jected to the white man's criminal law, and not given
reformatories and other belongings of the system which
we are perfecting for juvenile offenders. The suffering
in slavery was occasional only, and soon over. The
present suffering of the negroes under the criminal law
is constant, and is to be found rife in every locahty.
The aggregate of the felony and misdemeanor convicts
of Georgia now at hard labor is about 4,500, The con
victs sentenced by city and town police courts for short
terms of days I cannot give with any approximate
accuracy, I think it probable that the number of those
convicted each year in the municipal courts is somewhat
larger than that of those convicted in the State courts.
By reason of a late wholesale reduction of felonies the
number of long-term convicts does not increase, — it is
at a standstiU, — but the number of the misdemeanor
and municipal convicts steadily increases. More than
nine-tenths of those in each one of the three classes are
negroes. The stench, filth, and discomfort of their nights
and the hardship of their days, who can describe? How
it moves my pity to see, as I often do, the convict toil
ing incessantly for long hours, impeded and tortured
by his iron shackles, the paddle at hand, and a double-
barrel or Winchester frowning over him, each to be
used on occasion by somebody who cares nothing for

i8o The Brothers' War
and has no interest in him. Weary as the worker may
be, a word from the boss gives new impetus to his pick
or shovel. Here is the only place I have ever known
on American soU where one can find " poor, oppressed,
bleeding Africa," How different it was with the slave
offender ! It mattered not what was the charge against
him, he had persons related to him both in interest and
affection who would intercede powerfully at his call.
Wherever he might be, — in the sheriff's hands, or
locked up by the overseer in the gin-house, — a messen
ger-service as secret and more sure than wireless teleg
raphy even if not as quick, was at his command; and
some child, white or colored, or favorite servant would
carry his entreaties to the Big House. And the justices,
or ole master or the overseer, would be influenced by a
word from ole miss, or the tears of young misS, or the
importunity of young master. In the end Cuffee's pun
ishment would be made tolerable ; and after it was over
he would the next night at the cabin brag joyfully of
the many friends he had and what great things they had
done for him — the children of his master present and
showing more gladness than himself.
Which of the two was the more humane and christian
punitive system for the negro? Which of the two was
the better for him ? That of slavery, or that produced
by the conditions which his professed friends put in
place of slavery?
I assert it most solemnly that I never saw a negro
slave worked in shackles and under a loaded firearm,
neither by his master nor an overseer, nor by their
command, nor by an officer of the law ; and, further, that
I never had information or report that such had been
done. When their emancipators led the negroes out of their
cabins into their new hfe it was something like throw-

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 1 8 1
ing our domestic animals into the forest and desert,
where they, without formed habits of self-maintenance
and without knowledge of the new environment, must
live, if they can live, only in competition with their wild
brothers and sisters knowing the environment and who are
self-maintaining experts therein. That comparison serves
somewhat. But this comes nearer: Suppose children
between the ages of eight and twelve, who have never
been taught to do anything for themselves, to be taken
away from their parents, and settled among a people
lately made bitterly hostile to the children, as the whites
were made to the negroes by the effort of the emanci
pators to give political equality — nay, supremacy — to
the latter. Those emancipated children must subsist
themselves. How little they could earn by begging or
work. They would have to steal to live. Those that
did not steal, and for whom no companion would steal,
would perish. The philanthropists who founded this in
fantile colony would have outdone but by a very little
those who thrust the reluctant negroes into freedom.
I ask my reader to add here mentally the full descrip
tion which in my last two chapters I have given of the
lower class ofthe negroes in the south — this description
showing them to be ninety-five per cent of the whole,
far below their average condition in American slavery,
and steadily becoming worse.
I believe that in due time the people of the north will
make these admissions :
I, Any and every evil of southern slavery to the
negro was accidental, and not a necessary incident of
the system, just as the occasional evils of marriage to the
parties are not necessarily incidental to that institution,
2, As this slavery had improved and was still improv
ing the negroes so prodigiously in every particular, and
as their condition during the forty years foUowing eman-

1 82 The Brothers' War
cipation has been going uninterruptedly from bad to
worse, until now the extinction of the great body is
frightfully probable, as I shall show in my last two chap
ters, the sudden and sweeping abolition of 1865 was an
unutterable misfortune to these dependent creatures.
Emancipation ought to have been gradual. Especially
ought there to have been established something hke the
Roman patronate, under which the freedman would have
been sure of wise advice, beneficial overlooking, and
efficient protection from his former master.
3, The grant at once of right to vote and hold place and
office to the southern negroes indiscriminately exceeds
all blunders of democracy in madness and stupidity,
4. Southern slavery, so far from being wrong morally,
was righteousness, justice, and mercy to the slave. The
federal constitution was simply obeying the commands
of good conscience in recognizing the slave as the prop
erty of his owner, and protecting that property. There
fore, when the federal government emancipated the slaves
it ought to have given the masters just compensation.
So much for what American slavery was to the negro,
and what its abolition has done for him in the south.
This can be told now. But for years the powers watch
ing over our union kept the subject in the dark. It did
not suit their purpose, that the people ofthe union-pre
serving section should see and understand. They had
decreed that northern resistance to slavery, as the soli
tary root of disunion, should go beyond refusing it
extension into the Territories, They chose to add
another provocation of the secession which they had
planned as the means of abolishing slavery. This new
provocation was that the north be induced to make the
fugitive slave law a dead letter. To drive the south into
early secession, perhaps it would not be enough merely

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 183
to deny her new territory. But unite the north against
the law mentioned, and encourage both running away
and the underground railroad by an active public opinion,
then soon all along the southern border slavery will lose
its hold, some of the slaves escaping and the rest going
south. This zone will, after a while, be settled by the
friends and employers of free labor, who from year to
year wiU push the southern non-slave district further in.
The menace of this hostile occupation will steadily
become greater to the slaveholders, and finally it will
convince them that they cannot protect slavery in the
union. Many northerners who declared it was wrong to inter
fere with slavery in the States, at the same time sympa
thized with the pubhc opposition to restoring the fugitive
to his master. It is clear that they did not regard this
opposition to be what it really was ; that is, actual war
upon slavery where it existed. To oppose execution
of the law was both to invite and help runaways. And
if such invitation and help was persisted in, from one
end of Mason and Dixon's line to the other, the risk of
escape of slaves and their consequent depreciation in
market value would both steadily increase. The refusal
to enforce the fugitive slave law was therefore a deadly
attack upon slavery in the States ; and this was so plain
that the union-loving people of Georgia declared in
the famous Georgia Platform of 1850 that the union
could not be preserved if that law was not faithfully
executed. The faithful guardians of the American union had
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " written of purpose to prevent
the execution of the fugitive slave law. They hypno
tized the root-and-branch abolitionists and Mrs. Stowe
into believing that to abet in any way the restoration
of a flying slave was an unpardonable crime ; and that

184 The Brothers' War
the obhgation of conscience to refrain from committing
such a crime imperatively commanded disregard of all
counter provisions of the constitution and the law of the
land. One cannot at all understand the mighty abolition
movement if he stop with the professed motives of Phil
lips, Whittier, Garrison, Mrs, Stowe, and the rest. They
believed in their hearts, and declared, its purpose was
to wipe out the great national disgrace of slavery, to
lift the slave out of an abyss of unspeakable outrage
and injustice, and to better his condition. As we have
shown you, they were, in their very extreme of conscien
tiousness, as wide from the facts and right as wide can
be. They were not doing their own wills, as they
thought they were. They but did the will of the fates.
The latter ruthlessly — so it seems to us now — sacri
ficed both the prosperity and comfort of the southern
people for several generations, and the very existence,
it may be, of nearly all the negroes in America, besides
also making a laughing-stock of the abolitionists — all
to the end to kill that nationalization which threatened
the integrity of the American union.
I believe that I can now take my reader on with me
in what I have to say of Mrs. Stowe's book. Let him
bear in mind that the object of the fates was to have
in it not a representation true to fact, but such an untrue
and probable one as would unite the people of the north
in moral and conscientious resolve against any and every
attempt to restore a fugitive slave. What the fates
wanted was an author who appeared to have extensive
and accurate acquaintance with slavery, and who, while
beheving it most conscientiously to be the extreme of
evil to the black, was endowed with the power to make
the north see with her eyes. They found their author
in Mrs. Stowe, whom they had educated and trained
from infancy.

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 185
In view of the mighty influence which " Uncle Tom's
Cabin " exercised upon public opinion, it is important to
examine what were Mrs, Stowe's qualifications to speak
as an authority on southern slavery. And in this investi
gation the same qualifications of all others who arraigned
the system for what they alleged were its heinous moral
wrongs to the slave are likewise involved. The state
ment of Professor Wendell, quoted above, that she was
the only one of the abolitionists who had observed slavery
" on the spot," can be corroborated by overwhelming
proofs. If it be made to appear, as I think will be the
case, that she was from first to last under a delusion
which metamorphosed the negro into a Caucasian, and
further that she had no real opportunities of learning
the facts of slavery, then the case of the root-and-branch
abolitionists must fall with the testimony of the only eye
witness whom they have called.
Whether she was biased or not we will let her own
words decide. Here they are:
"I was a child in 1820 [she was then nine years old] when
the Missouri question was agitated ; and one of the strongest
and deepest impressions on my mind was that made by my
father's serraons and prayers, and the anguish of his soul for the
poor slave at that tirae. I reraeraber his preaching drawing
tears down the hardest faces of the old farmers in his congrega
tion, I well reraeraber his prayers raorning and evening in the
faraily for ' poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa,' that the time of
her deliverance might come ; prayers offered with strong crying
and tears, and which indelibly irapressed my heart, and made
me what I am frora my very soul, the eneray of all slavery.
Every brother that I have has been in his sphere a leading anti-
slavery man. As for myself and husband, we have for the last
seventeen years lived on the border of a slave State, and we
have never shrunk from the fugitives, and we have helped them
with all we had to give, I have received the children of liberated

1 86 The Brothers' War
slaves into a family school, and taught them with my own chil
dren, and it has been the influence that we found m the church
and by the altar that has made us do all this," *
No comment is needed. The passage shows that her
strongly excited feelings unavoidably shaped all her per
ceptions and formed aU her judgments as to everything
in slavery.
Now as to the means she had of acquiring the facts,*
Although she had seen a little of Kentucky, a border slave
State, she had never lived in it, nor anywhere else in the
south. Especially is it to be emphasized that she had
had no experience of the cotton region, the real seat
of slavery, and the only place where it could be fully
studied and learned. She passed some eighteen years
in lower Ohio, just across the river from Kentucky, where
she saw much of escaping slaves. Of course, being
aflame with zeal as she was for her subject, she had ob
served closely the native negroes of the north. Such of
these as she met were widely different from the mass in
slavery; for, born and bred in the north, they had had
the beneficent training of the free-labor system, and also
opportunity to absorb considerable of a higher culture.
These negroes were exceptional, even of the northern
natives. And the fugitives were also exceptional; for
they far excelled the companions left behind them in
intelligence, spirit, and every essential of good charac
ter. An ordinary Cuffee had liberty the least of all
things in his thoughts, A negro like Hector or Garri
son, the former escaping from Calhoun and the otlier
from Toombs, was as much above the average as the
shepherd dog is above common sheep-worriers and egg-
suckers, Mrs, Stowe, as her book shows, had no con
ception whatever of the ordinary plantation negro. And
while she had seen much of some Kentuckians, these
1 Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. xviii.

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 187
were not representative southerners. They lived upon
the border, where slave labor found but little lucrative
opportunity, and they were also affected more or less
with the sentiments of their nearby northern neighbors.
Naturally only those Kentuckians of the border who
really were of her opinion would consort with this de
cided anti-slavery partisan; the others would stand
aloof, Mrs, Stowe never knew either real negroes or
real slaveholders. And she also knew nothing whatever
of cotton plantation management. Some authors show
an amazingly full and accurate knowledge of countries
and communities which they never saw, Burke's knowl
edge of every detail touching India occurs to me,
Lieber had visited Greece while Niebuhr had not.
When the former had minutely described to the other
some famous landscape, — say the battlefield of Mara
thon, — Niebuhr would make copious inquiries about re
mains of old roads and belongings which the other had
forgotten, although he had seen them. Tom Moore
had never been in Persia, but there is so much of that
country drawn to the life in Lalla Rookh that somebody
applied to him the saying that reading D'Herbelot was
as good as riding on the back of a camel, Mrs. Stowe
could not collect, sift, and read facts, and see through
the most cunningly devised masks, as Henry D. Lloyd
showed his marvellous power to do in " Wealth against
Commonwealth." That was not her gift. Her gift was
to tell the best of stories — to vary it prodigally and
artistically throughout with wonders, with things to
make you shudder and also thrill with pleasure, with
things to make you cry and laugh. Her emotional in
vention was the great factor. Here is her own account :
" The first part of the book ever comraitted to writing was
the death of Uncle Tom. This scene presented itself almost

1 88 The Brothers' War
as a tangible vision to her mind while sitting at the comraunion-
table in the little church in Brunswick. She was perfectly over
come by it, and could scarcely restrain the convulsion of tears
and sobbings that shook her frame. She hastened home and
wrote it, and her husband being away she read it to her two
sons of ten and twelve years of age. The littie fellows broke
out into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through
his sobs, ' Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the
world ! '"
The description of Uncle Tom's death is the goal and
climax of the novel. Its scene is laid far down in the
south, hundreds of miles below any place which she or
the children had ever seen or studied. It would have
been more in order for her to submit the draft to observ
ant residents of that locality ; but the fates did not in
tend that her convictions should be weakened by real
information. Evidently she considered that her truth
to fact was fully vindicated by the effect ofthe narrative
upon her children, who, like herself, were entirely with
out knowledge of the subject. They wept and ex
claimed over it. Why, of course, like all children they
loved horrible tales, which their weeping and lamenta
tion proved that they thought were true. Doubtless
these same children had made respectable demonstra
tions over Bluebeard or Little Red Ridinghood. And
now over Uncle Tom's death, which is more dreadful
than anything in Dante's Inferno, and as pure figment,
their feelings were shaken with storm and tempest as
never before.
The statement just quoted proceeds thus :
" Frora that time the story can less be said to have been
composed by her than imposed upon her. Scenes, incidents,
conversations rushed upon her with a vividness and importunity
that would not be denied. The book insisted upon getting
itself into being, and would take no denial."

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 189
I often fancy, as I think over it, that the last quotation
describes suggestions from the fates.
But we must let Mrs, Stowe finish what we have had
her tell in part. Informing us that, after writing " two
or three first chapters," she made an arrangement for
weekly serial publication in the National Era, she says :
" She was then in the midst of heavy doraestic cares, with a
young infant, with a party of pupils in her family to whora she
was imparting daily lessons with her own children, and with
untrained servants requiring constant supervision, but the story
was so rauch raore intense a reality to her than any other
earthly thing that the weekly instalment never failed. It was
there in her raind day and night waiting to be written, and
requiring but a few moments to bring it into veritable characters.
The weekly number was always read to the family circle before
it was sent away, and all the household kept up an intense
interest in the progress of the story." ^
This household had been indoctrinated by the zeal
of Dr. Lyman Beecher into believing unreservedly all
the inventions of ignorant assailants of slavery instead
of the widely different facts.
Before I begin a detailed statement of the material
errors and perversions of fact in " Uncle Tom's Cabin "
I want to emphasize it that every one of them appeared
to northern readers, unfamiliar with the negro and the
south, to be true, and most efficiently helped to form
and strengthen sentiment against enforcement of the
fugitive slave law.
Many things that she writes show that Mrs. Stowe
was completely ignorant of the ways of the cotton plan
tation, I have space to mention but one, Tom was
bred in Kentucky, where no cotton was grown. And
1 These quotations from The Author's Introduction, Riverside ed,
Iviii, Iix, The last sentence italicized by me.

190 The Brothers' War
Cassy, by reason of her indulgent rearing, had had as
little experience as Tom in cotton-picking. Yet these
two show such expertness that Tom can add to the
sack of a slower picker, and Cassy give Tom some of
her cotton, and each have enough to satisfy the weigher
at night. The good cotton-picker is surely a most
skiUed laborer. He must be trained from childhood to
use both hands so well that he becomes almost ambi
dexterous. The training that the typewriter is now
urged to take is a parallel,
Mrs, Stowe shows that she had no accurate knowledge
of the sentiments of the whites of the south as to slavery.
As we have already suggested, there may have been
among the Kentuckians of the border some outspoken
opponents of slavery ; but it is very probable that in her
womanly ardor for her great cause she lavishly magni
fied their numbers. In her novel she has' nearly aU of
her white southerners — I may add all of the attractive
ones — to declare themselves as abolitionists at heart.
Misrepresentation of fact could not be grosser than
this, I was twenty-five years old when the brothers'
war commenced, I had mingled intimately with the
people, high and low, of my part of the south. During
all of this time I never found out there was a single one
of my acquaintances, man, woman, boy, or girl, who did
not believe slavery right. The charge implied by Mrs,
Stowe that we southerners were doing violence to our
consciences in holding on to our slaves is utterly with
out evidence; nay, it is unanimously contradicted by
all the evidence. As we and our parents read the bible,
it told us to hold on to them, but to treat them always
with considerate kindness.
Mrs. Stowe emphasizes the frequent cruelty of the
master to the slave ; and she emphasizes more strongly
stiU that under the law he was helpless. The slave was

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 191
not helpless. He was protected by law. Note this
example, given by Toombs :
"The most authentic statistics of England show that the
wages of agricultural and unskilled labor in that kingdom not
only fail to furnish the laborer with the comforts of our slave,
but even with the necessaries of life, and no slaveholder could
escape a conviction for cruelty to his slaves who gave his slave no
more of the necessaries of life for his labor than the wages paid
to their agricultural laborers by the noblemen and gentlemen of
England would buy," ¦^
The witness just caUed has fuU knowledge, and is the
extreme of frank honesty and truthfulness.
The statute-book demonstrates that the law was
steadily bettering the condition of the slave. I have
not space to state the progression which can be found
in the different Georgia enactments. But I must men
tion two instances. In 1850 the procedure of trying a
white person charged with a capital offence was ex
tended to the slave. The code which came of force
January i, 1863, and which had been adopted some
while before, prevented any confession made by a slave
to his master — it mattered not how voluntary or free
from suspicion it might be — from ever being received
in evidence against him,
I commenced law practice in 1857. From that time
until I went to the front I observed that pubhc opinion
was becoming more decided against mistreatment of the
blacks. The masters of ashcats, — as ill-fed negroes were
called in derision of their lean and dingy faces by the
great multitude of sleek and shining ones, — those who
punished with unreasonable severity, those who exacted
overwork, — they were few and far between, — they were
1 Tremont Temple Lecture, Stephens, War between the States, vol. i,
641, The italics are mine.

192 The Brothers' War
all more and more detested ; and grand juries became
more and more prone to deal properly with them, I
would support this by cases, if their citation would not
be unpleasant to descendants of parties,
Mrs. Stowe has his master to brand George Harris in
the hand with the initial letter of the former's surname.
She has Legree's slaves to pick cotton on Sunday. I
never heard of any cases of branding human beings
except as a punishment for crime in execution of a
judgment of conviction, and very few of them. Tidying
up the house, cooking, serving meals, caring for the
animals on the place, and such other things as are done
everywhere on Sunday, were of course required of the
domestic slaves. Leaving these out, no slave was ever
put to work on Sunday except to " fight fire," or at
something commanded by a real emergency. Their
employers now exact from thousands of white persons
of both sexes all over the country a great amount of
such hard and grinding Sunday work as was never
exacted of the slaves in the south. Peep into stores,
offices of large corporations, and elsewhere, while others
are at Sunday-school or church, and count those weary
ones yoti find finishing up the work of the last week.
But all of the mistakes of Mrs, Stowe noticed in the
foregoing are mere matters of bagatelle as compared
with the character and nature which she gives the
average negro of the south.
She represents the women as chaste as white women,
and the husbands faithful to their wives even when sepa
rated from them. I shaU now tell the truth as I know
it to be — the truth that all observant people who have
had experience with negroes know.
The moment almost that a married pair of slaves were
separated for any cause, each one secretly, or more often
openly, took another partner. Even when not separated.

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 193
infidelity of both was the rule. Mrs. Stowe has the girls
and their parents to shrink with horror from the desires
of the master. To the simple-hearted African the mas
ter was always great, and there was among them not a
woman to be found who would not dedicate herself or
her daughter to greatness, finding it so inclined, — hus
band, father, brothers, and sisters aU in their desire for
a friend at court heartily approving. The white whose
concubine gave favors behind his back to her slave
friends was the stalest joke of every neighborhood.
The mass of the negroes are more unchaste now than
they were in slavery, a subject of which I shaU say
something further in another chapter. But even where
the master's steady requirement from one generation to
another of a stricter observance of family ties, and the
natural imitation ofthe ways of the dominant race, had
lifted the slaves, in appearance at least, far above their
West African ancestors, not even mothers had become
chaste. Boys, girls, men, and women, both married and
unmarried, were as promiscuous by night as houseflies
are by day. The horror of horrors in this abyss of
moral impurity to one of a superior race was their utter
unconsciousness of incest.^
1 Professor DuBois, born in 1868, in New England, whose writings
show that his mind has been soaked to saturation in abolition misstate
ment and bitterness, and that consequently he is utterly unfamiliar with
either the average negro slave ofthe south and the conditions and effects
of slavery in the section, attributes the present unchastity of the negroes
to the frequent separation of man and wife by the raaster. Here is what
he says :
"The plague-spot in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy sepa
ration. This is no sudden development, nor the fruit of emancipation.
It is the plain heritage from slavery. In those days Sam, with his mas
ter's consent, took up with Mary. No ceremony was necessary, and in
the busy life of the great plantations of the Black Belt it was usually
dispensed with. If now the master needed Sam's work in another part
of the same plantation, or if he took a notion to sell the slave, Sam's
married life with Mary was usually unceremoniously broken, and then it
13

194 The Brothers' War
Mrs, Stowe has their philoprogenitiveness — as phre
nologists call it — as fully developed as the whites. One
bred in the cotton districts well remembers that it re
quired all the vigilance of master and mistress, overseer,
and the deputies selected from the older slave women, to
secure from the mothers proper attention to their chil
dren, and especially to keep them from punishing too
cruelly. But I do not mean to say that this parental
misbehavior was as general as the unchastity mentioned.
When the mothers aged beyond forty-five or fifty, they
would begin to think somewhat less of beaux and some
what more of their children,
George Harris and Eliza are next of the slave char
acters in prominence and importance to Uncle Tom,
With their large admixture of white blood, their com
paratively good education and superb moral training, a
southerner would think that you were merely mocking
him if you named these as fairly representative negroes.
As they are drawn, they are really whites — whites of
high refinement — with only a physical negro exterior,
and that softened down to the minimum.
But Uncle Tom — I pray my northern readers to take
counsel of their common sense and consider what I
shall now say of him. Rightly to estimate him, I must
was clearly to the master's interest to have both of them take new mates.
This widespread custom of two centuries has not been eradicated in thirty
years." The Souls of Black Folk, 142.
This statement is utterly untrue, as Professor DuBois can easily find
out from thousands of most credible witnesses. I never knew of a single
such separation. Of course, I will not say that there were none at all. But
I do say, in contradiction of his assertion, as fiat as contradiction can be,
that the separations which he describes were not common. Every im
partial investigator who has formed his opinion from the actual evidence
knows that the unchastity of the negro slave of America was an inherit
ance from Africa, I do not dispute the assertion often made that there
were and are still chaste negro tribes of that continent. But our negroes
did not come from them. They came from the West Africans, accurately
described above in citations from Mr. Tillinghast,

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 1 95
begin with some contrasts. The first that occurs to me
is Tyndarus, the slave hero of the Captivi of Plautus,
pronounced by the great critic Lessing to be the most
beautiful play ever brought upon the stage, Tyndarus
and Philocrates, his young master, taken prisoners, are
sold to Hegio, The two captives personate each other,
and induce Hegio to send home Philocrates, who was a
wealthy noble, and keep only the born slave, Hegio
was scheming to recover his own son, now a slave in
the land of the captives, by a bargain for Philocrates,
this bargain to be negotiated by the counterfeit Tyn
darus, Discovering how he had been duped, the
anguished father tells the real Tyndarus that he shall
die a cruel death. This is the reply of the ,slave :
" As I shall not die because of evil deeds, that is a small
matter. My death will keep it ever in remembrance that I
delivered my master from slavery and the enemy, restored him
to his country and father, and chose that I myself should perish
rather than he."
That is exalted. But Tyndarus has not the complete
goodness of Uncle Tom. As soon as he is at last rescued
from the horrible mines, to find PhUocrates true and him
self a free man, he threatens woe to a slave who had in
jured him, and looks approvingly upon the execution of
his threat.
Compare Uncle Tom with the good men of the bible,
such as Moses, Peter, and Paul, to mention no more.
Not one of these was able always to keep his feelings
and tongue in that complete subjection that never fail
Uncle Tom,
Uncle Tom, in whom love alone prompts all thoughts
and deeds, surpasses every saint in Dante's Paradise —
he surpasses even the incomparably sweet Beatrice, who
now and then chides unpleasantly.

196 The Brothers' War
The climax of my comparison is reached when I sug
gest that Uncle Tom is made from first to last a more
perfect Christ than the Jesus of the gospels. The latter,
as Matthew Arnold and other reverent christians re
mark, was sometimes unamiable. Remember his ex
pulsion of the money changers and traders from the
temple, and the many opprobrious words he used of
and to the Pharisees, Growing recognition of the all-
human Jesus is benignly replacing a rehgion of super
stition, intolerance, and dogma with one of universal love
and brotherhood. I cannot fully express my apprecia
tion of the liberal divines, from Channing to Savage,
who are preparing us so well for the millennium. But I
am sure a new study of Uncle Tom would give each
one of them firmer grasp of christlikeness and far more
power to present it. Think over such instances in that
holiest and most altruistic of lives as these : He has
just learned that he has been sold; that he is to be
carried down the river. His wife suggests that as he
has a pass from his master permitting him to go and
return as he pleases, he take advantage of it and run
away to the free States. As firmly as Socrates, un
justly condemned to death, refused to escape from
prison when his friends had provided full opportunity,
Tom declared he would stay, that he would keep faith
with his master. He said that, according to Eliza's re
port of the conversation she had overheard, his master
was forced to sell him, or sell all the other slaves, and
it was better for himself to suffer in their place. And
as he goes away he has nothing but prayers and bless
ings for the man who sends him into dread exile from
his wife and children. He falls to a new master, whom,
and his family, he watches over with the fidehty and love
of a most kind father, doing every duty, but above aU
things trying to save that master's soul. Then his cruel

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 1 97
fortune delivers him to the monster Legree. For the
first time in his hfe he is treated with disrespect, dis
trust, and harshness. Yet he forgets his own misery,
and finds pleasure in helping and comforting his fellow
sufferers, striving his utmost to bring them into eternal
life. He will not do wrong even at the command of his
cruel master, who has him in a dungeon, as it were, into
which no ray of justice can ever shine. And here he
dies from the cruel lash — almost under it. He falters
some, it is true; but there was no sweat of blood as
in Gethsemane, nor exclamation upon the cross, " My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ! " He went
more triumphantly through his more fell crucifixion.
I believe that the character of Uncle Tom is the only
part of the book which future generations will cherish ;
not for the lesson against slavery it was intended to
teach, but because it excels in ideal and realization all
imitation of Christ in actual life or the loftiest religious
fiction. Consider its marveUous effect upon Heine, as
told by a quotation from the latter in The Author's In
troduction to the book.-'
The detailed comparison which I have just made puts
Uncle Tom upon a pinnacle, where he is above all the
saints in lofty, self-abnegating, and lovingly religious
manhood ; and the reader notes how fruitlessly I have
tried to find another like him. But Mrs. Stowe was
confident that she had not exaggerated or overdrawn
him, and further that such were common among the
southern slaves. Here is what she deliberately says in
her Key:
" The character of Uncle Tom has been objected to as im
probable ; and yet the writer has received more confirraations
of that character, and from a greater variety of sources, than of
any other in the book,
1 Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. i. p. Ixxxix sj.

198 The Brothers' War
Many people have said to her, ' I knew an Uncle Tom in
such and such a southern State.' All the histories of this kind
which have thus been related to her would of themselves, if
collected, make a small volume."^
Toombs once said to me, " It would have been a
matchless eulogy of slavery if it had produced an Uncle
Tom." But, as we see from the last quotation, she
claims far more. She really claims that it was fruitful of
Uncle Toms in every southern State.
Shall we attribute this firm belief, that there were -
among the southern slaves many who were better chris
tians than Christ himself is represented to have been, to
a mere hallucination? That word is not strong enough.
To explain the belief, we must think of visions suggested
by the hypnotizing powers, or something like the spell
on Titania, when Bottom with his ass's head inspired
her with the fondest admiration and love.
Although the foregoing is far from being exhaustive,
it is enough ; it shows incontrovertibly that Mrs, Stowe
builded throughout upon the exceptional and imaginary.
My father, a Presbyterian clergyman, with the strictest
notions as to the Sabbath, as he generally called Sun
day, made me read, when a boy, a book called, if I
recollect aright, "Edwards's Sabbath Manual." Be the
ti,tle whatever it may, the entire book was but a collec
tion of instances of secular work done on Sunday,
and always followed closely by disaster, which appeared
to be divine punishment of sabbath-breaking. The
author was confident he had proved his case. He be
lieved with his whole soul that if one should do on Sun
day any week-day work not permitted in the catechism,
it was more than probable that God would at once deal
severely with him for not keeping his day holy,
J yncje Tom's Cabin and Key, Riverside ed., vol. ii. 273.

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 1 99
This is a somewhat overstrained example of Mrs,
Stowe's method. I will therefore give one which is as
close as close can be. Suppose a dihgent worker to
cull from newspaper files, law reports, and what he
hears in talk, the cases in which one party to a mar
riage has cruelly mistreated the other. If he digested
his collection with a view to effect, it would prove a far •
more formidable attack upon the most civilizing and im
proving of all human institutions than Mrs. Stowe's Key
is upon slavery; and if he had her rare itrtistic gift he
could found upon it a wonderful anti-marriage romance. ,
The author of such a Key and romance would be con
futed at once by the exclamation, "If these horrors are
general, people would flee marriage as they do the
plague," Let it be inquired, " If ' Uncle Tom's Cabin'
and Mrs, Stowe's Key truly represent, why did not more
of the blacks escape into the free States ? and why did
they not revolt in large bodies during the war in the
many communities whence all the able-bodied whites
had gone to the front far away ? " and there can be but
one answer, which is, there was no general or common
oppression of the African in slavery — there were no
horrors to him in the condition — but on the contrary
he was contented and happy, merry as the day is long.
How was it that a book so full of untrue statement
and gross exaggeration as to an American theme found
such wide acceptance at the north and elsewhere out of
the south ? For years I could not explain. When I
read it at Princeton, I talked it over with the southern
students. We pooh-poohed the negroes, but we ad
mired the principal white characters except Mrs, St,
Claire, whom we aU regarded as a hbeUous caricature.
The representation of slavery was incorrect, and the por
trayal of the negro as only a black and kinky-haired
white was so absurd that none of us dreamed that either

200 The Brothers' War
would be taken seriously by the north. It was some
ten years after the brothers' war that the true explana
tion commenced to dawn upon me, and it has at last
become clear.
It is an important fact that the great body of the
people of the north knew almost next to nothing of
the south, and especially of the average negro. As one
calmly looks back now he sees that in the agitation over
the admission of California, the cleavage between the
two nationalizations treated in foregoing chapters was
becoming decided, and that the people belonging to
each were losing their tempers and getting ready to
fight. When even a political campaign in which the
only question is, who shall be ins and who outs, is on,
each party is prone to believe the hardest things of the
other. But when such a fell resort to force as that of
1850 and the years immediately following is impending,
all history shows that those on one side will believe any
charge reflecting upon the good character of those on
the other side which is not grossly improbable. Such
quarrels are so fierce that we never weigh accusations
against our adversaries — we just embrace and circulate.
Thus had the northern public become ripe for an
arraignment of the morality of slavery, which — as was
with purblind instinct felt, not discerned — was the sole
active principle of the southern nationalization. Even
without the provocation just mentioned, a northern man
would hken the African in everything but his skin and
hair to a white. We always classify a new under some
old and well-known object. When the Romans first
saw the elephant they thought of him as the Lucanian
ox. The automobile which propels itself around our
streets is made as much like the corresponding horse-
drawn vehicle famUiar to the public for ages as can be.
The northerner knew no man well but the Caucasian,

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " 201
and he had long been led by a common psychological
process to give his characteristic essentials to the negro.
And now when anti-slavery partisans positively main
tained that the latter was a white in all but his outside,
adducing seeming proofs, and the free-labor nationaliza
tion was with its leading strings pulling aU the northern
people into line, even the calmest and most dispassion
ate among them were influenced to believe that the
negroes were so much like our Anglo-Saxon selves it
was an unspeakable crime to keep them in slavery.
And all tales of cruelty and horror found easy credence.
Thus had the northern public been made ready for
" Uncle Tom's Cabin." And although the book wholly
ignored and obscured the really live and burning issue,
and it was packed from beginning to end with the most
gigantic errors of fact, it took the section by storm.
It is a great book. When something has been as
persistently demanded as long as "Uncle Tom's Cabin''
has been by the northern public and the " Conquered
Banner " by the southern pubhc ; when thousands upon
thousands of plain people weep over them and lay them
away to weep over them again, you may know — it
matters not what the unruffled and sarcastic critic may
say — that each is a work of the very highest and the
very rarest genius. Tears of sympathy for tales of dis
tress and misery, whoever can set their fountain flow
ing is always a nature's king or queen.
I have read " Uncle Tom's Cabin " four times: first at
Princeton in 1852; the second time amid the gloom of
reconstruction, more accurately to ascertain northern
opinion of the negro and forecast therefrom, if I could,
what was in store for the south ; the third time as I was
meditating the Old and New South; and just the other
day the last time. The more famUiar I become with it
the greater seems to me the power with which the at-

202 The Brothers' War
tention is taken and held captive. The very titles to the
first twelve chapters are, in their contents and sequence,
gems of genius, and draw resistlessly. I become more
and more impatient with Ruskin's reprehending the
escape of Eliza, when, with her child hugged to her
bosom, she leaps from block to block of floating ice in
the Ohio until she is safe on the other side — a marvel
like the ghost's appearance in the first scene of Hamlet,
exciting a high and breathless interest at the outset,
which is never allowed to flag afterwards. Whenever I
begin to read the book, I fall at once into that illusion
which Coleridge has so well explained. I accept all her
blunders and mistakes as real facts, and although it is
hard to tolerate her negro travesties and the anti-slavery
sentiments of her southern whites, somehow they do not
then offend me, and there is chapter after chapter in which
I foUow the action with breathless interest, " Gulliver's
Travels " and " Pilgrim's Progress " are examples to show
how little of reahty either entertaining or moving fiction
needs. From a mass of false assumptions, seasoned
with the merest sprinkling of fact ; and especially from
her taking for granted that the negro is really on a par
of development with the white, she has constructed the
Iliad of our time. The nursery tale out of which Shak
speare fashioned the drama of Lear did not furnish him
with smaller resources. What a wonderful action he
puts in the place of the nursery tale I how natural and
probable it all appears to us as it unfolds 1 how we hate,
or pity, or admire, or love as we cannot keep from fol
lowing it ! Likewise every reader in the north accepted
Mrs. Stowe's novel as the very height of verity, and
afterwards saw in every fugitive slave a George Harris,
or Eliza, or an Uncle Tom, And the book evoked the
same effect out of America. The most curious proof of
this that I can think of is the statue of The Freed Slave,

"Uncle Tom's Cabin'* 203
which I saw on exhibition at the Centennial, It has
nearly aU the peculiar physical characteristics of the
Caucasian; and it represents not a typical man of
African descent, but a negro albino, that is, a white
negro, not a black one. There are albino negroes, but
there are also albino whites. That statue shows what
was European conception of the negroes whose chains
were broken by the emancipation proclamation. Its
reception in America shows also that the same con
ception prevailed here. Day after day I saw crowds of
northern people contemplating that counterfeit with
deep emotion, many of the women unable to restrain
their tears.
Surely " Uncle Tom's Cabin " in its propagandic po
tency is unrivalled. It did more than the anti-slavery
statesmen, politicians, preachers, talkers, and orators
combined. To it more than to all other agencies is due
that the people of the north took such a stubborn stand
in opposition that the south at last saw that the fugitive
slave law had been practically nullified. Thus the fates
worked to bring about secession. For secession was
to bring the brothers' war ; and this war was to do what
could not be done by law or consent, — that is, to get
rid of slavery as the informing principle of southern
nationalization. The post-bellum propagandic effect of " Uncle Tom's
Cabin " has been very malign. With the companion liter
ature and theories, it formed the opinion that devised
and executed the reconstruction of the southern States,
The cardinal principle of that reconstruction was to
treat the blacks just emancipated as political equals of
the whites.
Those who did this are to be forgiven. They had
been made to beheve that the negroes of the south were
as well qualified for full citizenship as the whites, and it

204 The Brothers' War
was but meet retributive punishment of the great crime
of slavery and waging war to hold on to it, that the
masters be put under their former slaves, " Uncle Tom's
Cabin " had made them beheve it.
The only parallel of mass of pernicious error engen
dered by a book, so far as I know, is " Burke's Reflec
tions," Constitutional England ought to have foUowed
Charles Fox as one man, and given countenance to the
rise in France for hberty. But Burke's piece of magnifi
cent rhetoric effectually turned the nation out of her
course, and had her in league with absolutists to put
back the clock of European democracy a hundred years
or more. Even yet intelligent Englishmen magnify that
most unEnglish achievement. The bad effects of " Uncle
Tom's Cabin" have not been so lasting in our country.
We Americans get out of ruts much more easily than
the Enghsh, The north is now rapidly learning the
real truth as to the utter incapacity of the mass of south
ern negroes to vote intelligently, and complacently
acquiesces in their practical disfranchisement by the
only class which can give good government.
We must utterly reject and discard everything that
Mrs, Stowe and those whom I distinguish as the root-
and-branch abolitionists have taught, in their unutter
able ideology, as to the nature and character of the
negro, and in its place we must learn to know him as
he really is — to tolerate him, nay, to love him as such.
This is the only way in which we can prepare ourselves
for giving the negroes their due from us.
Further, we owe it to our proud American history, now
that the brothers' war is forty years past, to ascertain
the real cause of that mighty struggle, maintained most
laudably and gloriously by each side. Those whom I
am here criticising made many believe that the real
stake was whether the slave should remain the property

" Uncle Tom's Cabin" 205
of his master or not. Note the emphasized adjuration
in the " Battle Hymn of the Repubhc : "
" As he [Christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make men
free."
A most beautiful sentiment, fitly expressed; but how
it humihates the grand issue, which was whether federal
government should live or perish! And that greatest
of American odes, Whittier's " Laus Deo," how wide of
the true mark is its subhme rejoicing ! Celebrating the
abohtion of slavery by constitutional amendment, the
occasion demanded that he extol the really benign
achievement. That achievement was that all cause of
diverse nationalization in the States had been forever
removed, and thus it was assured that brotherhood of
the nations was to grow without check. But the rapt
bard was blinded, as his utterances show, by what now
almost appears to have been a fit of delusional insanity.
He says : " Ring ! O bells !
Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime."
What does he mean is the crime? Why, the deliver
ing of certain Africans and their descendants from lowest
human degradation and misery, and blessing them with
opportunity and help to rise far upward ? Had he seen,
as we do now, forty years later, instead of pouring out
this wild and mad delight, he would have dropped scald
ing tears over the " burial hour " of all that promised
anything of welfare to those for whom he had labored
so long and faithfully. And in the last stanza his com
mand that " With a sound of broken chains "
the nations be told "that He reigns.
Who alone is Lord and God ! "

2o6 The Brothers' War
The poet misunderstood the " broken chains " as greatly
as be did the " burial hour," Chains were broken, but
their breaking was no blessing to the negro. Golden
chains of domestic ties, drawing him gently, kindly,
surely up to higher morahty and complete manhood —
these were broken; and far other were forged for him,
with which I fear he has been made fast to destruction.
His only friends able to help alienated ; what a clog !
Given back to African improgressiveness ; what a fetter !
How he is held to the body of death by unbreakable
chains of want, misery, vice, disease, and utter helpless
ness ! and how his shackles gall him and his convict
chains clank in every corner of the land which was
once an earthly paradise to him !
Let us not sully with Whittier the gloiy of the federal
arms by ascribing to them as their chief triumph the
gift of illusory freedom to a few negroes. Rather let us
inform ourselves with the spirit of Webster, and give
praise and thanks without end for the actual blessings
and the richer promise of the restored union to myriads
of that race whose mission it is to spread an inexpres
sibly fair socialism over all the earth.
And let me say at the last, the people of the north
should learn that all the tragic evils which Professor
WendeU and others outside of the south have in mind
belong only to the slave-ships, and by a strange psycho
logical metastasis — no stranger, however, than that by
which the fourth commandment, in popular conception,
has been abrogated as to the seventh day, and applied
to the first day of the week — they have firmly attached
themselves to the reputation of southern slavery. For
long years we ofthe south, our mothers and our mothers'
mothers, our fathers and our fathers' fathers, have been
charged with cruelties and outrages purely fancied.
These fabrications are the stock comparisons with which

"Uncle Tom's Cabin'* 207
almost every invective against the wrongs of any lower
class is sharpened. The writer or speaker whenever he
is taken short says something of the dreadful condition
of the southern slave under the sway of an entirely ab
solute master. Variety of the misdeeds invoked as illus
tration is limited only by the promptness with which the
utterer can think of what he has read in abolition litera
ture or its sequel. It is all mere parrot gabble. To hear
so much of it as we do is " a httle wearing," as Reginald
Wilfer said. Surely if our brothers and sisters of the
north but think, they will acknowledge that these so-
called horrors of slavery were all nothing but the in
ventions of the angry passions provoked by the powers
in the unseen after they had decided that slavery must
be sacrificed in the interests of the union. And these
dear brothers and sisters will no longer persist in assert
ing that southern slavery was but robbery and oppres
sion of and cruelty to the slave; that the system was
evil to him of itself. They will talk no more of the pro-
slavery infamy, of the unscrupulousness and perfidy of
the slave power, and all such false twaddle, that can
now serve no purpose whatever except to offend good
men and women and their children without cause.

CHAPTER X
SLAVERY AT LAST IMPELLED INTO A DEFENSIVE
AGGRESSIVE
UNTIL the crisis of 1850, slavery had never
changed from purely defensive tactics. This
year made it seem that the north had fully
resolved that slavery should never be allowed another
inch of new territory; and also was very near, and was
rapidly coming nearer to, the point of practically pre
venting the enforcement of the fugitive slave law. We
have explained how slave property could not live unless
it found new virgin soil in the Territories ; and we have
also explained what a deadly blow it would receive, in
the refusal to restore fugitives. This refusal would be
really indirect abolition. Read the masterly sketch by
Calhoun, in his speech March 4, 1850, ofthe conquering
advance of the anti-slavery party, until now — to use
his language — " the equilibrium between the two sec
tions , , , had been destroyed ; " and he demonstrates
that the actual exercise of the entire national political
power must soon be in the hands of the free-labor sec
tion. The south instinctively felt that the time for her
old tactics was over, and that she must do more than
merely fend off the blows of abolition. And, as we will
tell in the next chapter, she found her new leader in
Toombs. NuUification as advocated by Calhoun was
the extreme energy of the pure defensive of the south.
His proposed dual executive amendment was merely
that nullification be made a right granted to the federal

Impelled into a Defensive Aggressive 209
government instead of remaining one reserved to the
States, Toombs had grown up in the school of William
H, Crawford, George R. Gilmer, a foUower of Craw
ford, tells of the latter : " He was violently opposed to
the nuUification movement, considering it but an ebulli
tion excited by Mr. Calhoun's overleaping ambition." ^
Toombs scouted nullification. Under his lead his
State, in 1850, adopted the Georgia Platform quoted
above. This platform was considerate and resolute
preparation for the southern offensive.
Next the south assumes initiative. Extension of slave-
territory is so great an economical sine qua non that
she attacks its barriers. Using her control of the then
dominant democratic party she got the Missouri com
promise repealed. Her main purpose in this was to
wrench from the anti-slavery men the weapon of con
gressional restriction, then deemed by them the most
powerful of all in their armory. She also contemplated
extorting a concession of all lands in the Territories
which could be profitably cultivated by slaves from the
north, alarmed into apprehending that otherwise slavery
might be carried above 36.30',
This repeal did more than anything else — more even
than " Uncle Tom's Cabin " — to arouse the north into
mortal combat with slavery. The historian cannot
understand why the south procured it, if he ignores
that energy of southern nationalization which we have
done our utmost to explain. This nationalization had
got into what we may call the last rapids, and was bound
to go over the precipice into the gulf of secession.
The bootless struggle bythe south against overwhelm
ing odds of northern settlers to make Kansas a slave
State was the sequel to the repeal of the Missouri com
promise. When the South understood that Kansas was
1 Georgians, 128.
14

21 o The Brothers' War
really gone, she advanced her forlorn hope in her en
deavor to secure slavery in the union. The essence of
the compromise measures of 1850 was that the demand
of congressional non-interference with slavery in the
States and Territories, made by the south, was declared
adopted as future pohcy. As the forlorn hope just
mentioned she now made the demand that the owner's
property in his slaves, if he should carry them into a
Territory, should be protected by congress until its
people had made the constitution under which the Terri
tory would be admitted into the union. Her adherence
to this demand split the democratic party; and the elec
tion of Lincoln ensued. This election meant that slavery
— the property supporting more than nine-tenths ofthe
southern people, and which was virtually their entire
economic system — was put under a ban. There was
nothing for it but depreciation in the near future ; soon
more and more depreciation ; until after prolonged stag
nation and paralysis the value of all her property would
collapse as did that of the continental currency. That
was the way it looked to her. We believe that the facts
show that her conviction was right. She felt with her
whole soul that the time had come to invoke State sover
eignty. So she seceded, with intent to save the property
of her people and maintain their domestic peace. Of
course she purposed an equitable apportionment of the
pubhc domain between herself and the north under
which she would get the small part that suited slave
agriculture. The circumstances constrained the south thoughout
every part and parcel of her offensive as powerfully as
exhaustion of his supplies constrains the commander of
a garrison to a sortie upon what he has reason to believe
is the weakest point of the circumvallation. She was
hypnotized by the powers. They made her believe that

Impelled into a Defensive Aggressive 211
she was always doing the right thing to protect slavery
when they were having her to do that only which assured
its destruction. She was all the whUe as conscientious as
the mother who, afraid of drafts, keeps the needed fresh
air from her consumptive child and thereby kills him.
We recognize the resistless play of the cosmic forces
upon the sun, moon, and. stars; upon our earth; in the
yearly round of the seasons; in the ocean tides; in
storms and heated terms ; in vegetation ; and in things
innumerable taken note of by the senses. But this is
not all of their empire. They sway individuals, com
munities, peoples, nations, making the latter even be
lieve that they are having their own way when in fact
they are most servilely doing the will of the powers.

CHAPTER XI
TOOMBS
CALHOUN solidified the south in resolve to
leave the union if the abolition party got con
trol of the federal government. Just before
his death there commenced such serious contemplation
of an aggressive defence of slavery that we may call it
an actual aggressive. Although by reason of his
unquestioned primacy he could have assumed the con
duct of this aggressive, he did not, Toombs was its
real, though not always apparent, leader, from its actual
commencement until it resulted in secession. Thus he
played an independent part of his own, and deserves a
chapter to himself. While Calhoun was the forerunner,
Toombs was both apostle and the Moses of secession.
As nearly all of my readers have never thought of any
one else than Calhoun in this capacity, the statement of
Toombs's prominence just made will probably startle
them. But I know if they will follow me through the
record they will all at last agree with me. In view of
Calhoun's conspicuousness in the southern agitation
from 1835 until his death in 1850, this misapprehension
of my readers is very natural. Contemporaries follow
ing Sulla, named Pompey, not Julius Caesar, The Great,
Similarly Toombs, as an actor in the intersectional
arena, is as yet dwarfed from comparison with the
really great but not greater Calhoun,
It is much more necessary than I saw such a method
was with Calhoun to deal first with what we may call
the non-sectional parts of Toombs's career. And I

Toombs 213
wish to assure my readers at the outset that these parts
are exceptionally important and valuable not only to
every American, but to all those anywhere who prize
shining examples of private virtue and exalted teachers
of good and honest government,
I was nearly ten years old when Toombs's congres
sional career commenced in December, 1845, Living
only eighteen miles from him I heard him often men
tioned. It was the delight of many people to report his
phrases and repartees. By reason of their wisdom or
wit and fineness of expression, the whole of each one
lodged in the dullest memory, I never knew another
whose sayings circulated so widely and far without al
teration. As they serve to introduce you to his rare
originality, I will tell here a few of them that I heard
admired and laughed at in my boyhood.
He had not then left off tobacco, but he chewed it in
cessantly, and a spray of the juice fell around him when
he was speaking. Once while he was haranguing at the
hustings, a drunken man beneath the edge of the plat
form on which he was standing, rudely told him in a
loud voice not to let his pot boil over, Toombs, looking
down, saw that his interrupter had flaming red hair:
" Take your fire from under it, then," he answered.
In another stump speech he was earnestly denying
that he had ever used certain words now charged
against him, A stalwart, rough fellow — one of Choate's
buUdogs with confused ideas — rose, and asserted he had
heard him say them. When and where was asked.
The man gave time and place, and added tauntingly,
" What do you say to that? " Toombs rejoined, " Well,
I must have told ad — d he,"
A rival candidate, really conspicuous and celebrated
for his httle ability, in a stump debate pledged the
people that if they would send him to congress he

214 The Brothers' War
would never leave his post during a session to attend
the courts, as he unjustifiably charged Toombs with
habitually doing. The latter disposed of this by merely
saying, " You should consider which will hurt the dis
trict the more, his constant presence in, or my occasional
absence from, the house."
In another discussion this same opponent charged
him with having voted so and so. Replying, Toombs
denied it. The other interrupted him, and sustained his
charge by producing the Globe ; and he expressively
exclaimed, " What do you think of that vote ? " Toombs
answered without any hesitation — nothing ever con
fused him — "I think it a d — d bad vote. There are
more than a hundred votes of mine reported in that big
book. He has evidently studied them all, and this is
the only bad one he can find. Send him to congress in
my place, the record will be exactly inverted; it will be
as hard to find a good one in his votes as it is now to.
find a bad one in mine."
In the congressional session of 1849-50 Toombs had
made his Hamilcar speech, to be told of fully after a
while. In this he avowed his preference of disunion to
exclusion of the south from the Territories so positively
and strongly that the ultra southern rights men hailed
him as their champion. But soon afterwards, with the
great majority of the people of the State, he took his
stand upon the compromise of 1850 and the Georgia
Platform quoted above. This was really on his part a
recession from the extreme ground he had taken in the
speech. In 1851, a coahtion ofthe whigs and demo
crats of Georgia nominated HoweU Cobb, a democrat,
for governor, and Toombs, then a whig, canvassed for
him with great zeal. He had an appointment to speak,
in Oglethorpe county, at Lexington, the county seat.
There were quite a number of ardent southern rights

Toombs 215
men in the county, who held that the admission of Cal
ifornia, really in southern latitude, with its anti-slavery
constitution, called for far more decided action on the
part of the south than was counselled in the Compro
mise and Georgia Platform. Hating Toombs, whom they
regarded as a renegade, they plotted to humiliate him
when he came to Lexington, As he never shrank from
discussion they easily got his consent to divide time
with — as the phrase goes — a canvasser for McDonald,
their candidate for governor, Toombs was to consume a
stated time in opening the stump debate; then the
other was to be allowed a stated time; after which
Toombs had a reply of twenty minutes — these were the
terms. In opening, Toombs, as was natural, stressed
the compromise measures and set forth the advantages
of preserving the union ; and he fiercely inveighed
against the men who could not be satisfied with the
Georgia Platform, embraced as it had been by a great
majority of all parties, denouncing them as disunionists.
The other disputant took the Hamilcar speech of
Toombs, made just the year before, as his text, Dehb-
erately, accurately, systematically he unfolded the doc
trine of that speech, and he did the same for the speech
just made, and contrasting the two, he put them into
glaring inconsistency. Southern rights stock rose and
union stock sunk rapidly as the comparison went on.
In his peroration the speaker commented upon Toombs's
tergiversation with such effective severity it elicited wild
applause from the men of his side. They had pushed
themselves to the front, Toombs rose to reply. In
their riotous rejoicing over the great hit of their speaker,
they forgot the proprieties of the occasion ; forgot that
it was Toombs's meeting, as was said in common par
lance; and they rapped on the floor with canes, and
even clubs provided for the nonce, howled, and made

21 6 The Brothers' War
all kinds of noises to drown his voice. Unabashed he
looked upon them, smihng that grandest and blandest
of smiles. As the foremost of these roysterers told me
long afterwards, his self-possession excited their curi
osity. They wanted to hear if he could say anything to
get out of the trap in which they had so cleverly caught
him; and they became still. "It seems to me," he
commenced, " that men like you meditating a great
revolution ought first to learn good manners," At this
condign rebuke of behavior which, according to stump
usage, was as uncivil and impolite as if it had been
shown Toombs in his own house by guests accepting
his hospitahty, spontaneous cheers from the union men,
who were in very large majority, appeared to raise the
roof. In his highest and readiest style — for mob oppo
sition always lifted him at once into that — he reminded
his hearers that their whole duty was to decide whether
they would approve the compromise and the Georgia
Platform or not ; and that to discuss whether what he
had spoken last year before these measures were even
thought of, was right or wrong, was to substitute for a
transcendently important public question a little per
sonal one of no concern to them whatever, " If there
is anything in my Hamilcar speech that cannot be
reconciled with the measures which I have supported
here to-day with reasons which my opponent confesses
by his silence he cannot answer, I repudiate it. If the
gentleman takes up my abandoned errors, let him
defend them."
How the union men cheered as he broke out of the
trap, and caught the setters in it!
I heard much of this day, still famous in all the local
ity, when six years afterwards I settled in Lexington,
to begin law practice. Over and over again the union
men told how their spirits fell, feU, feU as the southern

Toombs 217
rights speaker kept on, until it looked black and dark
around ; and then how the sun broke out in full splendor
at the first sentence of Toombs's reply, and the bright
ness mounted steadily to the end. That sentence last
quoted is a proverb in that region yet. If in a dispute
with anybody there you try to put him down by quoting
his former contradictory utterances, he tells you that
if you take up his abandoned errors you must defend
tl\,em. The interest excited in me by what is told in the fore
going was the beginning of my study of Toombs, which
never at any time entirely ceased, and which will doubt
less continue as long as I live. He has impressed me
far more than any other man whom I ever knew. Soon
after his return, in 1867, from his exile I resolved I would
try to write his Life under the title, " Robert Toombs,
as a Lawyer, Statesman, and Talker ; " and for ten or
fifteen years I had been systematically collecting the
data. These had accumulated under each head — espe
cially reports of his epigrams and winged phrases — far
more considerably than was my expectation at first. I
added to them very largely by copious notes of the
record of his congressional hfe which I read attentively
in course, commencing immediately after his death. In
a few years I had finished my task. As yet I have not
found the times favorable for publication, and the MS,
may perplex my literary executor. Of course my object
in the too egotistic narrative just made is to inform you
that I have bestowed very great labor and study upon
the subject, hoping thus to draw your attention, _^
Robert Toombs was born July 2, 18 10, on his father's
plantation in Wilkes county, Georgia, He went to
school at Washington, the county seat; then to the
State university ; which having left, he finished his col
legiate course at Union, Next he spent a year at the

21 8 The Brothers' War
law school of Virginia university. He never was a book
worm. His habitual quotations during the last fifteen
years of his life — when I was much with him — betrayed
a smattering of the Roman authors commonly read at
school, a much greater knowledge of the Latin quoted by
Blackstone and that of the current law maxims, and con
siderable famiharity with " Paradise Lost," " Macbeth,"
and the Falstaff parts of " King Henry IV," and " Merry
Wives," Don Quixote, Burns, and the bible. But this
man, whose diction and phrases were the worship of the
street and the despair of the cultured, had no deep ac
quaintance with any literature, Erskine got the staple of
his English from a long and fond study of Shakspeare
and Milton ; but Toombs must have drawn his only from
the fountains whence Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mariah get
theirs, and then purified and refined it by a secret pro
cess that nobody else knew of, — not even himself, as
I beheve. If he had only corrected after utterance as
assiduously as Erskine did, of the two his diction would
be much the finer.
The year before he came of age he was admitted to
the bar by legislative act. In the same year he married
his true mate and settled at Washington. For four years
the famous Wilham H. Crawford was the judge of the
circuit. Toombs was born into the Crawford faction,
and the judge who, as there was no supreme court then,
was law autocrat of his circuit, gave him favor from the
first. The courts were full of lucrative business. The
old dockets show that in five years Toombs was getting
his full share in his own county and the adjoining ones.
The diligent attention that he gave every detail of prep
aration of his cases, had, in a year or two after his call,
. made him first choice of every eminent lawyer for junior.
One of these was Cone, a native of Connecticut, who had
received a good education both literary and professional.

Toombs 2 1 9
before he came south. Toombs, who had known the
great American lawyers of his time, always said after his
death in 1859 that Cone was the best of all, Lumpkin
used to tell that during a visit to England he haunted
the courts, but he never found a single counsel who
spoke to a law point as luminously and convincingly as
Cone, Another one of these was Lumpkin, He is, I
believe, the most eloquent man that Georgia ever pro
duced. He had some tincture of letters; but he was
without Choate's pre-eminent self-culture and daily drafts
of inspiration from the immortal fountains. A, H.
Stephens admired Choate greatly. He heard the lat
ter's reply to Buchanan, Often, at Liberty Hall — as
Stephens called his residence — he would repeat with
gusto the passage in which Choate roasts Buchanan for
his inculcation of hate to England, Stephens contended
that if all that education and art had done for each —
Choate and Lumpkin — could have been removed, a
comparison would, as he believed, show Lumpkin to be
the stronger advocate by nature.
These three — Cone, Lumpkin, and Toombs — were
often on the same side. But whether Toombs had them
as associates or as adversaries, they were always in these
early years of his at the bar, in his eye. With the un
remitted attentiveness of what we may call his subcon
scious observation, and a receptivity always active and
greedy, he seems to have soon appropriated all of Cone's
law and all of Lumpkin's advocacy — that is, he had,
as he did with the speech and language heard by him
every day, transmuted them into the rare and precious
staple peculiar to his own sui generis self.
In his first forensic arguments his rapid utterance was
as indistinct as if he had mush in his mouth, old men
have told me. But after a year or two of practice he
developed both power and attractiveness. In due time

220 The Brothers' War
when Cone or Lumpkin were with him, he would be
pushed forward, young as he was, into some important
place in court conduct, I myself heard Lumpkin tell
that the greatest forensic eloquence he had ever heard
was a rebuke by Toombs — then some twenty-seven
years old — of the zeal with which the public urged
on the prosecution of one of their clients on trial
for murder. The junior — the evidence closed — was
making the first speech for the defence. As he went
on in a strong argument, the positiveness with which he
denied all merit to the case for the State, angered the
spectators outside of the bar, and a palpable demon
stration of dissent came from some of them, which the
presiding judge did not check as he ought to have done.
Toombs strode at once to the edge of the bar, only a rail
ing some four feet high separating him from these angry
men, and chastised them as they merited. His invective
culminated in denouncing them as bloodhounds eager
to slake their accursed thirst in innocent blood. These
misguided ones were brought back to proper behavior,
and with them admiration of the fearless and eloquent
advocate displaced their hostility, and carried upon an
invisible wave an influence in favor of the accused over
the entire community, and even into the jury box. And
the narrator, who was one of Toombs's greatest admirers,
told with fond recollection how the popular billows were
laid by the speech of his junior, and how he himself took
heart and found the way to an acquittal which he feared
he had lost.
This affair is iUustrative of Toombs in two respects.
In the first place it shows his extempore faculty and
presence of mind, I have seen him so often in sudden
emergencies do exactly the thing that subsequent reflec
tion pronounced the best, that I believe had he been in
Napoleon's place when the Red Sea tide suddenly spread

Toombs 221
around, he would have escaped in the same way, or in
a better one. I do not believe that this can be said of
any one else of the past or present. In the second
place it is one of the many proofs extant that he could
always vanquish the mob.
He divined what offered cases are unmaintainable
more quickly, and declined them more resolutely than
any one I ever knew. So free was he from illusion
that he could not contend against plain infeasibihty. It
was impossible for clients, witnesses, or juniors to blind
him to the actual chances. For ten years or more, coinj
mencirig with 1867, I observed him in many nisi prius
trials, and I noted how unfrequently, as compared with
others, he had either got wrong as to his own side or
misanticipated the other. But now and then it would
develop that the merits were decidedly against him.
He would at once, according to circumstances, propose
a compromise, frankly surrender, or, if it appeared very
weak, toss the case away as if it was something unclean.
When he had thus failed, his air of unconcern and
majesty reminded of how the hon is said to stalk back
to his place of hiding when the prey has eluded his
spring, Stephens came to the bar some four years after
Toombs did, and settled in an adjoining county. I
need merely allude to their long and beautiful friendship,
full details of which are to be found in the biographies
of the former. I merely emphasize the importance of
Stephens's help to Toombs's development in his early
politics. The former got to congress two years before
he did, Toombs evidently relied greatly upon the sagac
ity with which the other divined how a new question
would take with the masses. On his return from aj
brief and bloodless service in the Creek war as captain
of a company of volunteers, Toombs commenced a State

222 The Brothers' War
legislative career, which Mr, Stovall has creditably told,^
I can stop only to say it was honorable, and contributed
greatly to his political education.
When Toombs was at the Virginia law school, he
heard some of Randolph's stump speeches; and for a
few years afterwards he often vouched passages from
them as authority, Stephens would tell this ; and then
with affectionate mischief tell further that his friend,
before he had finished in the Georgia legislature, had
ceased entirely to support his contentions with anything
else than his own reasons.
Before he got to Congress, he had made reputation at
the hustings. In 1840 he crossed the Savannah, and
meeting the veteran McDuffie in stump debate is re
ported to have come off with the high opinion of all
hearers, including his adversary.
Let us now take an inventory of him as he is about to
enter congress. He is the best lawyer in the State, ex
cept Cone, and fully his equal ; while as a speaker he
did not have Lumpkin's marvellous suasion of common
men, yet with them he was almost the next, and he was
far greater than Lumpkin in quelling the mob, convinc
ing the honest judge that his law was right, and con
vincing also the better men of the jury and citizens
present that the principles of justice involved in the
issue of facts were to be applied as he claimed ; he had
acquired enough of property to be considered rich in
that day, although he had always lived liberally; his
legislative and political career had convinced the people
that he was incomparably the best and ablest man of the
district for their representative. It is to be especially
emphasized that he had practical talent of the highest
order. His plantation was a model of good manage
ment. His investments were always prudent and lucra-
1 The Life of Robert Toombs, 29-49 {New York, Cassell Pub. Co.),

Toombs 223
tive. Practical men of extraordinary ability were bred
by the conditions about him. In the Raytown district
of Taliaferro county — about ten miles distant — my
maternal grandfather, Joshua Morgan, lived on his plan
tation of more than a thousand acres, which he managed
without an overseer. His father had been killed by the
tories. His education had been so scant that he found
reading the simplest English difficult, and to sign his
name was the only writing I ever knew him to do. But
his plantation management was the admiration of all his
neighbors. His land was sandy and thin, but he made
it yield more than ample support for his numerous fam
ily, his rapidly increasing force of negroes, his blooded
horses, his unusually large number of hogs, cows, sheep,
and goats; and a fair quantity of cotton besides. The
slaves loved sweet potatoes more than any other food,
and they were a favorite food in the Big House, His
supplies never faUed, there being some unopened " banks
or hills " when the new potatoes came. His hogs were
his special attention. His fine horses required so much
corn, and so much more of it was needed for bread,
that he could not feed it lavishly to his hogs. So he
developed a succession of peach orchards, with which
he commenced their fattening in the summer. These
were four in all ; the first ripened in July and the last
the fourth week in October. The fruit in any particular
one ripened at the same time, and he cared not how
many different varieties there were. Whenever he tasted
peaches away from home that he liked, if they were not
from grafted trees, he would carry away the seed, and
there was a particular drawer labelled with the date, into
which they were put. Whenever he had need to plant
a tree whose fruit was desired at that particular time of
the year, the seed was planted where he wanted the
tree. Many of his neighbors planted the seeds in a nur-

224 The Brothers' War
sery, whence after a year or two they transplanted the
young trees ; but my grandfather, as he told me, saved
a year by his method. He was always replanting in
place of injured trees and those he had found to be
inferior. The " fattening " hogs — that is, those to be
next kUled for meat — were turned into the July orchard
just as soon as the peaches commenced to fall ; and they
went on through the rest of the series. There was run
ning water in each orchard. After peach-time, these
hogs ran upon the peas which were now ripe in the
corn fields, the corn having been gathered. And for
some two weeks before they were to be killed they were
penned and given all the corn they would eat. What
pride the good planter of that time took in keeping in
dependent of the Tennessee hog drover, who was the
main resource of his rural neighbors who did not save
their own meat, as the phrase then was ! Observing that
his hogs were not safe against roving negroes when away
from the house on Sunday, on that day they were kept
up. One of my earliest recollections is that of Old
Lige driving them to the spring branch twice every
Sunday, For a long while he tried in various ways to
protect his sheep against worrying dogs. At last he
had them " got up " every night in some enclosure he
wished to enrich near enough to the Big House for his
own dogs to be aware of any invasion by strangers, and
he never had a sheep worried afterwards. The fore
going is enough to suggest the whole of the system.
The management of its different trains and many sepa
rate departments upon an up-to-date railroad was not
superior in punctuality and due discharge of every duty.
He lived well, entertained hospitably, and kept out of
debt. Mr, Thomas E, Watson has lately given a graphic
description of good plantation conduct,^ which ought to be
1 Bethany, A Story of the Old South, lo sq.

Toombs 225
considered by all those who now believe that every planter
was necessarily slipshod and slovenly in his vocation. It
was a good training school for the born business man.
Let me give an example to show how extensive planting
bred experts in affairs. The Southern Mutual fire in
surance company — its principal office being at Athens,
some forty miles distant from Toombs's home — at the
beginning of the brothers' war had for some years almost
driven all other insurers out of its territory. It is still
such a favorite therein that it is hardly exaggeration to
state that its competitors must content themselves with
its leavings. The plan of this great company is a novel
form of co-operative insurance — indeed, I may say, it is
unique. It was invented, developed, and most skilfully
worked forward into a success which is one of the won
ders of the insurance world. The men who did this
were never any of them reputed to be of exceptional
talents. They had merely grown up in the best rural
business circles ofthe old south. A similar fact explains
the mastery of money, banking, and related matters
which Calhoun acquired in a locality of South Carolina,
not forty miles distant from Washington, Georgia, It
also explains why Toombs, bred in the interior and far
away from large cities, had perfectly acquired the com
mercial law ; had complete knowledge of the principles
and practice of banking, and those of all corporate busi
ness, and also a familiarity with the fluctuating values of
current securities equalhng that of experts.
He was also, as I know, almost a lightning calculator,
and fully indoctrinated in the science of accounts.
Surely this man, now thirty-five, is ripe for congress,
January 12, 1846, the United States house of repre-^
sentatives having under consideration a resolution of
notice to Great Britain to abrogate the convention be
tween her and the United States, of August 6, 1827, rel-
15

226 The Brothers' War
ative to the region commonly called Oregon, Toombs
made his congressional debut.
It is an able speech for a new member — especially
for one grappling with a question peculiar to a part of
the country so far away from his own. Convinced that
the adoption of the resolution could give no just cause
of offence, he will not yield anything to those who
merely cry up the blessings of peace. The warlike
note is deep and earnest. Then comes the most origi
nal part of the speech. Showing great famiharity with
the facts and the applicable international law, he does
his utmost to prove that the title of each country is
bad; and it seems to me that he succeeds. He urges
that the time has arrived when American settlers are
ready to pour into Oregon, "Terminate this convention
and our settlements will give us good title,"
Of course I believe that Calhoun's policy, as I have
explained it above, was the true one, and that we should
have continued the convention as to joint occupancy as
long as possible, Toombs was bred among the fol
lowers of Crawford, who regarded Calhoun as his rival
for the presidency, and I doubt if he ever did neutralize
this early influence enough to enable himself to do full
justice to Calhoun, And as a further paUiation, his
combative temperament must be remembered, and also
that he had' inherited from a gallant Revolutionary father
an extreme readiness to fight England,
July I, 1846, he discusses a proposal to reduce import
duties in a long speech, carefully premeditated as is
evident. He shows great famiharity with Adam Smith,
economical principles, fluctuations in prices of leading
commodities, and the consequences of affecting legisla
tion. Its main interest here is the detailed argument in
its concluding passages against the expediency of free
trade, of which he afterwards became an advocate.

Toombs 227 1
January 8, 1847, a speech on the proposed increase
of the army is his next considerable effort. He de
nounces the Mexican war as unjust in its origin, but he
reprehends its feeble conduct. He is very strong, from
the southern standpoint, in what he says of the Wilmot
proviso. Here is a passage characteristic of Toombs
later on :
"The gentleman frora New York [Grover] asked how the
south could coraplain of the proposed proviso accompanying
the admission of new territory, when the arrangement was so
very fair and put the north and south on a footing of perfect
equality. The north could go there without slaves, and so
could the south, WeU, I will try it the other way. Suppose
the territory to be open to all ; then southerners could go and
carry slaves with them, and so could northerners. Would not
this be just as equal ? [Much laughter,] I will not answer for
the strength of the argument, but it is as good as what we of
the south get, [Laughter.] "_^
Winthrop, who followed, commences by deprecating
the necessity that exposed him to the disadvantage of
contrast with a speech which had attracted so much at
tention and admiration. And Stephens praised the
effort greatly,^ „
December 21, 1847, Toombs offered a resolution in
the house, that neither the honor nor interest of the
republic demand the dismemberment of Mexico, nor
the annexation of any of her territory as an indispen
sable condition to the restoration of peace.
His Taylor speech of July i, 1848, evinces warm whig
partisanship. In his first years at the bar he loitered a while as a
speaker. And one who studies his record in congress
discerns that it is some two years before he commences
to feel easy as a member of the house. The speeches
1 Johnston and Browne's Life of A. H. Stephens, 218.

2 28 The Brothers' War
which I have mentioned above, with the solitary excep
tion of that of Januaiy 8, 1847, are labored communi
cation of cram rather than the pecuhar language of the
speaker who, when I commenced to observe him a few
years later on the stump, had become a marvel both of
strong thinking and fit expression extempore.
I detect a gleam of the coming man, when August 4,
1848, and February 20, 1849, he exhibits his inveterate
hostihty to maintaining and increasing an army in time
of peace. Next he begins his lifelong war upon high
salaries, and the extravagance and waste of congres
sional printing. Note what he says February 29, 1848,
advocating reduction of salaries of patent examiners;
and his denouncing the evil of congress's pubhshing
agricultural works, in two speeches, the one made March
20, 1848, the other January 18, 1849, These are short,
but strong, and their forcible style gives sure promise
that the true Toombs is at hand. He suddenly found
his real self in December, 1849, when his lead towards
secession commenced, as I shall detail later. After that
date he soon becomes one of the strongest and most
influential members; and especially one whose speech
greatly attracts audience, I must support this assertion
by the record. With my limited space I must be very
brief. My trouble is that the many exaniples which I
could use are all so good it is hard to decide what must
be left out. While I shall always give dates, so that my
statements can be checked by reference to the Globe,
I need not confine myself strictly to the order of time.
His mastery of parhamentary law is a good subject
to begin with,
January 18, 1850, it was moved that the sergeant-at-
arms act as doorkeeper until one be elected. The chair
decided that the question affected the organization of
the house and was therefore one of privilege. On an

Toombs 229
appeal there was much discussion. Here is the part
played by Toombs:
" Mr. Toombs. I apprehend that the speaker has committed
error. This is not an office known to the law ; it was created
only by the rules of the house. The office of speaker and clerk
alone are known to the law. ... It is not every officer whora
by their rules they may choose to appoint, that is necessary to
the organization of the house. Suppose that by a rule they pro
vided for the appointment of a bootblack ; could a resolution
for his appointment be made a question of privilege to arrest
and override all other business ?
Mr, Bayley inquired of the gentleman from Georgia if a rule
was not as clearly obligatory upon the house as a law,
Mr. Toombs. It is ; but its execution is not a question of
organization," A reversal was the result.
The foUowing took place February 20, 1851, and is a
good illustration of his forcible way of putting things :
" Mr. Toombs. (Interrupting Mr, Stanton) called the genUe
man to order. The coramittee ought not to tolerate this custom
of speaking to matters not immediately before it.
The Chairman. Does the gentleman from Georgia raise
the point of order that the remarks of the gentleraan frora Ten
nessee are not in order because they have no reference to the
bill before the committee,
Mr. Toombs. My point is that debate upon steamboats is
not in order upon a pension bill.
The Chairman. I decide the gentleman is in order. It
has been invariable practice to permit such debate in comraittee
of the whole on the state of the union.
Mr. Toombs. The practice raay have been permitted ; but
it was wrong."
On appeal by Toombs the chairman was reversed.
Though Toombs — a whig — had stubbornly opposed
the candidacy of Howell Cobb — a democrat — he soon

230 The Brothers' War
became to the latter, after his election as speaker, the
leading parliamentary authority. Often there would be
confused clamor and wild disorder, nearly every member
proposing something. At a lo.ss himself, Cobb would
look at Toombs and see him intently conning his Jeffer
son. Soon he would rise, and being recognized by the
speaker at once, would forthwith suggest the right thing.
The foregoing was often told by Cobb, as his friends
have informed me.
February 24, 1853, he shows up the bad consequences
of overpaid offices, the duties of which the holders can
hire others to do for half of its compensation ; and
March 2, the same year, he thus speaks of a cognate
evU: "The gentleman seems to go upon the principle that as
many clerks with high salaries should be attached to one office
as to any other — the principle of equalizing the patronage of
these different offices without regard to the species of labor re
quired by each."
I append here a collection of short extracts from
Toombs's speeches in the lower house, which illustrate
his power to tickle the ear by striking presentation,
epigram, and novel expression:
Debate always Harmless. "A Uttle more experience will
show the gentleman that he is mistaken, and that the absence
of discussion here does not accelerate adjournment. The most
harmless time which is spent by the house, he will find, is that
spent in discussion." February 17, 1852.
Nominees of National Conventions. " What are the fruits of
your national conventions ? , , . They have brought you a Van
Buren, a Harrison, a Polk, and a General Taylor. . , , I mean
no disparagement to any one of these. All of them but one
[Van Buren] have paid the last debt of nature, and the one who
survives, unfortunately for himself, has survived his reputation."
July 3, 1852.

Toombs 231
Two Classes of Economists. " There is a class of economists
who will favor any measure by which they can cut off wrong or
extravagant expenditures. But there is another class who are
always preaching economy — who are always ready to apply
the rule of economy and get economical in every case except
that before the house," February 17, 1852,
Principles of Banking. " If we intend to regulate the busi
ness of banking in this District, the bill does too little ; if we do
not, it does too much. As it does not seek to control generally
the business of banking, but perraits the issue of notes greater
than five dollars, it violates the principles of unrestrained bank
ing, but does not go to the extent of regulation by law, I think
the public are raore likely to suffer, and to a greater extent, from
bank issues above five dollars than those under that amount,"
January 11, 1853,
The Dahlonega Mint, in his own State. "I believe the
mints at Dahlonega, Charlotte, and New York are each unneces
sary. ... I do not desire to continue abuses in Georgia any
more than in New York. I am willing to pull up all abuses by
the root, , , , I think the existing mint is adequate to the
wants ofthe country," February 17, 1853,
Personal Explanations in Debate of Appropriations. " I be
lieve that with all the abuses we have had in the discussion of
appropriation bills, we have never had personal explanations,"
February 21, 1850,
Toombs is now about to leave the lower for the upper
house. He has grown in aU directions in the quahfi
catlons and powers marking the good representative.
There is no other man in the house, from either section,
whose ability is superior or whose promise greater.
Three days before his career in the United States senate^
begins, he made the following appeal, protesting against
hasty and reckless expenditure, which seems to me a
model of matter and extemporaneous expression :
" In this bill the fortification bill is introduced ; and provision
made for private wagon ways for Oregon and California, There

232 The Brothers' War
is in it an appropriation of $100,000 to pay somebody for the
discovery of ether. You have a provision for a Pacific raUroad ;
and you have job upon job to plunder the government in the
military bill ; — and the representatives of the people are called
upon to vote on all these grave questions under five minutes'
speeches. You do gross injustice to yourselves ; you betray
great interests of the people when you act upon such important
measures in this raanner. Let the house reject the amend
ments ; let the senate devote its time to maturing bills, and send
them to us to be acted upon deliberately ; and then whichever
way congress determines for itself, it will have a right so to do.
But to act upon them in this way, is not only to abdicate our
powers, but to abdicate our duties. Put your hands upon these
amendments and strike them out," March i, 1853.
Manifestly all that he had learned of the pending bill
was from having heard it read. The instant apprehension
and accurate statement, and the exhaustion of the subject
in far shorter time than his small allowance — these recall
what I often heard Stephens say, " No one else has ever
made such perfect and telling impromptus as Toombs,"
His famous Hamilcar outburst did not consume all of
his five minutes,
Toombs was United States senator from March 4, 1853,
until the spring of 1861, His peculiarities must be sug
gested. Although he was perhaps the ablest lawyer in
the senate, loved the profession with all the ardor of
first love, and had great cases with large fees offered
him every day, he resolutely subordinated law practice
to his congressional duties. He did much practice, but
it was all in the vacations of congress. He did not seek
office. There is not to be found, so far as I know, a
trace of any aspiration of his during his congressional
career for other than the place of senator. If on a
special committee, he worked energetically; but he
avoided the standing committees. He says :

Toombs 233
" It is only occasionally that I go to the comraittee meetings to
make a quorum to act on important business. I do not attend
them one day more than I am obliged to, for I am quite sure
it is not my duty unless charged with a certain subject. This
whole machinery is a means of transferring the legislation of
the country frora those to whose hands the constitution comraits it
to irresponsible juntos, , , , I say general standing committees,
without any exception, are great nuisances, and they ought
to be abolished, , , . They are not proper bodies to exer
cise legislative powers. They are not known in the country
from which we derive our institutions. The English have no
standing coraraittees. They raise special coraraittees on special
objects."^ February 18, 1859.
"The general business of the country," as he ex
pressed it, January 10, 1859, that was his concern. Each
subject requiring the action of the senate, whether im
portant or trivial, received his industrious attention, as
his course and language on the floor always show ; and
he evidently feels it his duty to furnish the body on all
questions the utmost instruction and aid that he can
possibly give. He had no ambition to be the author
of novel measures — he was strenuous only to bestow
upon every subject of current legislation the proper con
sideration. His premeditated efforts are but few. He
never shows any distrust of his offhand faculty. He takes
part in nearly all the discussions, often being up several
times the same day on the same subject. He is seldom
lengthy, hardly ever away from the point needing ex
planation, and never, never dull. Generally he comes
with correcting fact or enlightening principle, and it is sel
dom that his matter and words are not both impressive,
I found it well in writing the Life mentioned above to
present the most of his senatorial course by assorting his
1 Toombs thus anticipates the trenchant but kindly criticism by Wood-
row Wilson of congressional ways of governing. Congressional Gov.
58-192, and in other places.

234 The Brothers' War
utterances under their proper heads, with the briefest
possible comment, rather than to narrate chronologically
in the common way of biographers. In his speeches it
is only now and then that he is steadily progressive as
he was in the Iowa contested election case. His advo
cacy or opposition is generally founded upon a principle,
and from this principle — usually central and self-evi
dent — the different passages radiate in aphorisms, self-
supporting paragraphs, and detached arguments, — this
common radiation being their only connection. Accord
ingly if you know what is the particular subject that is
under discussion, a part taken at random anywhere from
any of his extempore speeches is nearly always complete
in itself and fully intelligible. Therefore we can have
him to give in his own words, in a comparatively small
space, an approximately full collection of the rich and
varied teachings of his senatorial career, although our
chrestomathy would appear to one putting it beside the
unmutilated report of the Globe as a beggarly and je
june abstract, I know of no other public man with whom
this can be as satisfactorily done. Of course the compi
lation made by me, as just told, cannot be given here.
He challenged every bad and defended every good
measure. He is on record both by speech, nearly always
hitting the nail on the head, and by vote, nearly always
right, upon every one. What he did in the house de
serves close attention ; but his actings and doings in the
senate, to which he belonged from March 4, 1853, until
shortly after his famous speech of January 7, 1861, when
he left to go with his seceding State, are such that I
chaUenge all students of history to produce a single
example of such earnest grapphng with and able hand
ling of so many matters of importance in so short a time
— not eight fuU years — by any member of ancient or
modern parliaments.

Toombs ' 235
Having now, I hope, aroused my readers to some
faint conception of Toombs's greatness as a senator in
non-sectional matters, I must bring that greatness into
fuller view, if I can, I therefore add to the foregoing
catalogue the rough character sketch next following, ..
We begin with his devotion to his duties. One ex
amining the Globe will hardly find any other member
who calls as often for the reading of the reports accom
panying bills to pay private claims, and such other small
matters ; and he will always observe that his immediate
comment shows that he has fully taken in what has been
read. He said once, " I have been reproached half a
dozen times within the last two days as being rather
fractious because I desired to understand the business\
on which I was caUed to vote." August 3, 1854, '
The alert and intelligent vigilance which he gives
every measure proposed seems superior to that of all
his colleagues. They acknowledge this by the many
inquiries they make of him for information as to pend
ing bills. Thus June 20, i860, Green asks him where
is the amendment? when was it adopted? has the house
disagreed to it? has it been before a committee? etc.,
and every query is answered without hesitation. This
but examples how the other senators very often made
a convenience of Toombs's accurate note of what was
passing. He shows a like readiness upon facts of history —
especially Enghsh and American — on clauses of the
constitution, or statutes, or treaties, provisions of the
law of nations, principles of political economy, institu
tions, commercial systems, customs of particular nations,
and all such topics as may iUustrate the pending ques
tion, however suddenly it may have risen. And so he
discusses every matter, grave or trivial, with perfect
grasp of the proposition submitted, and with fullness

236 The Brothers' War
of knowledge and understanding. He avoids strained
and over-ingenious reasoning. Plain and safe men never
disparaged his arguments by calhng them hair-splitting
or metaphysical. But though he took his stand upon
the palpable meaning of undisputed facts and the most
plainly applicable doctrines of reason and justice, he
displayed an unparalleled power of formulating in intel-
hgible and striking words the key principles of common
affairs. This gift always found instant appreciation with
practical men, and they admired it as genius. Though
he has his eye ever open to principle, he is the very
opposite of the mere doctrinaire. He is practical, and
always pushing business on, except when the bills de
pleting the treasury — to use his favorite name for them
— are up and likely to pass because of the coalition be
tween the opposition and the fishy democrats which he
is always exposing with exhaustless variety of language.
Only then he prefers to do nothing.
As to his own measures, he changes words, accepts
amendments — in short makes every concession which
will gain him the substance of his desire.
We will here say a little of him as a speaker. He
thus describes himself:
" I speak rapidly ; but the idea which I intend to utter gene
rally coraes out, sometimes perhaps with too much plainness of
speech. What I say, I mean ; and the whole of what I mean
generally gets out." July 30, 1856.
He shows in the following a contemptuous opinion of
written speeches :
" As a general rule a speech that is fit to be spoken is not ¦fit
to be printed, and one fit to be printed is not fit to be spoken.
. . , The senator from New York [Seward] comes in with his
already in type ; other gentlemen around rae, on both sides ofthe
house, from all sections of the union, who think proper to write

Toombs 237
essays, bring them here and read thera to the senate, , , , I am
not objecting to their character, but I would rather read them in
my room. Of course nobody pays any attention to them here,"
April 22, 1858.
He did not habitually correct the report of his
^speeches, as he says May 13, 1858; at the same time
entering a general disclaimer as to all that he does not
report himself. This disclaimer must not be pressed too
far. If you are familiar with the man you need not fear
being led astray by the inaccuracies, the number of
which he greatly exaggerates. His stamp is so unmis
takable that you always know what is his. Extempore
discussion was his forte. Therefore nearly all the quo
tations I use in the Life which I have writtert I intention
ally take from his shorter, impromptu, and evidently
unrevised speeches. These unlabored effusions, it
matters not how dry or small the particular theme may
be, have generally the double merit of showing the true
solution and refreshing with figure, apt iUustration, or
wit.^ 1 What he says July 29, 1857, on death of Preston S. Brooks is a
good example of the forced and labored style of his set speeches.
Stephens often said that his set speeches were failures. And unless
they were made, as that on the invasion of States, that on the duty of
congress to protect slavery in the Territories, and his justification of
secession, January 7, 1861, under the excitement of a great cause, work
ing the same effect upon him as the ardor of extemporaneous effort, his
set speeches are below the mark. And I wish he had more carefully
revised the three just mentioned, following the example of Cicero, Ers
kine and Webster, who habitually corrected and improved their words
after they had been spoken. He does not seem to have given his good
speeches — the extemporaneous ones — any systematic correction. Of
all speakers and orators I ever knew or heard of, he has used the file the
least. It is my belief that he did not know how to use it. Had he but
polished just some of his best unpremeditated efforts ; as for instances
his first speech for the retired naval officers ; his most important utter
ances under various heads of internal improvements ; his humorous anti-
pension harangues ; and his titanic struggle in vain with his own party
to keep Harlan seated — what a find they would be for the school speech

238

The Brothers' War

In important debate he is conspicuously the strongest
man in the senate. We wiU run over the leading ones :
July 28, 1854, a biU containing appropriations for
places in nearly every one of the States came up.
Through the long debate he evinces uncommon power
and readiness. He is too tart in rejoinder, and too
much gives the rein to invective.
In the two days' debate of the mail steamer appro
priation — February 27, 28, 1855, — he distinguishes
himself, February 6, 1856, Toombs, with Hunter and Toucey,
supports a resolution proposing the origination of appro
priation bills in the Senate, Sumner and Seward take
the other side. The argument of Seward is very elabo
rate, notwithstanding his declaration at the outset that
he is wholly unprepared. It is demolished by Toombs
in his most crushing style. Note, too, how accurate the
latter is as to the proceedings of the constitutional con-
books of the future I His lecture on slavery, delivered in Tremont
Temple, Boston, January 24, 1859, — a good copy of which is given by
Stephens (The War between the States, vol. i. 625-647) — is the best speci
men extant, within my knowledge, of his deliberate style. If I may make
such a distinction, it was carefully revised, but never corrected. The
reader will find it, I believe, the very ablest of all the many defences of
slavery in the south.
Mrs. Davis states that during the times of excitement concerning the
compromise of 1850, " He [Toombs] would sit with one hand full of the
reporter's notes of his speeches, for correction," with a French play in
the other, over which he was roaring with laughter. (Memoir of Jefferson
Davis, vol. i. 411.) As his speech of December 13, 1849, and the Hamil
car speech of June next following, need very little correction, I incline to
believe that he did at least try to revise them. Naturally leading such
a novel movement as he then was — it will be fully explained a little later
on — he would desire to send forth his views in only carefully considered
words, and probably he corrected the proofs of the two speeches just
mentioned with something like diligence. In his pleadings, law-briefs,
sketches of proposed statutes, letters, etc., of which I saw much in his
last years, he was so palpably indifferent towards improving his first draft
that one might know it came from lifelong habit.

Toombs 239
vention, how famihar he is with the abuses of wild
appropriations which he is trying to correct, and how
graphically he depicts them.
July 28, 1856, the Black Lake harbor appropriation
is the subject. All that he says is noticeable for power ;
especially his replies to interruptions by Pugh, Wade,
and Cass. Though the bill was passed over his head,
as you read the report you feel that his was the actual
triumph. July 30, 1856, another debate of river and harbor im
provements. It is begun by Hunter. Benjamin takes
the lead in support of the bill ; Toombs joins discussion
with the latter, who by his coolness and adroitness for a
while foils his adversary ; but soon Toombs gets his feet
firmly on the constitution, and still more firmly upon the
injustice of extorting the support of commerce from
other interests, and he is resistless. The disputants
often put questions to one another. Toombs's prompt
ness to answer every adverse position is a taking exhi
bition. It is to be noted that many sparkling sentences
are struck out of him by the incessant hammering of the
others. At the close, he seems either to have wearied
or silenced his opponents. One cannot but feel that
this is no arena for a man who can make only written
speeches, August 4, 1856, the subject being the improvement of
the Mississippi, Toombs urges that the valley is pros
perous, and it should improve its river. The exami- '
nation he gives the question is profoundly searching.
Towards the conclusion of the debate, Cass reads the
counter doctrine of Calhoun, in the report of latter to
the Memphis convention, his reason being, as he says :
" I will confess frankly my object in reading it. The
senator from Georgia has treated the question with
great ability ; and I want the same vehicle that carries

240 The Brothers' War
his remarks to the public to carry also the opinions and
views of Mr, Calhoun, whose authority is vastly better
than mine,"
Through the whole of this debate the faculty and force
exhibited by Toombs are wonderful even for him.
Consider aU that he says of the proper management of
the post-office, February 28, 1859,
January 30, 1 860, there was an animated debate, which
occupied the morning and was renewed in the evening.
The vigorous blows which he deals the coalition pass
ing the appropriations — ever the theme of his severest
reprehension — and the review he makes of each item
in the appropriation bill, taken all in all, are high feats.
His conduct, January 6, 1857, in the Iowa contested
election manifests such rare courage against party and
section for the right that it must be told at some length.
We think it belongs with the more important matters
just noticed rather than to its chronological place.
Harlan, a repubhcan, had been sitting for some time
as a senator from Iowa. There was no contestant. The
adverse report was grounded upon a protest of the Iowa
senate, stating that that body did not participate in the
so-called joint convention which had affected to elect
Harlan. It appeared that both houses of the Iowa
legislature had met in joint convention, had balloted
without result, and the convention had adjourned to
meet at 10 A. M, the next day. On this day the senate
— the majority of its members manifestly being demo
crats and opposed to the sense of the joint majority —
met in their own chamber and adjourned before the
hour appointed for the assembling of the convention.
But a majority of the senate were present in the con
vention when it made the election — several of them
having been brought in by the sergeant-at-arms, and
who protested that they did not act in the proceedings.

, Toombs 241
In the United States senate the democrats were in a
majority, but Toombs, who was always above mere party
considerations, supported the cause of Harlan, saying
afterwards, " I maintained his title, black Republican
though he was, because I believed it stood on right,"
February 15, 1858, The decision was against Harlan;
but I do not think that an unbiased man who regards
mere technical rules as no more than the instruments
of justice, will fail to concur with Toombs, His treat
ment of the subject is extremely good and entertaining.
Every material fact is given prominence ; every impor
tant distinction taken, as, for instance, that the conven
tion, as it could do no legislative act and did not require
the concurrence of the executive, was not really the
legislature, but only the persons constituting the legis
lature acting in a body of their own as electors; and
further, his position that after the convention had organ
ized it could proceed with the election as long as it had
a quorum. Having completed a most lawyer-hke and
concatenated argument, which is a wonderful exhibition
of concise and exhaustive extemporaneous reasoning,
he rises to the higher plane of statesmanship and jus
tice, in which he shows in a vivid light what a monstrous
evil it would be to approve the factious withdrawal of
the majority of the Iowa senate from the convention.
Note especially the many questions asked him by dif
ferent members, and the readiness and satisfactoriness
of his answers,-' It is all in all one of the best samples
of Toombs's dispassionate debate to which I can refer.
Very probably the democrats would have done right by
Harlan had it not been for Bayard's argument, the spe
cial effectiveness of which was the use he made of the
case of his own election, in 1839, to the United States
senate by the Delaware legislature. As he stated it, it
1 Third Session, 240-244. ]
16

242 The Brothers' War
was this : There being a majority of one in the Dela
ware house of representatives in favor of the opposite
party, a majority of that house refused to go into the
joint balloting. Bayard was elected, and it was main
tained by his party, the democrats, that a majority of
the members of the two houses had authority to pro
ceed; but he hesitated, and at last consulted Silas
Wright, of New York. The latter gave a decided
opinion that such an election was invalid. Whereupon
Bayard succumbed, and his State was without a senator
for two years. I cannot help feeling that if Wright had
considered the subject and bottomed it on true principle,
as Toombs afterwards did. Bayard would have settled
down in the opposite conclusion, and he and Toombs in
concert would have forced their fellow-democrats of the
United States senate into doing justice to an opponent
Many have been superior to Toombs in making per
fect orations, but it is hard to find in any deliberative
body a match for him as a debater. Charles Fox was
a giant; but he did not have the strength, the grip, the
never remitted activity, the infinite thrust, the parry, illus
tration, wit, epigram, and invincible appeal to conscience,
feehng, and reason — in short, the complete supply and
command of all resources that marked Toombs as fore
most in the pancratium of parliamentary discussion. It
ought to add inexpressible brightness to his fame that
he sought for no triumphs except those of justice and
good policy. He was far more than a mere logician in
debate. His brilliant snatches, his sudden uprisings, his
thawing humor, and flashing wit — aU these did their
part as effectively in winning favor and working suasion
as his array of facts and his ratiocination did theirs in
convincing. He was too prone to use harsh language
towards the other side. There are many places in his
speeches where I wish he had used soft instead of bitter

Toombs 243
words. That he could observe perfect parliamentary
propriety there are proofs in the Globe. Especially
would I refer to his behavior in the Harlan debate,
spoken of a moment ago, and his discussion of the
Indiana senatorial election, June 11, 1858. Note the
last especially (belonging volume, 2943-2947) for his
moderation, courtesy, and invitation of question while
he is most ably supporting the central proposition he
had before urged in the Iowa case.
Yet, in spite of his occasional vehemence and acrimo
nious language, he seems to have the respect and regard
of even his most decided political opponents. Wade and
he recognize each the great merit ofthe other. Once'
after applauding his honesty and frankness, Toombs
says of him : " He and I can agree about everything on
earth until we get to our sable population, I do believe,"
March 22, 1858,
Wade had already said this of Toombs : " I commend
the bold and direct manner in which the senator from
Georgia always attacks his opponents," February 28,
1857, February 8, 1858, Fessenden said, " I am very happy
to get that admission from the senator from Georgia.
It is made with his customary frankness and clearness,"
Hale also respects him. January 23, 1857, he says
that Toombs ought to have been on the bench, compli
menting his desire for justice and fairness as well as his
legal ability.
The northern democrat Simmons loves to praise him,
as is evidenced by what he says June 2, 1858, February
9, 1859, and June 23, i860.
Such unsought and spontaneous commendations of
the great southern partisan by northern men during the
heat of sectional agitation are extraordinarily strong
proofe of his high character as well as great genius.

244 The Brothers' War
Of course the southern members showed their appre
ciation. Especially note what Bayard says March 21,
i860, and what Butier says January 6, 1857. I could
give many more such ; but I shall only add here how,
February 14, i860, by reason of the importunate urgency
of some of these, evidently regarding him as the special
southern champion, he is pushed into making an able
rejoinder to Hale, who had just concluded a reply to
Toombs's speech on the Invasion of States,
Toombs's inflexible keeping to what he deemed the
right course parallels the absolute fearlessness with
which Julius Caesar, when a young man, clung to the
wife whom the all-powerful and bloody-minded Sulla
commanded him to put away. The Sulla of America
are the people in their unconscientious moments, and
unpopularity the proscription threatened which disquiets
almost all public men with torturing apprehension.
And so there is in nearly every one some admixture of
the trimmer. But Toombs never showed fear either
of the people at large or of those of his own State and
locality. He thus scourges juries assessing the value of
land condemned for the government :
" It has come to such a pass that in getting places for the
army, it seems to be considered better to be cheated by the
owners of a site out of a few hundred thousand for $10,000
worth of property rather than trust a jury," June 12, i860.
When he uttered the following he knew it was ex
tremely unpalatable to his section:
" The southern States from their sparseness of population do
not pay all their postal expenses. The whole mail service of
the south ought to pay its whole expenses, and I am ready to
put it on that ground, , , . I say the point to retrench is in the
south." February 28, 1859.

Toombs 245
The following distasteful lesson he read his own
State :
" I know that some of the mail routes in my own neighbor
hood were taken away, and I never was consulted about them,
and I never thought it was the duty or business of the post
master-general to consult me. I have not been to his office
during this winter in regard to a single one ; and I have been
very rauch complained of, even in my own county and town, on
account of it. ... I have a word to say about the Isabel. She
touches at Savannah ; and I have received meraorials from
people, letters from interested people, frora the Savannah cham
ber of coraraerce, and others, saying, ' By all raeans keep up
the Isabel; we want it.' It is a very popular thing ; it is a
good ship, and has done its duty well. What have I to do but
follow ray uniform line of pohcy, and give them the same rules
as everybody else? Sixteen years' experience here — and I
was here in 1847, when this steamship system commenced —
have satisfied rae that congressional contracts are always unwise,
and are the fruitful sources of boundless legislative corruption.
Therefore, I will never sustain one under any necessity what
ever." May 28, i860.
February 22, 1859, though Iverson, his companion
from Georgia, was the other way, he advocated abohsh
ing the mint at Dahlonega in that State, and the mint
also in North Carolina.
The last instance we cite is his declaration, April 25,
1856, that he had always voted against a claim of the
daughter of Governor Irvin of Georgia.
And to this proud independence he was without spot
of corruption. This was never questioned but once.
May 13, 1858, he was taunted for having supported the
Galphin claim. When at last he sees that the charge is
seriously urged, in a becoming glow he demands an ex
planation. A disclaimer of reflection upon his charac
ter being made, he gives a detstiled account of the claim,

246 The Brothers' War
his steady support of it, and a complete justification of
George W. Crawford in the affair. At its close, Ham
mond of South Carolina, who was familiar with all the
details, bestowed upon it his unqualified voucher. The
lofty spirit and just indignation informing this statement
of Toombs from beginning to end distinguish it as that
of one who has kept out of dark places and walked so
purely in the light that accusation is far more of a sur
prise than insult,^
He never showed any symptom of the presidential
fever, which, to say nothing of its many other victims,
enfeebled each one of the great trio, — Clay, Calhoun,
and Webster, Fully content with his place in the sen
ate, he did not look elsewhere. Taking popularity at
its exact worth ; candid and frank to the extreme ; con
tented in the course dictated by his judgment and con
science though opposed by his people or party and his
own private interest; in no bargains with men nor
smirching connections with women, doing nothing in
secret which, if published, would bring a blush ; elevated
above the amiable weaknesses of unwise benevolence,
ever championing with all his powers the righteous
cause of the weak and unpopular, — as exampled in his
maintaining the claims of certain persons in Louisiana
to the Houmas land against the formidable opposition
of the two senators from that State, in his extraordi
narily eloquent appeal for the naval officers retired with
out a hearing, in his heroic endeavor to have his party
seat the repubhcan Harlan; incorruptible and really
consistent forever and always, — when he is scrutinized
as a public man his character rises into a grandeur of
1 Globe, 3Sth Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 360 (I am thus particular in
giving this reference, from a sense of justice to the memory of George
W. Crawford, which is now and then ignorantiy aspersed because of the
Galphin claim).

Toombs 247
unselfishness, firmness of high purpose, honesty, and
power to show and do the right almost superhuman. It
stands by itself awe-striking and imposing.
But let us particularize the special lesson of his sen
atorial career. We must begin by suggesting his
peculiar bent. If is clear that he chose as his province'^
commerce and industry, with the related themes of
political economy, finance, the currency, taxation, the
tariff, the principles of exchange and distribution, and
so on.^ He probably had the best business insight of
all our prominent statesmen, Calhoun even not ex
cepted. Though Hamilton and Webster — the former
especially — evince titanic comprehension of financial
theory, yet we see from their lives and poor money-
saving success that commercial and business affairs were
not to them both practice and theory as they were to
Toombs, Of all his peers he was most at home in the
ways and principles which dictate proper legislation as
to trade and business. To judge by his words, utterea'
year in and year out, nobody else ever saw more clearly
that there ought to be no tariff, improvement, job, or
any other pets of government. The latter should not
foster such a class, yearly increasing in number, as it
always wiUj living idly and luxuriously upon the public
income, that is, upon the labor and property of othersj
This class supplants the vigorous products of natural
selection by pampered fatlings of bounty, always raising
their demands for support, and ever more and more
clamorously calling for the suppression of all self-sup
porting competition at home and abroad. With the
1 See his argument. May 25, 1858, for putting duties on the home valua
tion of imports ; note also how familiar he is with trade, the motive of
smuggling, the relation of exchange ; also what he says of the tariff of
1857, Globe, 35th Cong., ist Sess., 465, 467, 470. For his mastery
of trade and commerce, see what he says June 9, 1858, especially pp.
3832-2834.

248 The Brothers' War
moral hardihood of Shakspeare, who shrinks not from
rudely shocking our feehngs by making Henry V dis
card his old boon companion Falstaff, Toombs never
wearied of proclaiming the unpopular truth that the
government ought not to be the helper, guardian,
patron, protector, guarantor, surety, almoner, of any of
its citizens. Ponder these stout-hearted and golden words
of his, although the evil represented therein is now estab
lished and magnified into dimensions far beyond what
he could conceive when they were said — an evil, to
suppress which let us hope all patriots will soon unite :
"Whenever the systera shall be firmly established that the
States are to enter into a miserable scramble for the most
money for their local appropriations, and that senator is to be
regarded the ablest representative of his State who can get for
it the largest slice of the treasury, from that day public honor
and property are gone, and all the States are disgraced and de
graded." February 27, 1857.
He is always preaching against the heinous abuse of
diverting government from impartially guarding the
whole community and making it profit only a few. His
text is never far-fetched. He finds it in the proposed
legislation of the day, which it is his duty to consider
in his place. He cares not that he makes no present
effect. Just before BeU's biU for improving the Cum
berland river was passed, he said of it and its compan
ions : " These bills are passing sub silentio, and I suppose
attempt to resist is wholly useless. I wish it understood
that I do not assent to their passage. I am opposed to
aU of them." February 24, 1855.
He sees that the appropriations for harbors and
rivers, lighthouses, private claims, pensions, etc., are
almost as baneful as was the distribution of corn to
the Roman populace, and yet the people everywhere

Toombs 249
are eager for the corrupting gifts. Against his party,
against many of his section, he fights alone and single-
handed, reminding of Horatius keeping the bridge
against the Etruscan host. Though always outvoted,
he behaves with spirit and dignity. Either he, or some
one of the faithful few who act with him in the slim
minority, always have the yeas and nays recorded. His
grand purpose was to appeal to the American people
upon an issue involving the article of his creed which he
had held up with so much puissance and fidelity in days
of evil report. These words contain the motto of the
long contest which occupied all of his non-sectional
career in the senate : J,
" I think every one of these bills should be considered,
I do not wish to have thera considered in such a raanner as
improperly to occupy the tirae of the senate, I desire to
spread before the country reasonable information. That is the
only purpose we can have now ; because the combination is
sufficient to carry everything that the committee report. But
there is a day of reckoning to come ; and I trust that those who
support this system will be called to judgment."
" I desire the truth to go to the honest people all over the
country. Let the taxpayers look at this raatter ; let the jobbers
beware, ' To your tents, O Israel ! ' " July 29, 1856. j
The sectional agitation, mounting higher and higher,
as Toombs said often, blinded the people to this great
subject. Secession came, and his State — to him the
only sovereign — called the sohtary combatant away
from the ground that ought to be kept forever in loving
memory for his long, desperate, thrice-valiant stand.
And the world should also remember that the clauses^
of the constitution of the Confederate States, " prohibit
ing bounties, extra allowances, and internal improve
ments," came from him,-'
* Stephens, War between the States, vol. ii. 338,

250 The Brothers' War
The struggle that wins our deliverance from the
monopolists now causing us to go hungry, cold, and
unshod is yet to be, I cannot say when ; but I know it
will come soon, and that the people will conquer. As
in that day Calhoun's monetary doctrine will be brought
out of its obscurity to add new lustre to his fame, as I
believe, so I believe also that the name of Robert
Toombs will become an object of affectionate rever
ence to all his countrymen, and the weighty and elo
quent sentences in which he sought to shield general
industry from drones and rivals favored by government,
and in which he advocated that the public burdens be
reduced to the minimum, and then apportioned justly, —
these stirring words will be quoted everywhere to re
ceive at last their due audience and favor. . And when
no branch of our government either robs or gives to its
citizens, Toombs's never-remitted, brave, unselfish, and
gigantic endeavor to bring on this millennium ought to
be put by Americans in their Sunday-school books.
When we who fought the brothers' war completely
forget and forgive, as we soon will, it will then be
understood how much the sectional agitation impeded
him, and that when he was caught away from the senate
by the whirlwind of secession he was only fifty years
old, and of such constitutional vigor that he had the
guaranty of at least a quarter of a century more of un
diminished activity, A fond imagination will inquire:
Suppose the energy spent upon the Kansas discussion ;
the protection of slavery in the Territories ; in the great
speech of January 24, i860, on the Invasion of States,
and in that of January 7, 1861, justifying secession, his
supreme effort, as most of his admirers claim, could
have been saved for themes of Pan-American concern ;
and suppose him remaining in the senate, eschewing all
other place, with increasing years loved the more by his

Toombs 251
people for his courageous fidehty to the right, age
assuaging his vehemence and softening his invective,
ripening his judgment and bringing him charity and
wisdom to the full, — to what a height and glory he
would have grown 1
If there had been no slavery, I verily believe that the
south would have been the leading and most prosperous
part of the union, and that Toombs would have been
the greatest American. Stephens knew Webster, Cal
houn, and Clay. The longer he lived the more positive
he became in believing that Toombs was superior in
ability to each one of the three. I have heard him say
often that he had never found anything to which he
could compare the power of Toombs, discussing a great
theme extempore, except Niagara.
Turning back from these unavaihng conjectures, I
must say a last word as to that part of Toombs's career
in the senate which I have been discussing. Its exem-
plariness is not so much in single great achievements.
It is his uniform attention to the current duties of his
place. Whether the particular duty impending was im
portant or trivial, whether it was popular or not, it re
ceived from him at the proper time whatever effort was
needed for doing it rightly. His performance averages
so high in merit that I cannot find a like. No plodder
ever kept more closely to the safe and beaten path. But
he did far more than plod. Almost every day for eight
years he showed how genius can manifest itself fully
and fitly and find its true activity in the common round
of affairs ; how it can better, exalt, ennoble, and beautify
daily routine. I believe that if you will reflect over this,
you will at last see that such are the greatest of men,
and those that the world most needs,
I now take up Toombs's sectional career. The ag
gressive defence of slavery, looming in sight as Calhoun

252 The Brothers' War
is within a few months of death, called for a leader who
did not hug the union, and whose eyes were shut to
everything but the justice and sanctity of the southern
cause, Calhoun's last speech, that of March 4, 1850,
was throughout an appeal to the north. In that same
session, and some while before that speech was de
livered, the true apostle of secession begins the procla
mation of his mission, and some time after Calhoun's
death and before the end of the session that portentous
proclamation was complete, Robert Toombs — then in
his fortieth year, and having as yet attained but little
conspicuousness in congress — is the man I mean. His
appeal was really to the south.
Just after the new congress assembled in December,
1849, a caucus of the whigs, to which party Toombs
then belonged, having met to nominate a candidate for
speaker of the house, he introduced a resolution to the
effect that congress ought not to put any restriction
upon any State institution in the Territories, nor abolish
slavery in the District of Columbia, and, the resolution
being rejected, Toombs, Stephens, and a small number
of others retired from the caucus, and they did not act
any further with their party in the organization of the
house. Toombs and his following declared their pur
pose to disregard former connections and side with
whatever party accorded the south the guaranty de
manded by the resolution above mentioned. As these
southern whigs, and also fourteen northern democrats
and whigs, would not support for speaker either Cobb,
the democratic nominee, or Winthrop, the whig, neither
one of the two nominees could muster the majority
necessary under the rules for election, Toombs's tactics
were hke those of the commons who would not vote the
supplies until the king granted their wishes in other
matters. At this time all the southern democrats and

Toombs 253
a majority of the southern whigs were opposed to his
action. He was leading what appeared to be a hopeless
advance. This is the beginning.
The next stage is when, after nine days of baUoting
for speaker without result, a resolution was introduced
declaring Cobb, who had received a plurality, speaker,
when Duer of New York opposing, said he was willing
for the sake of organizing to elect a whig, democrat, or
free-soUer — only that he could not support a disunionist.
This manifest reflection upon the whigs who had held
themselves aloof made Toombs break the silence he
had theretofore kept
He surprised everybody — perhaps himself — with an"
impromptu of powerful argument and burning eloquence.
Note, in order to compare it with whatever utterance of
Calhoun you please, these passages :
" Sir, I have as much attachment to the union of these States,
under the constitution of our fathers, as any freeman ought to
have, I am ready to concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just
and honorable man ought to sacrifice. I will do no more. I have
not heeded the aspersions of those who did not understand or
desired to misrepresent my conduct or opinions. The time has
come when I shall not only utter thera, but raake them the
basis of my political action here. I do not, then, hesitate to
avow before this house and the country, and in the presence of
the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to drive us
from the Territories of California and New Mexico, purchased
by the blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish
slavery in the District, thereby attempting to fix a national deg
radation upon half of the States ofthis confederacy, Iam for dis
union; and if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance
of my convictions of right and duty, I will devote all I am and
all I have on earth to its consummation."
"The Territories are the common property of the United
States. . . . You are their comraon agents; it is your duty
while they are in the territorial state to reraove all impediments

254 The Brothers' War
to their free enjoyraent by both sections . , , the slaveholder and
the non-slaveholder. You have made the strongest declarations
that you will not perform this trust ; that you wiU appropriate
to yourselves all the Territories, . , , Yet with these declara
tions on your Ups, when southern men refuse to act with you in
party caucuses in which you have a controlling majority — when
we ask the simplest guaranty for the future — we are denounced
out of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we are
met with the cry of 'Union, union!'"
" Give rae securities that the power of the organization which
you seek will not be used to the injury of my constituents, then
you have my co-operation; but not till then, , , . Refuse them,
and, as far as I am concerned, ' let discord reign forever.' "
I must emphasize the effect of this speech made
December 13, 1849, — nearly three months before that of
Calhoun last mentioned, — and which goes great lengths
beyond anything ever said by Calhoun. The Globe
mentions that the speaker was loudly applauded several
times. Stephens, who was present, says " it received
rounds of applause from the floors and the galleries,"
and we can well believe his assertion that it " produced
a profound sensation in the house and in the country." '
Another eye-witness, Hilliard of Alabama, a southern
whig who was not in sympathy with his refusal to act
with his party, relates with rapturous reminiscence the
full-orbed splendor with which Toombs unexpectedly
rose upon the house at this time. He tells : " A storm
of applause greeted this speech, Mr, Toombs had left
his desk and taken his stand in the main aisle and the
southern members crowded about him,"^
For completeness and height, and for sudden sur
prise, this speech exceeds all impromptus on record.
To appreciate it you must recognize it as surely fore-
1 War between the States, vol. ii. 186.
2 Address in the Supreme Court of Georgia, March 9, 1886.

Toombs 255
running the future uprising of southerners as one man
in what they deemed the holiest of causes. When you do
this you can adapt to it Webster's words :
" True eloquence . , . does not consist in speech. ... It
must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion, . , .
It comes . . . like . . - the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with
spontaneous original, native force. . , , Then patriotism is
eloquent, then self devotion is eloquent, , . . This, this is elo
quence ; or rather it is something greater and higher than all
eloquence — it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action,"
The remaining facts of this remarkable session, which
show that Toombs and not Calhoun was the apostle of
secession, can now be told very briefly,
December 14, .1849, debate in the house was pro
hibited by resolution. On the 22d the whigs and demo
crats, in order to organize without agreeing to the
demands of Toombs, joined in a resolution that the
person receiving the largest vote on a certain ballot, if
it should be a majority of a quorum, should be speaker.
This was a palpable violation of the rules, but perhaps
authorized by the great emergency. When the resolu
tion was presented, Toombs, having resolved to prevent
any organization until he had secured the guaranty he
was standing for, in defiance of the prohibition of debate,
made a demonstration of his surpassing endowment, as
compared with all other orators, to outmob a hostile
mob and scourge them into respectful audience. He
adroitly led Staunton, introducing the resolution, to yield
the floor. Why should he want the floor? The house
had forbidden any discussion, and especially were nine-
tenths of them deaf to him, deeming him the cause
of their failure to organize. Announcing his purpose
of discussion, he was called to order. Then a point of
order was raised, which the clerk tried to put. The yeas

256 The Brothers' War
and nays being demanded, the clerk began to call the
roll. There was turmoil and din, but Toombf. held on,
denying the right of anybody to interrupt him, support
ing his attack on the resolurion by the constitution, the
act of 1789, and the high authority of John Q, Adams,
chaUenging the right of the clerk calling the names, and
indignantly inquiring of the house how they could so
permit an intruder and an interloper in nowise connected
with them to interrupt their proceedings. At the last
he forced the house into quiet, and completed the argu
ment he had risen to make. You will not understand
this marvellous achievement if you deem it, as many do,
to have been prompted by the pride of ostentation and
the rage of turbulence. Toombs was thinking only of
securing the rights of his people. He was as earnest in
this cause as ever Webster was for the union. And des
tiny, providence, — not himself nor other men, — was in
this juncture reveahng him to the south as her leader.
' He now begins to be conscious of his coming leader
ship, and to feel that he is an authority and entitled to
pronounce ex cathedra upon the question of southern
equality in the disposition of the Territories. Con
sequently, February 27, 1850, he made a long speech
on the subject of the admission of California — one far
more elaborate and finished than his average efforts.
Especially to be noted is its ending with the famous
words of Troup, " When the argument is exhausted, we
will stand by our arms."
One other exploit of Toombs during this session must
be told. It crowned him as the leader of the south.
Excitement had become intense. The extreme north
ern partisans for bringing in Cahfornia were challenged
to answer if they ever would vote to admit a slave State,
and they declined to say that they would. Thereupon
came from Toombs an outburst which is perhaps the

Toombs 257
finest example of his miraculous extempore declamation
which has survived. He did not consume the five min
utes to which he was limited. We append the conclu
sion, which is a httle more than a third of the whole :
" We do not oppose California on account of the anti-slavery
clause in her constitution. It was her right to exclude slavery,
and I ara not even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its
exercise — that is her business ; but I stand upon the princi
ple that the south has the right to an equal participation in the
Territories of the United States, I claim for her the right to
enter them all with her property and securely to enjoy it. She
will divide with you, if you wish it ; but the right to enter all,
or divide, I shaU never surrender. In my judgment, this right,
involving as it does political equality, is worth a thousand such
unions as we have, even if they each were a thousand times
more valuable than this, I speak not for others, but for myself
Deprive us of this right and appropriate this coramon property
to yourselves, it is then your government, not raine. Then I ara
its eneray, and I will, if I can, bring my children and my con
stituents to the altar of liberty, and, like Hamilcar, swear thera
to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just
rights, and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the
union, every part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and
for one I shall strike for independence," 1
Stephens, ever a most accurate and trustworthy wit
ness, says that of all speeches which he heard during his
congressional course, which covered the years 1843-1859,
this produced the greatest sensation in the house,^ Its
effect outside — that is, in the southern pubhc — was
widespread, deep, and permanent. The comparison
with which it closed had been, I believe, used before ;
but what of that? It exactly voiced the revolutionary
sentiment which, as his deliverances on the 13th of De
cember before showed, was beginning to come into
1 War between the States, vol, ii. 217,
17

258 The Brothers' War
consciousness in his section. It gave new impetus to
the circulation of the other speeches. The young men
of Georgia, as I know, and perhaps those of other south
ern States, read them over and over, reciting with
passionate emphasis the most stirring passages. Es
pecially did they delight to declaim the peroration of
the Hamilcar speech, as that of June 15, i8'50, has
always been called in Georgia. To the stump orators,
the last mentioned and that of December 13 became
examples'which they emulated only to find in their de
spairing admiration that parallel was impossible. And
even the retiring, quiet, and elderly people who care for
nothing but their daily business caught the fire. Not
long ago, one who is now old, who was entering middle
age in 1850, and who has been a stanch union man all
his life, told me that he could not keep from reading
these speeches over and over, and whenever he read
one of them, it made him for the time a disunionist.
The part played by Toombs in the congressional
session of 1849-50 seems to me one ofthe most wonder
ful exploits in all parhamentary annals. Since slavery is
gone, and I can at last understand that it was all blessing
to the African and all curse to us, my joy is inexpress
ible. But I must ever hold that its defence was one of
the noblest efforts of the best of people. It will soon
be understood by the whole world, and especially by
our brothers of the north. They will acknowledge that
neither Greek nor Scot nor Swiss were more manly or
heroic than southerners, and the supporters of the Lost
Cause wiU be crowned with such lustre and glory as
magnify Hannibal succumbing to Rome, or Demosthe
nes unvaihngly stirring up his country against Macedon,
It will forever bring me ecstatic emotion to recall the
many, many places where my fellows suffered or fell at
my side without a murmur. Our victories at the open-

Toombs 259
ing of the brothers' war ; then the drawn battles ; then
the defeats ; and the round of sickening disasters at the
end, — all these come thronging back, and I can never
be other than proud of the prowess and endurance of
our out-numbered armies, the energy and untamable
spirit of our people, and the devotion of our blessed
women to the weal of our soldiers, I often look back
over the track of what I have called the aggressive
defence of slavery. Though it was disguised under
various names, such as the threat of disunion in certain
contingencies by the Georgia Platform, just division of
the public domain between the sections called for by all
parties in the south, and finally the demand for full pro
tection of slavery in the Territories ; and though it was
now and then seemingly at rest, that movement from
the day it set in was in reahty one directly towards
secession, and it kept on as steadily as the Propontic.
And as I look back at the further edge of this retrospect,
marking the beginning, towering above all who took high
place later, — even above Lee and Jackson, — ever comes
more plainly into view the majestic figure of Robert
Toombs, revealing his unsuspected power like a thunder
clap from the sunny sky, December 13, 1849, when he
extorts wild acclamations of applause from the majority
of southern whigs and all of the southern democrats,
both unanimous against his stand for a guaranty of con
gressional non-restriction ; a few days later coercing an
infuriated house trying to cry him down into wondering
silence ; and through the whole session upholding his
cause with such might that the single champion proves
an overmatch for the two parties striking hands against
him, and he finally conquers preaudience and dictation
upon the main southern theme,
I become more and more confident that future history
will find the achievement of Toombs in the session of

26o The Brothers' War
1849-50 to be the exact point where the drift towards
secession, which had before that been only latent and
potential, becomes actual, and that here is the dawn
of the Confederate States, The more I gaze at it the
plainer and redder that dawn becomes.
We need not tell the rest of Toombs's sectional career
with much detail. The all-important part of it histori
cally is its beginning, and how he vaulted into the lead
of the aggressive defence of the south, which I hope I
have adequately told. From this time he showed in
all that he did the quality which Mommsen glorifies
in Julius Caesar, — ready insight into the possible and im
possible. Much discontent manifested itself in Georgia,
and also in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina,
against the compromise measures, and especially against
the admission of California with its constitution prohibit
ing slavery. A convention being called in Georgia to
consider what should be done, there was thorough
discussion. An overwhelming majority of delegates
opposing any resistance was elected. To this result
Toombs contributed more than any one else, and he
really shaped the platform finally promulgated by the
convention. This — -the Georgia Platform of 1850, as
we always called it — is a most important document to
the historian ; for it was the weighed and solemn dec
laration of some nine-tenths of the people of a pivotal
southern State.
The southern-rights men, as a small but noisy part of
the southern people then called themselves, had mis
taken Toombs's last-mentioned speeches in congress as
declarations for immediate disunion in case California
was admitted under her free constitution; and when
he supported the compromise measures, and also the
Georgia Platform, they hotly denounced him as a
turncoat. In their bhnd fury they could not see, as

Toombs 261
everybody else did, that vehement and fervent language,
proper to awaken one's people from perilous apathy,
may really be at the time understatement, and that,
after the people have awakened, to seek in that same
language the counsel of right action would be the ex
treme of immoderate folly. The more you meditate it
the more plainly you discern that his leadership was
masterly. From the first to the last his appeal was to.
the middle class of property owners — then so numerous
that it was practically the whole of southern society.
His object at the first, as he declared, was to make with
this class the protection of their fundamental property
interest the prominent question of national pohtics.
And the end showed that he not only took, but that
he kept, the right road. The Georgia Platform became
the bible of every political following in the State, The
next year, 1851, Toombs, still a whig, supported Howell
Cobb, a democrat, for governor against McDonald, one
of the most popular men of the State, the southern-
rights candidate, Toombs's side, which won by a large
majority, was called the union party. You will not
be deceived by this if you keep in mind that Cobb was
elected on the Georgia Platform, which had pledged the
people of the State to resist, even to disunion, certain
named encroachments upon slavery which providence
had already ordered to be made.
In 1848 Yancey had aroused the people of Alabama
into demanding that the United States protect slavery
in the Territories, and he advocated secession in 1850.
But in both these things he was premature. As com
pared with Toombs he uncompromisingly stood for every
tittle of what he beheved were the rights of the south,
Toombs was a far more practical and able opportunist.
His faUing back upon the Georgia Platform from a much
more advanced position, as I have just told, is an instance.

262 The Brothers' War
I want to give others. He always declared in private
conversation after the war that the democratic party
was ripened and committed by Douglas and his co-work
ers to the repeal of the Missouri compromise while he
was kept away from Washington by necessary attention
to the interests of a widowed sister, otherwise, with his
commanding position at the time, he would have crushed
the scheme at its first proposal. When he returned to
his pubhc duties, to his amazement he found that every
prominent member of the party was irrevocably for the
repeal, and he could do nothing but embrace the inevi
table. Then he would say substantially, " Had it not
been for that administratorship which I could not avoid
taking, we would all still be working our slaves in peace
and comfort. That Missouri settlement was not right,
but we had agreed to it; and with me a wrong settlement,
when I agree to it, is just as binding as a righteous one,"
When others are urging that the United States ought
to protect slavery in the Territories, the record does not
show that he is interested at first ; although when at last
the question is forced into debate he makes by far the
strongest speech of all in championship of the Davis
resolutions, I believe the current sucked him in.
Just after Lincoln's election — an event which in
fluenced nearly all of even the most moderate elderly
people of my acquaintance to declare at once for a
southern confederacy — he proposed that Stephens join
with him in an address to the people of Georgia, coun-
selhng that no immediate secessionist nor non-resistance
man be elected to the convention ; ^ and later he pro
fessed wiUingness to accept the Crittenden compromise.
The truth is that the ablest leaders, as we call them,
do not lead — they are led. If they should become
non-representative, their followers would go elsewhere.
* Waddell, Life of Linton Stephens, 237,

Toombs 263
And those of these leaders whose influence is the most
potent and permanent are the conservative and mod
erate. Toombs was never really ahead in the southern '
movement except when for a brief while in the session
of 1849-50 he planted the standard far to the front
and called his people forward. Afterwards there were
always others who appeared to be fighting much in
advance of himi
He companioned his people as they steadily devel
oped their readiness for the dread action commanded
by the Georgia Platform if the north should say not
another inch of extension for slavery, and no extra
dition of fugitive slaves. Of course he matured in
feeling for secession far beyond what appeared to be his
ripeness in 1850. With all his conservatism, he was of
that stuff out of which the most earnest and biased par
tisans are made. There are many who can admit
nothing against those they love, and a still larger
number who hug their country with a religious ac
ceptance of everything in it as the best in the world.
To him and his people, the south, under the mighty
influence of the nationalization we have explained,
had long been unconsciously displacing the union in
their hearts. As one may learn from his Tremont Tem-*
pie lecture, he saw and magnified all of the good in the
society to which he belonged, and was as blind to the
bad as a mother is to the faults of her children, He^
was often heard to run through an enumeration of south
ern superiorities. The courage and valor of the men,
the virtue and lovehness of the women, the purity of
the administration of justice and of the performance of
all public duties ; especially did he love to say that the
honesty of his section was so well established that its few
venal congressmen were like a woman of easy virtue in a
good family, whom the reputation of the latter keeps

264 The Brothers' War
from solicitation; and he would faU to praising the
kinghness of cotton, the beneficence of slavery both to
master and slave, the delicacy of our yam, the exceUing
flavor given by crab grass to beef and butter, the juice
of the peach of Middle Georgia, sweeter than nectar,
the incomparable melon, and cap the climax by assert
ing persimmon beer to be more acceptable to the palate
of a connoisseur than any champagne. And in the days
just preceding the great outbreak he had become more
intense in his deep love for his State and section. The
raid of John Brown into Virginia was, I think, the event
which turned the scale with him, and made him feel that
secession was near. Taking the occasion offered by
Douglas's resolution, directing the judiciary committee
to report a biU for the protection of each State against
invasion by the authorities and inhabitants of other
States, January 24, 1 860^ he delivered in the senate
a speech which we niust notice. It is common in
Georgia to adopt the eulogy of Stephens and pronounce
the speech of January 7, 1861, justifying secession, as
Toombs's greatest effort. But I hesitate, unable to
decide which is superior. He states his propositions
thus:
r " I charge, first, that this organization of the abolitionists has
annulled and made of no effect a fundamental principle of the
federal constitution in many States, and has endeavored and is
endeavoring to accomplish the same result in all non-slavehold
ing States.
Secondly, I charge thera with openly attempting to deprive
the people of the slaveholding States of their equal enjoyment
of, and equal rights in, the common Territories of the United
States, as expounded by the supreme court, and of seeking to get
the control of the federal government, with the intent to enable
themselves to accoraplish this result by the overthrow of the
federal judiciary.

Toombs 265
Thirdly, I charge that large nurabers of persons belonging
to this organization are daily committing offences against the
people and property of the southern States which, by the law
of nations, are good and sufficient causes of war even among
independent States ; and governors and legislatures of States,
elected by them, have repeatedly comraitted similar acts,"
The facts are reviewed closely and summed up with
extraordinary force; the subject is treated as carefully
under the law of nations as under the constitution ; the
quotation from Mill's " Moral Sentiments," and that from
Thucydides, narrating the successful effort of Pericles in
persuading the Athenians to resort to war rather than
concede the right of the Megareans to receive their re
volted slaves, are appositely used; the conviction that
there is no longer safety for the south in the union
speaks out in every line; and, with the exception of
a few overheated passages, the entire speech is from the
loftiest height of the statesman who bids his people arm
for self-preservation. Just preceding the peroration
there are paragraphs describing nervously and graphi
cally the great resources of the south and her rapid
development from feeble beginnings, one of which es
pecially emphasizes the past and present of Virginia,
adding at the last
" One blast upon her bugle horn
Were worth a million men."
Next before this are words which invoke the northern
democracy, but they seem out of place and foreign. He
abruptly ends his appeal to the national classes who
have his respect by saying, " The union of aU these ele
ments may yet secure to our country peace and safety.
But if this cannot be done, peace and safety are incom
patible with this union. Yet there is safety and a glorious
future for the south. She knows that liberty in its last

266 The Brothers' War
analysis is but the blood of the brave. She is able to pay
the price and win the blessing. Is she ready? "
The last three sentences are the southern correlative
of Webster's soaring when he magnified the union in his
reply to Hayne, They were repeated over and over by
everybody with a wild acceptance utterly without parallel
in my knowledge, and after the election of Lincoln became
the war cry of Georgia.
The position taken in the very conclusion of this
truly Periclean speech is especially to be attended to
here. It is that in the event of the success of the re
publican party in the next presidential election the
people of his State must redeem their pledge made nine
years before in the Georgia Platform,
From this time on he is facile primus of southern
champions. Note his long and elaborate reply to Doo
little, February 27, i860; the discussion with Wade,
March 7, i860, — both relating to his speech last
noticed above; and his very able argument. May 21,
i860, on the duty of protecting slavery in the Territories.
During the presidential campaign of i860 the Douglas
men and the Americans in Georgia charged the sup
porters of Breckinridge with plotting disunion that
would bring on war. The charge was generally denied.
The truth is, hardly anybody was aware that the awful
crisis was near. Those who really expected secession
beheved with HoweU Cobb and his brother Thomas,
and with Thomas W. Thomas, that it would be peace
able, and perhaps they were about a tenth; the rest
followed Stephens, beheving that the American people
on each side of Mason and Dixon's line would, when
it was demanded, rise up in resistless co-operation and
make safe both southern institutions and the union.
Generally Stephens was far superior to Toombs in
forecast and discernment of the sentiment of the masses.

Toombs 267
But whUe the former was too wise to consider even for
one moment the probabilities of peaceable secession,
he had a most un-American conviction that nothing
good was ever gained by war, and he so loved peace
and the union that he could not believe his people
would secede. In his great sympathies Toombs was
here far more clear-sighted. While he was the only
speaker in this presidential campaign that was disre
spectful to the union, often caUing it in derision " the
guUorious," and he gave no promise that withdrawal
from the union would be peaceful, and so appeared to
be to himself and alone, he was really the only one
riding the waves of the undercurrent rising every day
nearer the surface, and soon to sweep all of us onward
upon its raging waters. The other speakers discussed
the rival platforms, but the nearer election day ap
proached the more potently he was preparing the
people and himself for secession, though unawares to
both. And when Lincoln was elected, — the man who
had solemnly published his belief that this government
could not endure permanently part slave and part free,
— an occurrence which aroused the south throughout
as the firing upon Fort Sumter afterwards aroused the
north, Toombs drank in every accession to the emotion
of his people, and towered more largely before them
every day as the soul of the revolution now palpable in
its coming to all. When secession was debated before
the Georgia legislature, after enumerating what he
declared to be the wrongs of the south, he said, " I ask
you to give me the sword ; for if you do not give it to
me, as God lives, I wiU take it myself" In his immortal
eulogy of the union the next night, Stephens quoted
these words, and Toombs, who was present, answered
in a voice of thunder, " I will," The house rocked
to and fro with frenzied applause. Long afterwards

268 The Brothers' War
Stephens told me that this outburst was the first reveal
ing sign to him that his people were rushing to war.
He lost his breath while gasping out the awful word,
and there was terror in his looks as if the direful ghost
had risen again. Some ardent secessionists professed
themselves ready to drink aU the blood that would be
spilled, but Toombs, in his warlike nature, was already
reveUing in the joy of fighting for his people in this
most sacred of causes. In one of his speeches he
eulogized beforehand those who were to fall in defence
of the south, giving them the requiem of sleeping for
ever where " Honor guards with solemn round
The silent bivouac of the dead."
I did not hear this, but a friend told me that the
speaker's electric recitative made the hackneyed words
forever new and fresh to him.
I must go faster, January 7, 1861, Toombs made in
the United States senate his famous defence of seces
sion. He presented in behalf of the south these de
mands expressed in writing:
I, Any person to be permitted to settle in any Terri
tory, with any of his property, including slaves, and be
protected in his property till such Territory is admitted
as a State on an equality with the other States, with or
without slavery as its people may determine,
2, Property in slaves to receive everywhere from the
United States government the same protection which
under the constitution it can give any other property,
it being reserved to each State to deal with slavery
within its limits as it pleases,
3, Extradition of persons committing crimes against
slave property, as commanded by the constitution,
4. Extradition of fugitive slaves as commanded by
the same constitution.

Toombs 269
5. Congress to pass efficient laws punishing all per
sons aiding or abetting invasion of a State or insurrec
tion therein, or committing any other act against the
law of nations that tends to disturb the tranquillity of
the people or government of the State. ^
It is plainly evident to the unprejumced that he had
the warrant of 'the constitution, the law of nations, of
the practice and professions ofthe great body of even
northern citizens ever since the adoption of the consti
tution, for every one of these demands. It is also as
plainly evident that every one was vital to each southern
community, founded as it was from basement to roof,
upon property in slaves. The justice of his demands
could not be denied without repudiating the constitu
tion, the law of nations, and the solemn compacts of the
fathers, their children and children's children. And
providence had really made each one of these astound
ing repudiations, in her purpose to extirpate slavery as
the only menace to the American union, even if the
people so dear to Toombs must be all cast out of their
prosperity and comfort into beggary. But when a man
is fighting for his loved ones, — especially if he is fight
ing for his country, — and he has the valor of Toombs,
his not-to-be-shaken conviction is that providence is on
his side, and the nearer great disaster approaches, the
stouter becomes his heart. Toombs's support of his
demands, and his defence of what he knew the south
would do if they were refused, are the most earnest
words he ever spoke. Note these paragraphs :
" You cannot intimidate my constituents by talking to them
about treason. They are ready to fight for the right with the
rope around their necks,"
" You not only want to break down our constitutional rights ;
you not only want to upturn our social system ; your people
not only steal our slaves and make thera freemen to vote against

270 The Brothers' War
us ; but you seek to bring an inferior race into a condition of
equality, socially and poUtically, with our own people. The
question of slavery moves not the people of Georgia one half
as much as the fact that you insult their rights as a com
munity. You abohtionists are right when you say that there
are thousands and ten thousands of men in Georgia, and all
over the south, who do not own slaves. A very large portion
of the people of Georgia own none of them. In the mountains
there are comparatively few of them ; but no part of our people
are more loyal to their race and country than our brave moun
tain population ; and every flash of the electric wires brings me
cheering news from our mountain tops and our valleys that
these sons of Georgia are excelled by none of their countrymen
in loyalty to the rights, the honor, and the glory of the com
monwealth. They say, and well say, this is our question; we
want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no mon
grel race to degrade our own ; and as one man they would
meet you upon the border, with the sword in one hand and the
torch in the other. We will tell you when we choose to abolish
this thing ; it must be done under our direction, and according
to our will; our own, our native land shall determine this ques
tion, and not the abolitionists of the north. That is the spirit
of our freemen,"
Here is the grand conclusion :
"This raan. Brown, and his accomphces, had sympathizers.
Who were they ? One who was, according to his public speeches,
his defender and laudator, is governor of Massachusetts, Other
officials of that State applauded Brown's heroism, magnified his
courage, and no doubt lamented his ill success. Throughout
the whole north, public meetings, immense gatherings, trium
phal processions, the honors of the hero and conqueror, were
awarded to this incendiary and assassin. They did not con
demn the traitor ; think you they abhorred the treason ?
Yet , , , when a distinguished senator from a non-slavehold
ing State proposed to punish such attempts at invasion and
insurrection, Lincoln and his party say before the world, ' Here
is a sedition law,' To carry out the constitution, to protect

Toombs 271
States from invasion and suppress insurrection therein, to com
ply with the laws of the United States is a ' sedition law,' and
the chief of this party treats it with contempt; yet, under the
very same clause of the constitution which warranted this bill, you
derive your power to punish offences against the law of nations.
Under this warrant you have tried and punished our citizens
for meditating the invasion of foreign States ; you have stopped
illegal expeditions ; you have denounced our citizens engaged
therein as pirates and commended them to the bloody ven
geance of a merciless enemy. Under this principle alone you
protect our weaker neighbors of Cuba, Honduras, and Nica
ragua, By this alone are we empowered and bound to prevent
our people from conspiring together, giving aid, money, or arms
to fit out exfjeditions against a foreign nation. Foreign nations
get the benefit of this protection ; but we are worse ofif in the
union than if we were out of it. Out of it we should have the
protection of the neutrality laws. Now you can come among
us : raids raay be made ; you may put the incendiary torch to
our dwellings, as you did last summer for hundreds of miles on
the frontier of Texas ; you may do what John Brown did, and
when the miscreants escape to your States you will not punish
them, you will not deUver them up. Therefore, we stand de
fenceless. We must cut loose from the accursed * body of this
death,' even to get the benefit of the law of nations.
You Will not regard confederate obUgations; you wiU noi
regard constitutional obligations ; you will not regard your oaths.
What, then, am I to do ? Ara I a freeraan ? Is ray State a free
State ? We are freeraen. We have rights ; I have stated them.
We have wrongs ; I have recounted them. I have demonstrated
that the party now coming into power has declared us outlaws,
and is determined to exclude thousands of millions of our prop
erty from the coraraon Territories, that it has declared us
under the ban of the union, and out of the protection of the
law of the United States everywhere. They have refused to
protect us by the federal power from invasion and insurrection,
and the constitution denies to us in the union the right either
to raise fleets or arraies for our defence. All these charges I
have proved by the record ; and I put thera before the civilized

272 The Brothers' War
world and demand the judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of
distant ages and of heaven itself, upon the justice of these
causes. I am content, whatever may be the event, to peril all
in so noble, so holy a cause. We have appealed time and
time again for these constitutional rights. You have refused
them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we had
them, as your court adjudges them to be just as our people
have said they are ; redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all
men, and it will restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of
us. Refuse them, and what, then ? We shall ask you, ' Let us
depart in peace.' Refuse that, and you present us war. We
accept it ; and inscribing upon our banners the glorious words
' Liberty and Equality,' we will trust to the blood of the brave
t_and the God of battles for security and tranquillity."
No new nation about to be launched upon a sea of
blood was ever heralded with words that were above
these in appeal to the conscience and strongest affec
tions of humanity. They are not outvied by those of
Patrick Henry reported by Wirt, or those of John
Adams reported by Webster, which the world will ever
treasure as all gold, O that he had corrected them !
He could not use the file, as we have already said.
Soon after making the speech he went away from the
senate without taking leave, March 14, 1861, that body
passed a resolution reciting that the seats before occu
pied by Brown, Davis, Mallory, Clay, Toombs, and
Benjamin had become vacant, and directing that the
secretary omit their names from the roll.
It was clear from his incomparable and faultless lead
ership of the active defence of the south, and his unique
ability in affairs, that he was the choice of the directors
of southern nationalization for president of the Confed
erate States; but these were overcome by stronger
spirits, and Davis was made president. I have al
ways believed that Toombs regarded this as the great

Toombs 273
miscarriage of his life. He could not continue his
connection with the unbusinesslike conduct of the ad
ministration, and he retired from his secretaryship of
state. Read what his superiors say of him at Sharps
burg, and what Dick Taylor with admiration tells of
the help he afterwards got from him in a dark hour,
as specimens of his gaUantry and efficiency in the
service. But his was not the nature of Epaminondas, to
doff his natural supereminence and sweep the streets.
Pegasus did not show more unsuited to the plow than
he did to his inferior station in this stage of the great
conflict which was his meat and drink.
The collapse came, flight from America, return at
last to his stricken people, and disabihty for the rest of
his hfe. Though he had something of even a great
career at the bar, and in State politics, his longing for
the old south and discontent with the new increased,
slowly at first, then faster and faster. As infirmity from
age came on apace, and his wife whom he had always
made his good angel went to heaven, every day he
became more lonely. He had survived his country.
Such love as his for that loves but once and always.
The sacrifices that he had made for it became his treas
ures. He hugged his disability as his most precious
jewel. Our gallant Gordon was not more proud of the
scars on his face. Not long before his mind and mem
ory were failing, speaking of the past, he said with the
utmost firmness : " I regret nothing but the dead and
the failure. ' Better to have struck and lost.
Than never to have struck at all,' "
What a fall ! Greater by far than Lucifer's, Lucifer
was rightfully cast out because of heinous offence. But
Toombs was cashiered because he had been the best,
ablest, and most faithful servant of his people, whose
' 18

274 The Brothers' War
dearest rights were in jeopardy. According to our
merely human view it is the way of fiends to reward
such supremacy in virtue and achievement with hell
pains. If we cannot hope confidently, may not we sur
vivors at least send up sincere prayers that the Lord
will yet give this Job of the old south twice as much of
fair fame as he had before.
If the defeated in the wars between England and
Scotland and in the Enghsh civil wars ; and if Cromwell
and the regicides who set up a government that had to
fall, — if all these have found respectful and fully appre
ciative mention at last, why shall not Calhoun and
Toombs look to have the same after some years be
passed? Trusting that such will come, I close this
sketch by suggesting where Toombs will, I think, be
niched in American history.
He is often spoken of as the southern correspondence
to Wendell Phillips, There was nothing whatever in
common between the two except extraordinary fluency
of zealous speech. Early in life, Phillips, almost a mere
boy, broke with Mrs, Grundy by advocating abolition
before his neighbors were ripe for it. While Toombs
cared nothing for Mrs, Grundy, he always so comported
himself that he was her great authority. He was a very
able lawyer, who had made a considerable fortune by
practice, and a thorough statesman, when fate confided
the southern lead to him ; and while Phillips was reck
less and rash, Toombs never, never essayed the impos
sible with his people. The more you balance him and
PhiUips against each other, the more unhke you wiU find
them. Prof. William Garrott Brown is quite correct in
pairing PhiUips and Yancey.
There is a northern character to whom Toombs as a
southern opposite corresponds in so many important
particulars that it surprises me it has not been pro-

Toombs 275
claimed. As Webster was the special apostle of the
preservation of the union, Toombs was the same of
secession. Their missions were parallel in that each one
was the foremost champion of his nationality, Webster
of the Pan-American, as we may call it; and Toombs
of the southern. All through the brothers' war their
phrases were on the lips and fired the hearts of each
host, those of Webster impelling to fight for the union,
those of Toombs for the southern confederacy. Each
was probably the ablest lawyer of his day. Each was
surely the ablest debater to be found. Each was of
sublime courage in defying what he thought to be un
just commands of his constituents. And the last point
which I think of is that each was of most complete
and perfect physical development, and was the most
majestic presence of his day. The busiest men in the
streets of all sorts and ranks always found time to look
upon either Webster or Toombs as he passed, and
admire, I never saw Webster, But I beheve that from
his pictures, from long study of his best speeches, and
from what I have greedily read and heard of him in a
fond lifelong contemplation, I have an almost perfect
figure of him before my mind's eye. Toombs from my
boyhood I saw often, I will describe him as I observed
him at the hustings just before the war. His face,
almost as large as a shield, but yet not out of propor
tion, was in continual play from the sweetest smile of
approval to the scowl of condemnation, darkening all
around like a rising thundercloud. His flowing locks
tossed to and fro over his massive brow hke a lion's
mane, as was universally said. In every attitude and
gesture there was a spontaneous and lofty grace — not
the grace of the dancing-master, but the ease and repose
of native nobility. His face was not Greek, but in his
total he looked the extrenie of classic symmetry and the

276 The Brothers' War
utmost of power of mind, will, and act. Princely, royal,
kingly, even godlike, were the words spontaneously
uttered with which men tried in' vain to tell what they
saw in him. He and just one other were the only men
of my observation whose greatness, without their saying
a word, spoke plainly even to strangers. That other
man was Lee. I noted, when we were near Chambers
burg in Pennsylvania those three or four days before
the great battle, that, while the natives would curiously
inquire the names of others of our generals as they rode
by, every one instantaneously recognized Lee as soon as
he came near. This publication of her chosen in their
mere outside which destiny makes is not to be slighted
nor underprized. And so remember that Webster
looked the greatest of all men of the north, and Toombs
the greatest of all men of the south.
To my mind I give each unsurpassable praise and
glory when I call Webster the northern Toombs and
Toombs the southern Webster.
I add a note by way of epilogue. I observe with
pain that the obloquy against Toombs in the north
seems to increase, while that against him in the rising
generation of the south — who do not know him at all
— is surely increasing. It is, however, a growing con-'
solation to me to note that every charge, currently made
against him north or south, is founded either upon com
plete mistake of fact or the grossest misunderstanding
of his character and career. It is a duty of mine not
only to him as my dead and revered friend, but a high
duty to my country, to set him in his right place in the
galaxy of America's best and greatest I never knew a
man of kinder or more benevolent heart ; nor one who
had more horror of fraud, unfairness, and trick; nor one
whiter in all money transactions ; nor one whose longing

Toombs 277
and zeal for the welfare of neighbors and country were
greater ; nor one who showed in his whole life more re
gard for the rights and also the innocent wishes of every
body. The model men of the church, such as Dr. Mell
and Bishop George Pierce, loved him with a fond and
cherishing love. The humblest and plainest men were
attracted to him, and they gave him sincere adulation.
Many of my contemporaries remember rough old Tom
Alexander, the railroad contractor. I saw him one day
in a lively talk with Toombs. As he passed my seat
while leaving the car he whispered to me : " Bob Toombs !
his brain is as big as a barrel and his heart is as big as a
hogshead." From 1867 until 1881 I was often engaged
in the same cases with Toombs, either as associate or
opposing counsel, and I saw a great deal of him. It
falls far short to say that he was the most entertaining
man I ever knew. He was just as wise in judgment as
he was original and striking in speech, I am sure that
his superiority as a lawyer towered higher in the con
sultation room just before the trial than even in his able
court conduct. And he led just as wisely and pre
eminently in the politics of that day, when it was vital to
the civilization of the south to nullify the fifteenth amend
ment, Georgia would indeed be an ungrateful republic
should she forget his part in the constitution of 1877,
That was deliverance from the unspeakable disgrace of
nine years — a constitution made by ignorant negroes,
also criminals who, to use the words of Ben Hill,
sprang at one bound from State prisons into the con
stitutional convention, and some native deserters of the
white race — the constitution so made kept riveted
around our necks by the bayonet. The good work
would have remained undone for many years had not
Toombs advanced $20,000 to keep the convention,
yyhich hatj exhausted its appropriation, in session long

278 The Brothers' War
enough to finish our own constitution. The railroad
commission established by that instrument is really his
doing. This post-beUum political career of his, in which
he restored his stricken State to her autonomy and self-
respect, has not yet won its full appreciation.
If Toombs could but be dehneated to the life in his
extempore action, advice, and phrase he would soon
attain a lofty station in world literature. It mattered
not what he was talking about, — an affair of business or
of other importance, communicating information, teUing
an experience, complimenting a girl, disporting himself
in the maddest merriment, as he often did after some
great accomplishment, — his language flashed all the
while with a planet-like briUiancy, and the matter was of
a piece. Those of us who hang over Martial, how we
learn to admire his perpetual freshness and variety ! But
when we compare him with Catullus, his master, we note
that while his epigram is always splendid, the language
is commonplace beside that of the other.'^ Toombs was
even more than Martial in exhaustless productivity and
unhackneyed point, and his words always reflected, like
those of Catullus, the hues of Paradise. Perhaps a
reader exclaims, " As I do not know Martial and Catul
lus your comparison is nothing to me," Well, I tell him
that I have read Shakspeare from lid to lid more times
than I can say, and that I have long been close friends
with every one of his characters, all the way from Lear,
Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth at the top, down to his
immortal clowns at the bottom. Surely with this ex
perience it can be said of me, " The man has seen some
majesty." I have often tried, and that with the help of
1 The rare perfection of CatuUus's spontaneous poetic expression
is something like adequately represented in two quotations made by
Baehrens, one from Niebuhr, and the other from Macaulay, especially in
the former, CatuUi Veronensis, Liber II. 42,

Toombs 279
a few intimates almost as deeply read in Shakspeare as
myself, to find in the dainty plays an equal to Toombs
throwing away everywhere around him with infinite
prodigality gems of unpremeditated wisdom and phrase,
Samuel Barnett, Linton Stephens, Henry Andrews and
my cousin, his wife, Samuel Lumpkin, and S, H. Harde
man, all of whom knew him well, were among these.
The end of every effort would be our agreement that
Shakspeare himself could hardly have made an ade
quately faithful representation of Toombs.
The mental torture of the last three or four years of
his life I must touch upon again. The most active anti-
slavery partisan and most scarred soldier of the union
will compassionate if he but contemplate, I met him
only now and then. As I read his feehngs — one eye
quenched by cataract and the other failing fast ; his con
temporaries of the bar and pohtical arena dead; the
wife whom he loved better than he did himself sinking
under a disease gradually destroying her mind; ever
harrowed with the thought that his country was no
more, and that he was a foreigner and exile in the spot
which he had always called home, — though I was full
of increasing joy over the benefit of emancipation to my
people and gladness at the promise of reunited America,
my tranquillity would take flight whenever he came into
my mind. He was that spectacle of a good man in a
hopeless struggle against fate that moves enemies to
pity. To me his last state was more tragic and pathetic
than that of CEdipus.
Of course his powers were declining, I know that he
would never have drank too much if there had been no
sectional agitation, secession, war, nor reconstruction.
His appetite was never that insane thirst, as I have
heard him call it, which impels one into delirium tre
mens. He always disappointed his adversaries at the

28o The Brothers' War
bar calculating that drink would disable him at an im
portant part of the conduct. Others as weU as myself
can testify to this. Near the end he dehberately chose
to drain fuU cups of purpose to sweeten bitter memories.
With moderation he had more assurance of longevity
than any other of his generation; and he would, I
verily believe, have been green and flourishing in his
hundredth year. He lost his rare faculty of managing
money. It was a shock of surprise to me when the fire
in August, 1883, disclosed that he had let the insurance
of his interest in the Kimball house run out shortly be
fore. It was a pitiable sight to see him in his growing
blindness and wasting frame armed by his negro servant
along the streets of Atlanta in his last visits to the place.
During all this time he was dying by inches.
But the sun going down behind heavy clouds would
now and then send forth rays of the old glory. It was
in May, 1883, during the session ofthe superior court
of Wilkes, where I had some of my old business to
wind up, that I was last in his house. He had made
invitations to dinner without keeping account. At the
hour his sitting-room was densely packed. A few of us
were late. When we arrived many were compounding
their drinks. He hospitably suggested to us new-comers
that there was still some standing room around the
sideboard. In a little while the throng was treading the
weU-known way to the dining-hall, which we overflowed
so suddenly that his niece, whom Mrs. Toombs, then
keeping her room, had charged with seeing the table
laid, was astounded to find she could not seat aU of the
bidden guests. Just as her flurry was beginning to make
us uncomfortable our host entered. In spite of his in
firmity and purblindness he took in the situation with
his wonted quickness. He said in a tone of tender re
monstrance to his niece, " O, I do not object to hay-

Toombs 281
ing more friends than room; it is usually the other
way in this world." And with despatch and order he
had the surplus given seats at side tables. My eyes
moistened. I had an unhappy presentiment that this
was my last observation of the only man I ever knew
whose fine acts and words never waited when occasion
called. I was aroused by the whisper of a neighbor,
" Can any one else in the world do such a beautiful thing
on the spur ofthe moment?" The admiring Idoks that
followed inspired him, and his talk seemed to have more
than its old lustre and gleam.
In his final illness, when paralysis was slowly creeping
up his frame, and he had lost the sense of place and
time, he would now and then start from his stupor and
send across the State a bolt from the bow which no
other could bend. Somebody spoke of a late meeting
of " prohibition fanatics," " Do you know what is a fa
natic ?" he asked unexpectedly. "No," was replied. "He
is one of strong feehngs and weak points," Toombs ex
plained. And overhearing another say that an unusually
prolonged session of the State legislature had not yet
come to an end, he exclaimed with urgency, " Send for
Cromwell ! "
He died December 15, 1885, in his seventy-sixth year.
If I have told the truth in this chapter, — and God
knows I have tried my utmost to tell it, — ought not my
brothers and sisters of each section to lay aside their
angry prejudices and bestow at last upon the only and
peerless Toombs the love and admiration which are the
due reward of his virtues, his towering example, his
wonder-striking achievements, and his incomparable
genius? May that power which incessantly makes for
righteousness, and which always in the end has charity
to conquer hate, soon bring to us who really knew him
our dearest wish !

CHAPTER XII
HELP TO THE UNION CAUSE BY POWERS IN THE
UNSEEN
IF you are not balked by adherence, either to the
rapidly waning overpositiveness of materiahsm, or
to the ferocious orthodoxy which denies that there
has been any providential interference in human affairs
since that told of in the bible ; and if you are exempt
from the fear of being regarded as superstitious which
keeps a great number of even the most cultivated people
forever in a fever of incredulity as to every example of
what they call the supernatural, you have long since be
come convinced that evolution is intelligently guided by
some power or powers in the unseen, I seem to myself
to discern plainly in many important crises of history
the palpable influence of what are to me the directors
of evolution, Washington, to found our great federa
tion, and Lincoln to perpetuate it — these come at once
as examples. Now follow me while I try to show you
what the directors did in preparation for and in conduct
of the brothers' war, of purpose that the north should
triumph and save the union. Of course I am precluded
from all attempt to be exhaustive, I shall only glance
at a few of the facts that appear to me cardinal and most
important. In the first place, they deferred the war until under
the effect of foreign immigration the population of the
north greatly outnumbered that of the south and had
become almost unanimous against slavery ; and until the
south was almost entirely dependent upon her raUroads

Help to Union Cause by Powers Unseen 283
and her river and ocean commerce. Had secession oc
curred because of the excitement over the application
of Missouri for admission into the union with a slave
constitution, there might have been a war, but it would
have been short, the end being that every foot of the
pubhc domain admitting of profitable slave culture would
have faUen to the south. Suppose a serious effort had
been made in 1833 to collect the revenue in South Caro
hna, how long would the south have endured invasion of
the little State and slaughter of its citizens ? Even Presi
dent Jackson would have soon forgotten his enmity to
Calhoun and recognized that blood is thicker than water.
The time was not then ripe, as the directors saw ; and
so they effected an adjustment of the controversy. It
did not suit the directors to have the war commence in
1850, for there was at the time no general use of iron
clads, and the railroad system was far from completion.
Consider for a moment the advantage to the north of
having gunboats and the disadvantage to the south of
not having them. Fort Donelson really fell because
of gunboats. Grant got re-enforcements in time to save
him from dis,astrous defeat at Shiloh because of the
command of the river by gunboats. The gunboats
caused the fall of VIcksburg, And it was the holding
of the James from its mouth to Fort Darling by gun
boats which gave Grant such secure grip at Petersburg
that Richmond had to fall at last, and with it the con
federacy. Now a word as to the southern railroads. Next to
the navigable rivers they were the lines of easiest pene
tration to invaders. Remember how the British in 1898
advanced in Africa only as they completed their railroad
behind them. Of course had the railroad been already
made their advance would have been along it. How
could Sherman have ever crossed the devastated tract

284 ¦ The Brothers' War
from Dalton to Atianta had he been without the rail
road behind him ? During his retreat Johnston kept the
invading army between himself and the railroad without
which it could not have been subsisted, and staid so close
that Sherman had him constantly in view ; conduct which
is still lauded by some people in the south as masterly
beyond compare.
To conceive more vividly the river and railroad situ
ation which I am striving to explain, suppose that during
the Revolutionary war the States had been as dependent
as the south afterwards became upon rivers and railroads,
and the British had and the Americans did not have
iron-clad gunboats ; as matters now look, our forefathers
would have been beaten back to the foot of the throne,
I believe that the railroads alone would have rendered
their subjugation certain.
So much for the matchless judgment shown by the
directors in deciding as to the time of the war, I shall
now tell what I have long thought is most unmistakably
their work in conducting that war.
As soon as secession was an accomplished fact, they
deprived the better southern statesmanship of all guid
ance of the brothers' war now inevitable and about to
begin. In such a war a proper executive is of far more
importance than good legislators and even good gen
erals, Toombs was the man who stood forth head
and shoulders above all others as the logical president
of the southern confederacy. But the wily directors
hypnotized the electors into believing that Davis, be
cause of his mihtary education, service in Mexico, and
four years' secretaryship of war, was the right man. It
is generally believed in the south that the considerations
just mentioned turned the scale in favor of Davis, But
sometimes I think that the true explanation is different.
Stephens has told how Toombs was got out of the way.

Help to Union Cause by Powers Unseen 285
When this narrative ^ was published, bpth Toombs and
Davis, with many of the partisans of each were alive,
and regard for them may have kept him silent as to a
reported mischance to Toombs, which provoking op
position — as was whispered — from some of those who
had been among his most earnest supporters, decided
him to retire, A biographer writes : " There was a
story, credited in some quarters, that Mr, Toombs's
convivial conduct at a dinner party in Montgomery
estranged from him some of the more conservative
delegates, who did not realize that a man like Toombs
had versatile and reserved powers, and that Toombs at
the banquet board was another sort of a man from
Toombs in a deliberative body,"^
Something like that stated in the quotation just made
did happen, as Stephens was wont to relate at Liberty
Hall — the name which he gave his hospitable home at
Crawfordville, Georgia, I was present more than once
at such times.
Such could have been the work ofthe directors.
Georgia, being the pivotal State of the new federation,
was by many conceded the presidency. Besides Toombs
she had two other men, far abler statesmen than Davis
and then as conspicuous in the public eye — A. H.
Stephens and Howell Cobb. The election of either one
of these would really have been the same almost as the
election of Toombs, for the three were in complete ac
cord, and Toombs was the natural and actual leader. So
great was their fealty to him that neither one could have
been induced to stand for the place after he had missed
it. The directors saw to it that neither one of the three
should be president of the Confederate States.
Suppose that Toombs — or that either Stephens or
1 War Between the States, vol. ii. 329-333.
2 Pleasant A. Stovall, The Life of Robert Toombs, 218.

286 The Brothers' War
Cobb — had been made president, what a different con
duct there would have been of the war. Besides being
the foremost statesman of the south, Toombs was its
very ablest man of affairs, and as far superior to Davis
in practical and business talent as a trained and ex
perienced man is to an untrained and inexperienced
woman. Not intending to disparage the other great
qualifications of Toombs, I must emphasize it that of
all his contemporaries he alone evinced a clear under
standing of the principles according to which the con
federate currency could have been better managed than
were the greenbacks by the other side, A letter of
his during the war to Mr. James Gardner, of Augusta,
Georgia, published at the time in the paper of which
the latter was then editor, shows insight and grasp of
the subject equal to Ricardo's. Toombs as president
of the confederacy would have had congress enact
proper currency measures. When he was in place to
advise and lead, his influence exceeded by far that of
any other man that I ever knew.
But this, important as it is, is far from being the most
important. He and Stephens were fully convinced at
the very first of the overruling importance to the con
federacy of these two things: (i) to make full use of
cotton as a resource ; (2) tp prevent a blockade of the
southern ports. I make these extracts following from
a speech of Stephens's at Crawfordville, Georgia, No
vember I, 1862:
" What I said al Sparta, Georgia, upon the subject of cotton,
many of you have often heard me say in private conversation,
and most of you in the pubUc speech last year to which I have
alluded. Cotton, I have maintained, and do maintain, is one
of the greatest eleraents of power, if not the greatest at our
coraraand, if it were but properly and efficiently used, as it
might have been, and still might be. Samson's strength was in

Help to Union Cause by Powers Unseen 287
his locks. Our strength is in our locks of cotton. I believed
from the beginning that the eneray would inflict upon us more
serious injury by the blockade than by all other means cora
bined. It was ... a matter of the utraost . . . iraportance
to have it raised. How was it to be done ? . . , I thought it
. , , could be done through the agency of cotton, ... I was
in favor, as you know, of the government's taking all the
cotton that would be subscribed for eight per cent bonds at a
rate or price as high as ten cents a pound. Two millions of
the last year's crop might have been counted upon as certain
on this plan. This, at ten cents, with bags of the average
commercial weight, would have cost the government one hun
dred millions of bonds. With this amount of cotton in hand
and pledged, any number, short of fifty, of the best ironclad
steamers could have been contracted for and built in Europe —
steamers at the cost of two millions each, could have been
procured, equal in every way to the ' Monitor.' Thirty millions
would have got fifteen of these, which might have been enough
for our purpose. Five raight have been ready by the first of
January last to open some one of the ports blockaded on our
coast Three of these could have been left to keep the port
open, and two could have conveyed the cotton across the
water if necessary. Thus, the debt could have been promptly
paid with cotton at a much higher price than it cost, and a
channel of trade kept open till other ironclads, and as many
as were necessary, might have been built and paid for in the
sarae way. At a cost of less than one raonth's present expen
diture on our army, our coast might have been cleared. Be
sides this, at least two more millions of bales of the old crop on
hand might have been counted upon — this with the other raak
ing a debt in round numbers to the planters of ^200,000,000.
But this cotton, held in Europe until its price became fifty cents
a pound, would constitute a fund of at least ;?i, 000,000,000
which would not only have kept our finances in sound condi
tion, but the clear profit of $800,000,000 would have met the
entire expenses of the war for years to come," '
1 The War between the States, vol. ii. 781 (Appendix).

288 The Brothers' War
The reader who carefully reflects over the passage
just quoted may well think that the extravagant profit
pictured savors more of Mulberry Sellers than of a
cool-headed statesman ; but if the war price of cotton
be recalled he readily agrees that under the plan pro
posed the south could easily have got a fleet of the best
ironclads. Such a fleet would have kept the southern
ports open. The advantage of which would have been
very great. It would have held the Mississippi from
the first, or have recovered it after the capture of New
Orleans. It would have cleared the gunboats out of
all the navigable rivers in the south. And we must not
forget how it might have ravaged the northern coast,
perhaps capturing New York, and forcing an early
peace, I must make you see the greatness of cotton as a re
source. There has been from soon after the invention
of the gin a steadily increasing world demand for it, and
the south has practically monopolized its production.
I can think of no other product of the soil except wine
and liquor that is as imperishable. But wine and liquor
spill, leak, and evaporate, while cotton does neither. If
you but safe it against fire it wiU not deteriorate by age.
In 1884 1 was told of a sale just made of some cotton for
which the owner had refused the famine price in 1865.
It brought the market price of the day, and experts
said it sampled as well as new cotton. It was at least
19 years old. Wine and hquor cannot be compressed,
but the same weight of raw cotton becomes less and less
bulky every year. By reason of the foregoing, cotton is
always the equivalent of cash in hand. Now add the
effect of the steadily growing war scarcity, and remem
ber how easy it was during the first two years of the war
to carry out cotton in spite of the blockade. The Eu
ropean purchasing agent of the Confederate States gov-

Help to Union Cause by Powers Unseen 289
ernment says " it possessed a latent purchasing power
such as probably no other, , . in history ever had."^
He means cotton. There were several million bales of it
in the confederacy, all of which could be had for the tak
ing — much of it for merely the asking. And there were
a legion of carriers eager to run the blockade. I cannot
understand how Professor Brown could have ever writ
ten, "The government had not the means either to buy
the cotton or to transport it." ^ Surely the government
could have seized the cotton as easily as it did all the
men of military age, and collected the tithes in kind.
If Toombs had been president of the southern con
federacy, the very best possible use of its cotton as a
resource would have been made. At the time, if but
managed with the financial skill which he always showed,
that cotton would have been a great war chest in a
secure place, always full and appreciating. It is very
probable that almost at the beginning of the war the
confederacy would have struck terror into its adversa
ries with some warships far superior to any with which
the United States could have then supplied itself. In
this case there never would have been any Monitor.
And the south would have had all the benefits of wise
husbandry and conduct.
1 The supplies for the Confederate Army, How they were obtained in
Europe and How paid for. — Personal Reminiscences and Unpublished
History. By Caleb Huse, Major and Purchasing Agent, C.S. A. Boston,
Press of T. R. Marvin & Son, 1904.
I commend this narrative to Professor Brown. Should he study it
he will have cause to retract what he has written (The Lower South
in American History, 164) in disparagement of this resource. Had
Toombs, or Stephens, or Cobb been president and represented by such
an extraordinarily able agent, the Confederate States would have got
ironclads, broken the blockade, kept out invaders, and had a money that
would have held its own much better than the greenbacks unsustained by
cotton or anything like it. From what I know of these men I am sure
the right agent would have been found.
2 Book cited, 164, 165. 19

290 The Brothers' War
During his short premiership of the confederacy
Toombs showed marked ability. Note his extraordi
nary insight when instructing the commissioners, that
" So long as the United States neither declares war nor
establishes peace, the Confederate States have the ad
vantage of both conditions ; " and consider how accu
rately he foresaw that the north would be rallied as one
man to the stars and stripes by attack upon Fort
Sumter, and how earnestly he opposed the proposed
attack,^ Stephens was thoroughly against the policy of many
pitched battles. He counselled from the very first
that we should draw the invaders within our terri
tory, where, having them far from their base and taking
advantage of our shorter interior lines, we could when
the right moment came, by attacking with superior
numbers, virtually destroy their entire army. The
more I think over it, the more clearly I see that this
was the true way for us to have fought. Stephens's in
fluence would have been so great with Toombs or Cobb
as president that he would have shaped the conduct of
the war.
There would have been no keeping of inefficient men
in high command ; and no efficient one would have been
kept out, Mr. Lincoln would have had an executive
rival worthy of his steel. As the former searched dili
gently and with rare judgment for his commander-in-
chief and at last found him in Grant, so Toombs would
in all probability have found the proper southern gen
eral in the west. It would have been Forrest, The
marveUous military genius of this Uliterate man, who at
the beginning of the war could not have put a recruit
through the manual of arms, showed him far superior
to his superiors who sacrificed the southern army at Fort
1 Stovall, Life of Robert Toombs, 226,

Help to Union Cause by Powers Unseen 291
Donelson. The lieutenant-colonel would not surrender,
and his escape with his entire command proved that he
could have executed the offer he had made to the
commander to pilot the whole army out. From this
moment Forrest moves on and upward with the stride
of a demigod. The night after Johnston has faUen at
Shiloh he alone in the southern army discovers that
Grant is receiving by the river thousands as re-enforce
ment, and he gives Beauregard wise counsel which the
latter is not wise enough to heed. Read his letter of
August 9, 1863, to Cooper, adjutant-general ofthe Con
federate States,^ in which he proposes to do what will
virtually wrest the Mississippi from the federals, and the
sane comment thereon of his biographer.^ Think of
him just after the battle of Chickamauga; how,had Bragg
listened to him, he would have reaped the fruits of a
great victory which he was too stupid to know he had
won. Meditate the capture of Fort Pillow, in spite of
its strong defences and the succoring gunboat, by dispo
sitions of his troops and a plan of attack which, though
made and executed on the spur of the moment, are the
most superb and brilliant tactics of all the engagements
of the brothers' war. And his incomparable conduct by
which the army of Sturgis was almost annihilated at
Brice's Cross-Roads, The conception of Forrest is as
yet, even in the south, very untrue. He is thought of
only as always meeting charge with countercharge, in the
very front crying " Mix ! " sabring an antagonist, and
having his horse killed under him. When he is rightly
studied he is found to be a happy compound of the
characterizing elements of such fighters as mad Anthony
Wayne and Paul Jones, of such swoopers and sure re-
tirers as Marion and Stonewall Jackson, of such as Han-
1 Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 268, 269,
2 Id. 271.

292 The Brothers' War
nibal, whose action both before, during, and after the
engagement, is the very best possible. Of all the' north
ern generals Grant showed by far the best grasp of the
military problem, I think Forrest's grasp was equal.
Toombs would have divined the genius of Forrest.
The confederate army under him would probably have
equalled — possibly surpassed — the achievements and
glory of that under Lee.
It was one of Toombs's epigrams that the southern
confederacy died of too much West Point. Of course
one must not unjustly disparage the mihtary school.
Yet there were plainly graduates on both sides who had
in them too much of it. This was true of Halleck and
McClellan ; also of Davis and Bragg, Mr, Davis, by rea
son of his exaggerated West Point spirit, was not nearly
so well qualified as Mr. Lincoln for finding the few
real generals in the south. Toombs, with the help of
Stephens and all the real statesmen of the section, would
have kept the best generals in command.
Let us briefly summarize. Had Toombs been presi
dent these things would have followed :
I, The cotton of the south, fully realized as a resource,
would have given her an adequate gold supply, a stable
currency, and an unimpaired public credit. It would
have also kept our ports open and the hostile gunboats
out of our rivers.
2, There would have been no unwise waste of our
precious soldiers. As it was, their very gallantry in
our contest with a foe so greatly outnumbering, was
made a guaranty of defeat.
3, These magnificent soldiers would have been led
always by the best commanders.
These were resources enough, and more than enough,
to have won for the south. I often paralleled her neglect
to use them with the supineness of the French Commune

Help to Union Cause by Powers Unseen 293
in 1 87 1. Lassigaray tells us how there were piles of
money "and money's worth in the bank deposits and
reserves, which could have all been had by mere taking,-'
But the Commune made no use of this great treasure.
It surprises one as he reads of it. Then it occurs to
him that the new French government was in the hands
of men who generally had had no experience in govern
ment whatever. It was widely different with the south
ern confederacy. No other revolutionary government
ever started with so little jolt and difficulty. The grooves
along which it was to run were all ready, " Confederate
States " was instantaneously substituted for " United
States " in the constitution, organic federal statutes, and
the thoughts of the people, and the administration of
the new government seemed to everybody in the south
but a continuation of that of the United States, And
this new federation was inaugurated by the best-trained
statesmen in America, That these men should have
overlooked the great resources we have pointed out is a
far more strange and wonderful blunder than was that
of the raw and inexperienced managers of the Commune,
You can explain it only by recognizing it as the accom
phshment of fate. Fate put in charge of the fortunes of
the confederacy an executive as just as ever was Aris-
tides, and as much respected and confided in by his
people. That executive most conscientiously drove out
of the public counsels the only men who could have
saved the southern cause.
To the foregoing I shall add but a few other instances
briefly told.
Grant was at the opening of his career put in a place
which taught him the importance of gunboats, and held
there until his skill in using them had given him resist
less prestige, Beauregard's failure to make use of the
I See his 14th chapter.

294 The Brothers' War
daylight remaining after the fall of Albert S, Johnston
seems to have been prompted by the powers who had
the future conqueror in charge. Had he been sent
against Lee in 1862 or 1863 he would hardly have done
better than McCleUan, Burnside, or Hooker, Compare
how the powers in charge of the Roman empire pre
vented a too early encounter of Scipio with Hannibal.
Ordinary conduct ought to have captured McClellan
instead of driving him to the James, The tone of Mc
Clellan's boasting over the flank movement by which he
successfully marched across the entire front of Lee's
army within cannon shot is really that of a man who
feels that he has miraculously escaped an unshunnable
peril. The directors sent Stuart astray and hypnotized Lee
into believing that Gettysburg was to be another Chan
cellorsville, They blinded Davis to the merits of Forrest, Espe
cially to be thought of here is the rejected proposal of
the latter to recover the Mississippi shortly after the fall
of Vicksburg.
I need not go further. The student of the brothers'
war can add to the foregoing many other favors shown
the union cause by the powers in the unseen.
Of course we of the south stood by our side, fighting
to the last against increasing odds with the resoluteness
of hereditary freemen. In spite of all their potency the
powers were often hard pressed by Lee, Jackson, For
rest, and the incomparable valor of the confederate sol
diers. These should have some such eternizing epitaph
as this :
" For four years they kept the fates banded against
them uneasy."
The parallelism of the fall of the confederacy to that
of Troy has incalculably deepened the interest I take in

Help to Union Cause by Powers Unseen 295
Vergil's great description. Especially of late years do
I realize more vividly how his goddess mother removed
the cloud darkening his vision, and gave yEneas to see
Neptune, Juno, and Pallas busy in the destruction of the
burning city ; and a lurid illumination falls upon the
statement, " Apparent dirae f acies inimicaque Troiae
Numina magna deum," i
1 " I see a vision of awful shapes — mighty presences ot gods arrayed
against Troy." Mneid, II, 622-23, Transl. by John Conington, Writ
ings, II., Longmans, Green & Co. (1872).

CHAPTER XIII
JEFFERSON DAVIS
FOR some time after the brothers' war it was very
generally believed that Davis had been one of
the Mississippi repudiators; that through aU
his ante-bellum public career he had been an uncon
ditional secessionist — what we in the south mean by a
fire-eater ; that cherishing an accursed ambition for the
presidency of the southern confederacy he organized a
secret conspiracy which consummated secession; that
as the chief executive of the Confederate States he
aided and abetted the perpetration of inhuman cruelties
upon federal prisoners of war ; that he was accessory to
the murder of President Lincoln ; and that when cap
tured he was disguised as a woman, I suppose that
these accusations — all of which are utterly untrue —
are still in the mouths of many at the north. They have
attained some currency abroad, I note that the leading
German encyclopedia — that of Brockhaus — repeats
those as to the conspiracy and disguise. But "The
Real Jefferson Davis," as Landon Knight has of late
presented him,^ — without hostile bias and with some
thing like an approach to completeness — is at least
beginning to be recognized outside of the south. It is
about as certain as anything in the future can be that
all detraction from the moral character and patriotism
of Davis will after some while wear itself out, I believe
1 In six consecutive numbers of the Pilgrim, beginning with that of
October, 1903. This is a monthly, edited by Willis J. Abbot, and pub
lished by the Pilgrim Magazine Co., Ltd., Battle Creek, Mich.

Jefferson Davis 297
far greater favor than mere vindication from false accu
sation will at last be awarded him in every part of his
own country and also abroad. Later in the chapter I
shall try to bring out fully the praise and appreciation
which world history will, as seems probable to me,
shower upon his career. Here I can take time to men
tion only the beginning of that great fame which we of
this day have looked upon. We saw him fall from
one of the highest and proudest places in which
for four years he had been the talk and envy of the
earth. We saw him in sheer helplessness, accused of
murder and treason, his feeble health and personal com
fort made a jest of, disrespect and insult heaped upon
him — we saw him endure all the most refined tortures
of imprisonment. Then we saw him set free — his inno
cence confessed by the acts of his accusers. Then for
over twenty years he lived with the people who under
his lead had been conquered and despoiled; and we
saw them always eager to pay him demonstrations of the
warmest love; we saw them bury him with inconsolable
grief; and we see them keeping his memory green by
reinterring him in the old capital of the Confederate
States, giving him there a conspicuous monument, and
making the anniversary of his birth a legal holiday in
different States, This — which we impressively mark
now as only a beginning of glory — must develop into
something far larger.
Whenever Davis comes into your mind, of course,
you first think of that with which his name is most
closely connected — his elevation and his great fall.
Therefore it is quite right that we make our start from
this point, which is, that he was the head of a subverted
revolutionary government. He is one of a few who,
like Richard Cromwell, Napoleon, and Kruger, were
suffered to survive deposition. Nothing in nature hates

298 The Brothers' War
a rival more than sovereignty — which, be it remem
bered, is the representative of a distinct nationality.
Note how inevitably a young queen bee is kiUed by her
own mother- when found in the hive by the latter.
Humanity has not in this particular evolved as yet very
far above bee nature; and the fate of Maximihan,
emperor of Mexico, usually befalls the sovereign head of
a defeated revolution. To the student of history it is a
surprise that the hfe of Davis was spared when Ameri
can frenzy was at its height Think of some of the
things which then occurred. Mrs. Surratt and Wirz
were hanged; the cruel cotton tax; the negroes were
made rulers of the southern whites ; it was provided ex
post facto that the high moral duty of paying for the
emancipated slaves should never be done. While good
men and women both of the north and the south will
always censure with extreme severity the treatment
which Davis as a prisoner received, they ought to note
it as a most significant sign of American progress that
he was at last allowed to go forth and live without
molestation the rest of his life among his old followers.
Before we begin the sketch which we contemplate let
us bring out more vividly the novelty of his example
by contrasting him with the faihng leaders of revo
lutions mentioned above, Richard Cromwell could be
tolerated as a private man by the restored royal gov
ernment, because his protectorate had been, so far as
he himself is considered, a mere accident. It was the
mighty Oliver, his father, that overthrew and beheaded
Charles I, and then took the reins of rule. These,
when he died, came to his son, who in abihty and am
bition was a cipher. They who set him aside would
have been ashamed to confess the slightest fear of him.
His captors exiled Napoleon, and Kruger exiled him
self, Richard Cromwell, having been cast out of the

Jefferson Davis 299
protectorate, living forgotten in England, is no parallel
to Davis spending his last years in Mississippi honored
by the entire south with mounting demonstration to
his death. Had Napoleon lived in France and Kruger
in the Transvaal, each after his overthrow, they would
be parallels. As it is, the subsequent hfe of Davis is
without any parallel.
Having thus shown you what it is that Davis espe
cially examples, let us now give you briefly such a
biography as suits the purpose of this book.
The fairies bestowed upon him treasures of mind and
heart, of form, mien, and face, of speech and manners.
He was not of the very first rank, as Webster, Toombs,
and Lee, who suggest comparison with the Pheidian
Zeus, nor was he in the next with Poseidon and Ares.
When President Pierce and the members of his cabinet
were passing by Princeton, a throng of citizens and stu
dents called them out during the stop of the train at the
Basin. As we went away it seemed to me that no
speech but that of Davis was remembered. Compli
ments were rained upon him. At last a student from
New York State cried, " He 's an Apollo ! " and all the
hearers assented with enthusiasm. This placed him
right, — at the head of the Olympians in the third
circle. Though he became a very prominent pohtical leader,
the choice of a profession made by him was that of a
soldier. And that profession was always his first love.
His early education, though very deficient and limited,
was far superior to that with which Calhoun had to be
content until he was eighteen. But Davis had when a
boy something which supplies educational defects — a
taste for study and a fondness of and access to books.
When at the age of thirty-five he made his d^but in
politics he had become really a well-schooled and

300 The Brothers' War
highly cultured man. He completed his West Point
course, graduating in July, 1828, His wife says: "He
did not pass very high in his class ; but he attached no
significance to class standing, and considered the favorable
verdict of his classmates of much more importance,"
He served in the army until June 30, 1835, when he
resigned, I wiU cuU from the entertaining narrative of
Mrs, Davis certain occurrences of his army life which
are characteristic.
Reaching a ferry on Rock river in Ilhnois, in 183 1,
with his scouts, he found the boat stopped by ice, and
the mail coach with certain wagons going to the lead
mines waiting on the bank. All the crowd put them
selves at his direction. He had the men to cut blocks
from the ice for a bridge. Water was poured upon each
block as soon as it was laid, and this freezing, the block
was kept firmly in its place. Whenever a cutter would
fall overboard, he was sent to turn himself round and
round before the fire until he was dry and ready to
resume work. The bridge was soon finished, and the
entire party crossed the river. This incident shows that
there was something in Davis's appearance that invited
full trust, and that he was unwontedly quick and in
genious in expedient.
How he disabled a disobedient soldier of ferocious
temper and great size by an unexpected blow, and then
beat him into complete submission ; and how he cap
tivated the other soldiers by announcing that he would
not notice the affair officially, illustrates his talent for
command. Men desperate and well armed had taken possession
of the lead mines, and they were to be removed. He
tried to induce their consent by making them a speech.
Some weeks later he sought another conference. Find-
1 Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. 59.

Jefferson Davis 301
ing a number of them in a drinking booth, he was
begged by his orderly not to go in. " They will be
certain to kill you," the orderly said ; " I heard one of
them say they would."
" Lieutenant Davis entered the cabin at once, and,
as they expressed it, ' gave them the time of day ' [that
is, he said " Good-morning " or what the hour demanded].
He immediately added, after saluting them, ' My friends,
I am sure you have thought over my proposition and
are going to drink to my success. So I shall treat you
all,' They gave him a cheer," *
How much more heroic is such Caesar-hke courage
and tact in quelling the mob than to butcher misguided
men with musketry,
I have reserved for emphasis here, as iUustrating
Davis's presence of mind and readiness in emergency,
two incidents which are earlier in time than what I have
just been teUing, The first is this. One of the profes
sors disliked and was inclined to disparage Davis while
he was a cadet at West Point, Lecturing on presence
of mind, this professor fixed his eye on Davis " and said
he doubted not there were many who, in an emergency,
would be confused and unstrung, not from cowardice,
but from the mediocre nature of their minds. The in
sult was intended, and the recipient of it was powerless
to resent it. A few days afterwards, while the building
was full of cadets, the class were being taught the process
of making fireballs, when one took fire. The room was
a magazine of explosives. Cadet Davis saw it first, and
calmly asked of the doughty instructor, ' What shall I
do, sir? This fireball is ignited.' The professor said,
' Run for your lives ! ' and ran for his. Cadet Davis
threw it out of the window, and saved the building
and a large number of lives thereby."^
1 Memoir, vol. i. 86. " Id. 52, 53.

302 The Brothers' War
In the affair last told, Davis showed a freedom from
confusion and an alertness that is very rare. But the
second thing which I have to tell is stiU more re
markable. While stationed at Fort Crawford in 1829, he had set
out in a boat with some men to cut timber, accompanied
by two voyageurs.
" At one point they were hailed by a party of Indians who
deraanded a trade of tobacco. As the Indians appeared to
have no hostile intentions, the litfle party rowed to the bank
and began to parley. However, the voyageurs , . , soon saw
that their peaceful tones were only a cloak. They warned
Lieutenant Davis of the danger, and he ordered his raen to
push out into the stream and make the best tirae they could
up the river. With yells of fury the Indians leaped into their
canoes and gave chase. There was little, if any, chance for the
white raen to escape such experienced rowers, . , . If taken
, . , death by torture was inevitable. They would have been
captured had not Lieutenant Davis thought of rigging up a sail
with one of their blankets. Fortunately the wind was in their
favor, but it was very boisterous. As it was a choice between
certain death by the hands of the Indians, or possible death by
drowning, they availed themselves of the slender chance left
and escaped."^
These things which we have selected to tell of him
prove that he had in large measure some of the endow
ments vvhich are indispensable to the excellent soldier.
They will be recalled by you when we tell his feats in
Mexico, I must say here that I do not mean to claim
first-rate ability for him ; but I do believe that he was
equal or almost equal to the best in that great depart
ment of the military requiring the powers of the gifted
officer and not those of the few born generals of the
world. 1 Memoir, Id. vol. i. 59, 60.

Jefferson Davis 303
It is a mo!5t amiable touch that he left the army to
marry a woman the choice of his heart, and give her a
happy home. He cordially sacrificed for her an occu
pation which he loved only less than herself. He had had
as brilliant a career as could be won by a lieutenant in
garrison duty and service against the Indians, It must
be remembered he had been promoted to first lieutenant
for gallantry.
It is proper to mention here one other fact of his
army life. He had resolved that if the regiment to
which he belonged should be sent to help execute the
force bill in South Carolina, he would resign. Though
he never was a nuUifier, his conscience could not per
mit him to abet in any way the coercion of a sovereign
State, as he always believed each one of the United
States to be.
His wife lived only a few months. Her death was a
fell blow. Her husband mourned her for nearly ten
years. Then he made a most happy marriage with the
lady who survives him.
In 1836 — the next year after the death of his first
wife — he settled on a plantation. Mr, Knight is espe
cially happy in teUing how, with his elder brother
Joseph, who had been a successful ' lawyer, but was
now a rich planter, as instructor and guide, he studied
diligently for some while. To quote:
" During the period of their residence together, the time not
required by business the brothers devoted to reading and dis
cussion. Political economy and law, the science of government
in general and that of the United States in particular, were the
favorite themes. Locke and Justinian, Mill, Adara Smith, and
Vattel divided honors with the Federalist, the Resolutions of
ninety-eight, and the Debates of the Constitutional Convention.
It was said they knew every word of the last three by memory ;
and it is certain that year after year, almost without interruption.

304 The Brothers' War
they sat far into the night debating almost every conceivable
question that could arise under the constitution of the United
States." Jefferson Davis, as his congressional speeches and his
book show, became deeply versed in the subjects of the
joint study just described, I must note, however, that
the discussion which engaged him for such a consider
able period of his ante-public life was had only with one
who was of the same State-rights creed as he himself
was, and that it was all in the closet, as it were. You
can only begin the making of a great lawyer by feigned
cases and moot courts. Likewise the true political leader
must early be plunged into real contentions over ques
tions of actual interest, and thus almost from the very
first mix practice with theory. Compare Webster and
Toombs, each at his outset combating with the ablest
lawyers of his State as adversaries, and also publicly
discussing varied questions of policy, I suspect that this
prolonged closet training, with its abundance of academic
debate, had much to do in developing Davis into that
supra-logical consistency, stiffness, and unmodifiability
of opinion which is one of his special differences as a
practical statesman from the two great men last men
tioned. This, and the mental habitude given by his
military education and experience, mark him as sui
generis among our political leaders. His public career
shows more of the doctrinaire and precisian than can be
found in any other one of these.
In the long post-graduate course which he took in
private under his brother, he was preparing for pubhc
life without being aware of it, as it seems to me.
He had now but one acquisition to make — to think
on his legs and tell his thoughts at the same time. Ex
tempore speakers are generally made. But Davis was a
born one. He did not have that experience at the bar

Jefferson Davis 305
and in the State legislature which has been the begin
ning of so many famous American orators. The demo
crats of his county nominated him for the legislature in
1843, and his first experience in public speaking was in
a stump-debate immediately afterwards with the redoubt
able S. S. Prentiss, Davis then being thirty-five years
old. The debate consumed most of the day. The dis
putants had each fifteen minutes at a time. The result
of the campaign was in favor of Prentiss, As Davis, a
democrat, was merely leading a forlorn hope in a county
overwhelmingly whig, that was to be expected. But the
pluck, readiness, and power which he exhibited in this,
his maiden effort, pitted as he was against the ablest
speaker of the State, astounded the auditors, and it
seemed even to the whigs that the raw debater while
nominally losing had really triumphed.
The next experience he had is thus narrated by Mr.
Knight : " Mr, Davis took a conspicuous part in the
presidential campaign of 1844, and was chosen as pne
of the Polk electors. Before this campaign he was but
slightly known beyond his own county, but at its conclu
sion his popularity had become so great that there was a
general demand in the ranks of his party that he should
become a candidate for congress in the following year,"
He had to receive just one more lesson as a speaker.
In 1845 Calhoun was coming to Natchez, Davis was
selected to welcome him with a speech. He made care
ful preparation, which his wife, whom he had lately
married, took down at his dictation. But when Calhoun
had come, after a moment or two of slowness in the
exordium, Davis gave up trying to recite from memory,
and delivered with grace and effect an unpremeditated
speech of taking appropriateness,^
^ Mrs. Davis tells all the details most delightfully ; Memoir, vol. i,
307-212. 20

3o6

The Brothers' War

What Mrs. Davis says of him as a speaker is so just
and in such good taste, that I quote it :
" From that day forth no speech was ever written for delivery.
Dates and names were jotted down on two or three inches of
paper, and these sufficed. Mr. Davis's speeches never read as
they were delivered ; he spoke fast, and thoughts crowded each
other closely ; a certain magnetism of manner and the exceed
ing beauty and charm of his voice moved the multitude, and
there were apparenfly no inattentive or indifferent hsteners.
He had one power that I have never seen excelled ; while
speaking he took in the individuality of the crowd, and see
ing doubt or a lack of coincidence with him in their faces,
he answered . . , with arguments addressed to the case in
their minds. He was never tiresome, because, as he said, he
gave close attention to the necessity of stopping when he was
done. Only so much of his eloquence has survived as was indiffer
ently reported. The spirit of the graceful periods was lost. He
was a parenthetical speaker, which was a defect in a written
oration, but it did not, when uttered, impair the quahty of
his speeches, but rather added a charm when accentuated by
his voice and commended by his gracious manner. At first his
style was ornate, and poetry and fiction were pressed from his
crowded memory into service ; but it was soon changed into a
plain and stronger cast of what he considered to be, and doubt
less was, the higher kind of oratory. His extempore addresses
are models of grace and ready command of language." ^
^ Memoir, vol. i. 214, 215. Compare what Stephens says of the
speech made by President Davis at the African church in Richmond in
February, 1865, just after the return of our Commissioners who had
sought in vain for terms of peace which the south could consider. We
give the part of the passage pertinent here.
" The newspaper sketches of that speech were meagre, as well as in
accurate . . . and . , . came far short of so presenting its substance even,
as to give those who did not hear it anything like an adequate concep
tion of its full force and power. It was not only bold, undaunted, and
confident in tone, but had that loftiness of sentiment and rare form of
expression, as well as magnetic influence in its delivery, by which the

Jefferson Davis 307
He took his seat in the United States house of repre
sentatives in December, 1845, he and Toombs, who was
two years younger, beginning their congressional careers
together. Davis made a very creditable speech on the
Oregon question early in February, 1846, He was a
modest member, but he did all the duties of his place
with, praiseworthy dihgence.
Although he was a thoroughgoing anti-tariff democrat
and Webster a pro-tariff whig leader, he could not be
induced to join in the effort to make pohtical capital for
his own party by blackening the name of Webster, The
minority report of the committee which investigated the
conduct of Webster, as secretary of state, was really
made by Davis, who was one of the committee. The
stand taken by the latter, and the true presentation
which he made, at last got the whole committee to adopt
his report substantially. Webster was greatly pleased
with it.
Early in May, 1846, Taylor had won his first victories.
On the 29th Davis, supporting joint resolutions of thanks
to the general and his army, made reply to what he
deemed were unwarranted reflections upon West Point,
He emphasized Taylor's operations as proving the high
value of mihtary education. He asked Sawyer of Ohio,
who had disparaged the Academy, if the latter believed
that a blacksmith or tailor could have done such good
work. Thus, without knowing it, he trod upon the toes
of two members of the house ; for Sawyer had been a
blacksmith, and Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, a tailor,
passions of the people are moved to their profoundest depths, and roused
to the highest pitch of excitement. Many who had heard this Master of
Oratory in his most brilliant displays in the senate and on the hustings,
said they never before saw him so really majestic. The occasion, and
the effects of the speech, as well as all the circumstances under which
it was made, caused the minds of not a few to revert to like appeals by
Rienzj and Demosthenes." War between the States, vol. ii. 623, 824. j

3o8 The Brothers' War
Sawyer took it good-humoredly, but Johnson, the next
day, passionately defended tailors, and used language
very offensive to Davis, implying that the latter belonged
to " an iUegitimate, swaggering, bastard, scrub aristoc
racy." To this the latter, justly indignant, rejoined with
cutting severity. There was never any love lost between
the two afterwards. When President Lincoln was
murdered Johnson, succeeding him, committed the
unspeakable folly of offering by proclamation $100,000
reward for the arrest of Davis as accessory. When
Davis, having been captured, was told of the proclama
tion he said to General Wilson — hoping his words
would be reported to Johnson — that there was one man
in the United States who knew the charge was false;
this was the man who had signed the proclamation;
" for," said Davis, " he at least knew that I preferred
Lincoln to himself"
Of course had Davis possessed the chief qualifications
of popular leadership he would have made a fast friend
instead of a bitter enemy of this man, whose rise from
low estate to greatness proves that he had in him ele
ments of manhood and virtue that ought to have homage
from the highest and proudest.
It was by his course in the Mexican war that Davis
commenced life in the eye of the nation. Without can
vassing for the place — he never did canvass for a place
— he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi vol
unteers, and " he eagerly and gladly accepted." The
president, authorized by a new law, offered to make him
a brigadier general, Mrs, Davis says ¦ " My husband
expressed his preference for an elective office; when
pressed, he said that he thought volunteer troops raised
in a State should be officered by men of their own se
lection, and that after the elective right of the volunteers
ceased, the appointing power should be the governor

Jefferson Davis 309
of the State whose troops were to be commanded by
the general. This was his first sacrifice to State rights,
and it was a great effort to him." ^
General Scott doubted if the percussion lock was as
well suited to field use as the flint lock, but Davis knew
better. He had his men furnished with the percussion-
lock rifle, a very superior arm to the old smooth-bore.
He drilled his regiment well. And he kept its members
from pillaging.
As the storming of Monterey opened, the head of the
column recoiled in confusion from a deadly cross-fire,
" producing the utmost confusion among the front of the
assaulting brigade. The strong fort, Taneira, which had
contributed most to the repulse, now ran up a new flag,
and amid the wild cheering of its defenders redoubled
its fire of grape and canister and musketry, under which
the American lines wavered and were about to break.
Colonel Davis, seeing the crisis, without waiting for
orders, placed himself at the head of his Mississippians,
and gave the order to charge. With prolonged cheers
his regiment swept forward through a storm of bullets
and bursting shells. Colonel Davis, sword in hand,
cleared the ditch at one bound, and cheering his soldiers
on, they mounted the works with the impetuosity of a
whirlwind, capturing artiUery and driving the Mexicans
pell-mell back into the stone fort in the rear. In vain
they sought to barricade the gate ; Davis and McClung
[the lieutenant-colonel] burst it open, and leading their
men into the fort, compelled its surrender at discretion.
Taneira was the key of the situation, and its capture in
sured victory. On the morning of the 23 d of Septem
ber, the following day, Henderson's Texas Rangers,
Campbell's Tennesseeans, and Davis's Mississippians,
the latter again leading the assault, stormed and cap-
l Memoir, vol. i. 146, 147.

3IO The Brothers' War
tured El Diabolo, and the next day General Ampudia
surrendered the city." ^
Davis's quickness, coolness, and dash — and especially
his promptness to take such wise initiative as is permis
sible to a colonel in action — shone forth conspicuously
in this affair.
He was the very soul of the glorious stand of the
Americans at Buena Vista against odds of more than
4 to I. At the opening ofthe battle a ball drove a part
of his spur into the right foot just below the instep,
making a very painful wound. He kept his seat as
though nothing had happened. Later in the day, his
bleeding foot thrown over the pommel, he spurred his
horse into leaping a ravine, in which he saw a horse
and cart beneath him as he flew over. But his great
exploit was the re-eintering hne of his regiment and
Bowles's Indianians, with which he received the charge
of a host of heavy cavalry. His rifles being without
bayonets, the hollow square, then the approved mode
of defence, was not to be thought of. So necessity, the
mother of invention, suggested to him a formation which
poured something hke two crossing enfilades into the
head of the cavalry column. The briUiant conception
was brilliantly executed. The carnage that befel the
cavalry drove it from the field. Did not the spirit of
Napoleon looking on regret that he had not given the
pesky Mamelukes like punishment? The world has
noted how Sir Colin Campbell learned from Davis the
right way of opposing infantry to the onset of heavy
cavalry. The great distinction won most deservedly by Davis,
as the colonel of a raw regiment in these important en
gagements, is, so far as I know, without any parallel. It
was but natural that he should always afterwards beheve
1 Landon Knight, " The Real Jefferson Davis," already cited.

Jefferson Davis 3 il
himself to be a great military genius. Of course he had
become famous throughout the whole country.
There was a vacancy in one of the United States sen-
atorships from Mississippi, and' Davis was appointed to
fill it. I need not go into much detail at this point. He
was warmly greeted at his entrance into the upper house.
He maintained himself with growing ability. While he
was independent and self-reliant enough now and then
to differ with Calhoun, in the main he followed the latter
as his leader. There was a dignity and poise in his
nature that suited the senate better than the house of
representatives. And he was doubtless frank when he
asserted later that he preferred the senate to any other
place. As I contemplate his record at this part of his
life he impresses me as that one of all the more promi
nent southern public men who was most fixed in the
opinion that the very surest preservative of the union
was for the south to be always unflinching and utterly
uncompromising in demanding exact enforcement of
every constitutional protection of slavery. He loved
the union most fondly. It was only the south that he
loved more. Conscientious doctrinaire as he was, he
believed that the rights of the south were so plain and
palpable that if they were but stated they would be con
ceded by the great mass of the northern people. He
thought it was to encourage disunion to surrender even
a jot of our claim to equality in the Territories and that
the fugitive slave law should be fully enforced. His
anticipation was that the more we yielded to the anti-
slavery men the more we would be asked to yield, until
at last we would be driven into the ditch, when we could
save the south only by secession. So he counselled with
all his might that the south should resolve to surrender
nothing whatever — to go out of the union rather than
so to do. Let the north understand this and the aboli-

312 The Brothers' War
tion party wiU disappear. That is the only way to save
the union. This explains why he refused to support the
compromise measures of 1850. He was beaten for
governor of Mississippi on that issue. He was classed
with the fire-eaters. But that was utterly untrue. Re
member that in i860 he actually contemplated being
the democratic presidential candidate, and that Mas
sachusetts sent a delegation to the Charleston conven
tion instructed for him,
A word or two as to his secretaryship of war. He
was as up to date in adopting every new thing of merit
as he had been in insisting upon percussion-lock rifles
for his regiment in the Mexican war. The diligence
and prolonged labor which he conscientiously gave his
official duties were truly exemplary, I wish especially
to have my reader reflect upon two things belonging
here. In selecting men to fill offices, from the highest
to the lowest, he was utterly regardless of their pohtics.
When remonstrated with by democratic partisans for not
giving democrats the preference in competition for
appointments, he declared positively that he should
always make fitness and qualification the only conditions
of such selection. And his actions as long as he held
the important office spoke even louder than his words.
Surely here is an example for these times to profit by.
The second thing really belongs to the same class as the
first. It is that when civil war actually prevailed in
Kansas between the anti-slavery men on one side and
the pro-slavery men on the other, and the commander
of the federal troops in the Territory would virtually be
absolute in power, though Davis was the very extreme
of pro-slavery he gave the place to Colonel Sumner, an
outspoken abolitionist, " whose honor, ability, and judg-'
ment recommended him as the best man for the difficult
duty," 1 J Landon Knight, " The Real Jefferson Dayig,"

Jefferson Davis 313
The secretaryship must be noted as deepening the
regular-army grooves in which Davis's thoijghts and
tastes had long been moving.
He became United States senator again in 1857, which
position he held until the secession of his State, I need
touch upon nothing but the prominent part he took.
Without knowing it he became the guide that conducted
the south in the aggressive defensive which the closing
in around her of the hostile lines imperatively dictated.
All that he did of importance but led up to or supported
his famous resolutions of February 2, i860. Their gist
was that if the judiciary and executive could not and
the Territorial legislature would not protect slave prop
erty in any of the Territories, congress was bound to
pass efficiently protecting laws, to remain of force until
the Territory was admitted as a State, with a constitution
that authorized or prohibited slavery.
Compare the speech he made for these resolutions
with that made for them by Toombs, and the wide dif
ference of the two men comes out plainly. The former
is the height of commonplace morality and patriotism,
expressed with manly strength and eloquence, while
the speaker does not see clearly into the gulf of the
brothers' war into which his measure has been made by
the fates the lever to plunge America, That of Toombs
shows titanic mastery of law and statesmanship, and
almost full discernment of the national catastrophe at
the door. It is destined, I believe, to stand in the high
est class of great speeches.
Compare the last speeches of each in the senate.
Toombs's justification of secession is with argument and
appeal to conscience that the greatest men cannot, and
only cosmic forces, the fates, the directors of evolution,
can answer. Davis's does satisfy the conscience of the
tj^pical southerner, and in the tone preserved from be-

314 The Brothers' War
ginning to end is a marvel of propriety. The pathos of
his leave-taking melted the sternest hearts on the other
side. It was especially in his freedom from offensive
words and the gentlemanly self-restraint of his manner
that Davis showed as decidedly superior to the other.
In the speech of Toombs last noticed there are some
harsh and heated words that I would blot into complete
oblivion if I could. There is not a single line in the
other that I can find fault with, I will here paraUel
them in another place that is strikingly illustrative.
Some years after the war the people of Mississippi
wanted to send Davis back to the United States senate.
To this end the legislature memorialized him to apply
for the removal of his disability. He replied that
repentance ought always to precede asking for pardon,
and that he bad not yet repented. One day about the
same time a sympathizing southerner asked Toombs if
the yankees had pardoned him yet. He scowled his
darkest, and thundered, " No. And God damn 'em, I
have n't pardoned them." Of course the average man
or woman will cordially approve the decorum of Davis's
reply, and on reflection will censure the other,
Davis was completely representative of the real chiv
alry of the south ; and from the Mexican war on, this
was more and more recognized in the section. When
he was made president of the confederacy the great
majority of the people approved. He is such a gentle
man ; so conscientious ; so attentive to his public duties ;
and then his military education and experience make
him far superior to Lincoln — this was said by the gen
eral. Thus were his disqualifications for the place con
cealed from the people of the south.
His chief defect was that not being a successful busi
ness man, he was not a practical statesman. On this
point we have already said enough.

Jefferson Davis 315
His own judgment upon himself was that he ought to
command the armies of the confederacy. To the very
last he believed he had the extreme of military ability.
During the gloomy days that set in after Gettysburg he
often exclaimed, " If I could take one wing and Lee the
other, I think we could between us wrest a victory from
those people," ^
But he did not have extraordinary military capacity,
as appears from the facts which I will now tell.
He was on the field at First Manassas when that
unprecedented panic seized the federal army. It was
instantaneously understood by the latest recruit looking
on from our side. The men and line officers around
me ejaculated, " We ought to press forward and go into
Washington with 'em," Davis with his training should
have seen better even than these raw volunteers, and
recognized it was his part by pursuit to accelerate the
flight and raise that panic to its top. There were re
maining several hours of daylight, during which five of
his men could chase a hundred and a hundred put ten
thousand 'to flight, and when night came the excited
imagination of the fliers would re-enforce the confed
erates with a vast host of destroying monsters behind
and before. The federals losing all organization, were
racing to escape over the bridge at Washington which
was a little more than twenty miles away. They were
choking the roads with abandoned vehicles and artillery.
As it was, they seriously choked the bridge. Had there
been rapid advance by us, and firing in the rear, it is
more than probable we should have got the bridge un
harmed. We should have added thousands to our prison
ers. But far more important than this, would have been
the arms, ammunition, wagons, horses, quartermaster and
commissary supphes of all sorts — in short, the entire
1 Mrs, Davis's Memoir, vol. i. 392.

3i6 The Brothers' War
baggage of the enemy — that would have been ours for
the taking. And if the federals had destroyed the bridge
before we reached it, we should have had McDowell's
pontoons, or captured material out of which to make a
bridge of our own. We should have crossed somehow,
and at the place which circumstances and the insight of
genius suggested. The capital would have fallen, really
without a blow ; and what an immense addition to our
booty would have been here. And the prestige ! In a
day or two our flag would have waved over Baltimore,
the consequence being that Maryland, with a throng of
most true and valiant fighters, would have been won for
the Confederate States, and its northern line instead of
the Potomac would have become the frontier. All this
would have happened if Davis had been a Caesar and
had Csesar-like used the one great opportunity of the
war. It must be set down to his credit that he did far
more than Johnston and Beauregard insist upon pursuit.
But he does not seem to have thought of it until night;
and at last he permitted himself to be reasoned out
of it.
There have been earnest efforts to justify the fateful
supineness of our army after this victory. We were
without transportation means, and a retreating army al
ways outruns its pursuers, said Johnston. Mr. Knight
says Northrop had left us without commissary supplies,
and of course men without anything to eat had to wait
until they could be fed, Beauregard says we ought to
have made for the upper Potomac, which was fordable.
All such reasons come from those who ignore the situa
tion, A real general would have said to his soldiers, in
the first moment of the panic, " You are weary ; it will
rest you to chase your flying foe; you can catch him
because of the obstructing bridge. You are hungry;
there are full haversacks and commissary wagons of

Jefferson Davis 317
your enemy just beyond Centerville without defenders.
Forward, and escort the grand army into Washington
city ! " And such a general with just what infantry he
could find to hand, all the while being re-enforced by
eager men catching up, pressing forward as persistently
as Blucher spurred with his cavalry after the French
flying from Waterloo, would have been in sight of
Washington when the sun rose,
Mr, Knight sets forth very truly the incapacity of
Davis as the military chieftain of the Confederate
States,^ I would abridge what can be said here under
these heads:
I. Each particular army ought to have operated as
a part of the whole force of the confederacy, and that
whole force ought to have been wielded as one machine.
Instead of trying to effect this end, the president de
cided that all exposed points must be defended. The
result was that these were taken one after another by
superior armies. A military man will understand me
when I say his strategy was below mediocrity. True
strategy dictated the abandonment of many places in
order to assemble by using our shorter interior lines a
resistless power on a really decisive occasion, McClel
lan, in Virginia, and Grant, in Mississippi, ought each to
have been captured as Burgoyne and Cornwallis were,
2, He selected his generals and important officers
according to his likes and dislikes, and not according to
their true qualifications.
3. He was without practical administrative talent in
any high degree. Such a man as Joseph E, Brown, of
Georgia, would have shown far superior to him.
It will doubtless be the decision of future history that
he was neither statesman nor military man of sufficient
abihty for the presidency. He did not want it, Com-
1 In his fourth chapter.

3i8 The Brothers' War
pare him as secession was dawning, with Toombs, who
was the man of aU to be president. The latter scent
ing battle in the air, was really eager for the inevitable
fighting to begin; Davis was cast down and dejected.
He loved the union, and it was inexpressibly bitter to
him to part with it. And then he was sure that there
would be a long and bloody brothers' war. What he
wanted was to fight for the south so dear to him. The
news of his election as president was perhaps the greatest
surprise of his life. Says Mrs, Davis : " When reading
the telegram he looked so grieved that I feared some
evil had befallen our family. After a few minutes' pain
ful silence he told me, as a man might speak of a sen
tence of death," ^
Writing of his inauguration at Montgomery, he says
to his wife: "The audience was large and briUiant,
Upon my weary heart were showered smiles, plaudits,
and flowers; but, beyond them, I saw troubles and
thorns innumerable," ^
And she tells this of his inauguration as president
of the permanent government :
" Mr, Davis came in from an early visit to his office and
went into his room, where I found him an hour afterwards on
his knees in earnest prayer 'for the divine support I need
so sorely' [as he said], . . , The inauguration took place
at twelve o'clock,' [The anterior proceedings having been
described, the contemporary account she quotes goes on
thus : ]
"'The president-elect then delivered his inaugural address.
It was characterized by great dignity, united with much feeling
and grace, especially the closing sentence. Throwing up his
eyes and hands to heaven he said, ' With humble gratitude and
adoration, acknowledging the providence which has so visibly
protected the confederacy during its brief but eventful career,
J Memoir, vol. ii. 18. 2 7^_ ^j, 33.

Jefferson Davis 319
to Thee, O God, I tmstingly commit myself, and prayerfully
invoke Thy blessing on my country and its cause.' "
Then she adds :
" Thus Mr. Davis entered on his martyrdom. As he stood
pale and emaciated, dedicating himself to the service of the
confederacy, evidently forgetful of everything but his sacred
oath, he seemed to me a wiUing victim going to his funeral
pyre ; and the idea so affected me that, making sorae excuse, I
regained ray carriage and went home," ^
So did this thrice-noble man sacrifice his dearest
wishes and with superhuman resolution step into the
arena at the command of the fates, to be the target of
their wrath against his people, /(
He was like Hamlet upon whom destiny had imposed
a high task far beyond his powers, 'We can believe
that to the end of his presidency Davis sorely sighed
more and more often :
" The time is out of joint : O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right."
His oflficial career from beginning to end was full of
fatal mistakes. But in every one of these he did the
right — to use Lincoln's grand word — as God gave him
to see it. This will more and more through all, the
future turn his failure to glory. He will be like Hector,
who draws the admiration of the world a thousand-fold
more than Achilles, his vanquisher,^
At the last, when the sword of Grant had beaten
down the sword of Lee, and all of us, it seemed to me,
knew that it was the highest duty of patriotism to yield
our arms, he was for fighting on. Casablanca would
1 Memoir, vol. ii. 180-183.
2 Mr. Landon Knight is happy in showing the fidelity, diligence,
courage, and unsurpassed conscientiousness, of Mr. Davis in his presi
dency, and especially how he bore himself amid the multiplying dis
asters of the last two yeara

320 The Brothers' War
not go with those who were leaving the burning ship
until his dead father bade him go. Davis would not
abandon the cause of his nation without its command ;
and it could give none ; for it was dead and he did not
know it. He was trying his hardest to reach the west,
intent upon prosecuting the war from a new base, when
he was taken.
His capture was accepted by the southern people as
the faU of the blue cross. Every man, woman, and
child old enough to think, in the late confederacy
became sick and faint. Sorrow after sorrow, and grief
after grief tore their hearts. The first was the thought,
for all the blood we have poured out during four
years of such effort on the battlefield as the world
never knew before we have lost ; we have been beaten,
and we are subjugated. The next thought that pierced
was, the property that made our homes the sweetest
and most comfortable on earth has all been destroyed,
and for the rest of their lives our dear ones must pine in
hardship and misery. O how this pang actually killed
many old men and women 1 It seems to me that heart
failure commenced in the south with the great harvest
it gathered in the first five years succeeding the war.
But the agony of agonies was that the negroes were put
over us. Those five years — particularly the last three
of them — are the one ugly dream of my hfe. To pay
his debts, which would have been a small thing to him
had he kept his slaves, but which were now monsters,
my father overworked himself, whUe trying to make
a cotton crop with freedmen. I did not learn of his im
prudence until I had been summoned to see him die.
There was something like this in every family. A
night of impoverishment, misery, contumely, and insult
descended upon us, and the sun would not rise. I kept
the stoutest heart that I could. Now and then it was a

Jefferson Davis 321
comforting day dream to imagine how well it would
have been for me if I had fallen in the front of my men
on the second day of Gettysburg, when I was trying my
utmost to make them do the impossibility of charging
across the narrow bog staying us, and mixing with the
men in blue hning the other side. Had that happened
to me I should never have known, in the flesh, of our
decisive defeats, nor of the trials of my people after they
laid down arms ; and even if my grave could not have
been found, there would have been at a place here and
thpre for some years honorable mention of me with tears
on Memorial Day, to gladden my spirit taking note.
This would sometimes be my thought, and thousands
of others had like thoughts.
Early in this time of sorrow and suffering the women
of the south instituted Memorial Day. Each year when
it comes they do rites of remembrance to the fallen
soldiers of the confederacy. These soldiers lie in every
graveyard from the Ohio and Potomac to the Rio
Grande, When the day comes these women in their
unforgetting love assemble the people, have praises and
lamentations of their dead darlings fitly spoken; and
then they deck their graves with the fairest flowers of
spring. It is an annual holiday, sacred to grief for our
heroes who died in vain. It is the fairest, tenderest, and
sweetest testimonial of love ever given — love from those
who have nothing else to bestow, lavished upon those
who can make no return ; and it is further the most
splendid and glorious, being the co-operative demon
stration of a whole people of " true lovers," ^
1 " We embraced the cause [i. c, of the Confederate States] in the
spirit of lovers. True lovers all were we — and what true lover ever
loved less because the grave had closed over the dear and radiant form ?
— And so we — we, at least, who as men and women inhaled the true
spirit of that momentous time — come together on these occasions not
only with the fresh new flowers in our hands, but with the old memories
21

322 The Brothers' War
I cannot say where and when the observance of
Memorial Day began. Perhaps Miss Davidson cor
rectly asserts that it was in Petersburg, Virginia, in
1866.2 It had reached its height at Charieston, South
Carolina, in the spring of 1867, when as prelude to
decorating the graves in Magnoha cemetery, Timrod's
hymn, containing this oft-quoted passage, was sung :
" Behold ! your sisters bring their tears.
And these memorial blooms,
" Small tributes ! but your shades shall smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day.
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay,
" Stoop, angels, hither frora the skies !
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies.
By mourning beauty crowned,"
The " true lovers " could no more forget their living
leader in prison than they could forget their soldiers in
the grave. " Out of sight, out of mind " could not be
said of Davis during his two years' confinement. The
concern of his people mounted steadily. They made
all his sufferings their own, lamenting and praying for
him as a loved father. When he was about to be re
leased on bond the news gave the south a wilder joy
in our thoughts and the old, but ever fresh, lover spirit in our hearts, and
seek to make these occasions not unworthy of the cause we loved un
selfishly and of these its sleeping defenders." Major Joseph B. Cumming,
in introducing General Butler, orator of the day, when the Confederate
soldiers' graves were decorated at the Augusta (Ga.) cemetery in 1895.
2 The celebration at Covington, Georgia, April 26, 1866, was complete.
My friend Hon. J. M. Pace has just shown me a copy of the local news
paper issued the next day, containing an account of the ceremony and
the rarely appropriate address which he made as part thereof. The fact
is that the observance of Memorial Day commenced everywhere in the
south at the time just mentioned.

Jefferson Davis 323
than did the unexpected victory of First Manassas, He
was brought in custody to Richmond by a James
river steamboat. Mrs. Davis thus describes how he was
received :
"A great concourse of people had assembled. From the
wharf to the Spottswood Hotel there was a sea of heads — room'
had to be made by the mounted pohce for the carriages. The
windows were crowded, and even on to the roofs people had
climbed. Every head was bared. The ladies were shedding
tears. . . . When Mr. Davis reached the Spottswood Hotel,
where rooms had been provided for us, the crowd opened and
the beloved prisoner walked through; the people stood un
covered for at least a mile up and down Main street. As he
passed, one and another put out a hand and lightly touched his
coat. As I left the carriage a low voice said : ' Hats off, Virgin
ians,' and again every head was bared. This noble syrapathy and
clinging affection repaid us for raany raoraents of bitter anguish.
When Mr. Davis was released, one gentleman jumped upon
the box and drove the carriage which brought hira back to the
hotel, and other gentleraen ran after him and shouted them
selves hoarse. Our people poured into the hotel in a steady
stream to congratulate, and many embraced him."
Bear in mind the people, and where it was, and when
it was, from whom this show of respect so great, so
earnest and unfeigned, spontaneously came. They were
of that part of the south which had lost more in blood,
property, and devastation than any other, and who, one
might think, were too embittered against their defeated
leader to show him anything but disapproval. They
were also of a State which had not been readmitted into
the union. The axe was suspended over their necks by
a party seeking excuses for letting it fall ; by a party to
whom Davis was the most hated of men. Surely these
Virginians who thus risked their fortunes were the truest
of lovers.

324 The Brothers' War
No reader of mine, though he search history and
encyclopedias through and through for years, can find
anything hke the Southern Memorial Day and the honors
given Davis in Richmond as we have just told. They
unmistakably mark an ascent of humanity. But it is not
my purpose to emphasize them as specially signalizing
the south. Their great lesson is not learned if it is not
understood that they are glories of federal government.
Under any other form of government such demonstra
tions would be suppressed as disloyal and treasonable.
For more than twenty-two years after this auspicious
day the ex-president of the southern confederacy lived
most of his time among his people. Their love for him
steadily grew. He proved worthy of it. He would not
accept the bounty they stood ready to shower upon him,
and he was poor and without money-making faculty.
When Mississippi wanted to make him United States
senator again, he felt that he was too old and broken to
serve the State efficiently, and he declined. It occurred
to all of us that he sorely needed the salary of the place.
He struggled on under the load of poverty and iU-health,
All of us knew that the latter came from that cruel and
inhuman imprisonment, and the more he suffered the
closer our hearts drew to him. The cause of his section
he justified to the last, and with all his energy. His
book defending that cause was written under difficulty
almost insurmountable by mah. His character as one
tried in every way and found true came out clearer
and clearer. He showed more and more of spotless
virtue, becoming aU the while to us a stronger justifica
tion of the fight we had made under him for the lost
cause. We thought to ourselves with pride that the
world will some day learn what a good man he was, and
that will be our comj^lete vindication from the slanders
now current.

Jefferson Davis 325
Let me tell of some of the other demonstrations made
over him, I witnessed that in Atianta, in 1886, April 30,
aU the State of Georgia was there, as it seemed. Old and
young, white and colored, waited impatiently for the
raUroad train bringing him from Montgomery, My
wife, divining the rare sight thus to be gained, secured a
station out of town where she could see the train pass
without, obstruction. As long as she lived afterwards,
his car, prodigally and appropriately bedecked with the
fairest May flowers of the sunny south, was her proverb
for that which pleases too greatly for description.
When he had come out of his bower of flowers and we
knew he was resting, we felt as if the angel of the Lord
was here with tidings of great joy for all our people.
Who can describe the rejoicing of the next day that
came forth everywhere as Mr, Davis showed himself to
his people ! I have seen popular outbursts of gladness,
but nothing hke this. It surpassed in profundity of
feeling and sustained energy and flow that which seemed
to come straight out of the ground when, in 1884, we
knew at last that Cleveland was elected, and the south
was convulsed with an ecstasy of happy surprise. The
women and men who had tasted the war all crying; all
pouring benedictions upon his gray hairs as they came
in sight; "God bless him" displayed on every corner.
I am utterly unable adequately to report this grand
occasion, I will tell only a few things that I saw or
heard of. He passed by a long line of school-children
in Peachtree street.. They made the sincere and decided
demonstrations of children whose pleasure is at its
height. But what was especially noticeable to me here
was the behavior in the section of colored children.
Their delight seemed, if that were possible, to be some
what wilder and more unrestrained than that of the
white children. The occurrence has come back to me a

326 The Brothers' War
thousand times. Is it to be explained by Mr. Davis's
character as a master, to whom , as to all really typical
masters, his slaves were but a little lower in his affec
tions than his children ? Or was it unconscious approval
of the resistance by the south with all her might against
the emancipation proclamation, the end of which may
be the wholesale destruction of the black race in Amer
ica, such approval being suggested by a cosmic influence
as yet inexplicable ?
When he was going through Mrs, Hill's yard to enter
her house, little girls on each side of the walk threw
bouquets before him, every one begging, " Mr, Davis,
please step on my flowers," The feeble man tried to
gratify all of them. The flowers that he did step on
were eagerly caught up by the owners, to be treasured
as the dearest of relics and keepsakes,
I was told that some old grayhead who met him dur
ing the day, gently raised Mr, Davis's hands to his lips,
saying, " Let me kiss the hands that were manacled for
me," and as he kissed his tears fell in a flood.
What we have just described occurred in Georgia —
a State in which of all during the brothers' war the most
formidable opposition to his administration was devel
oped. This opposition was lead or upheld by Toombs,
both the Stephenses, and Brown — the most influential
of all the Georgians at that time. That for all this the
State gave him this wonderful ovation shows how deep
and strong is the southern sentiment that glorifies the
lost cause. It was Henry Grady, a Georgian revering
and treasuring the men I have just mentioned, who when
Mr. Davis was in Atianta, in 1886, called him the un
crowned king of our hearts, the words evoking plaudits
from the entire south. And remember that Georgia
voted for Greeley in 1872, although Toombs and the
Stephenses opposed him. I think I was representative

Jefferson Davis 327
of the dominant public feeling at the time. While my
companions and I avowed the fullest confidence in
Greeley's integrity and statesmanship, we each said we
were in haste to honor with our votes the northern man
who got Mr. Davis bailed and became one of his sure
ties. And Georgia is among the States which has made
June 3 a legal holiday, because it is the anniversary of
Mr. Davis's birth.
Some northern paper sympathetically described the
reception given Mr, Davis in Atlanta, in 1886, as the
swan song of the southern confederacy. And to ifie it
has always been the funeral of the old south. But there
were other obsequies and swan songs. When he died
December 6, 1889, the south sorrowed as it never sor
rowed before. We are pleased to quote from the
memoir, the noblest monument a true wife has ever
given a dead husband — far nobler, more splendid and
immortal than that which Artemisia gave Mausolus,
Mrs, Davis tells:
\^Floral offerings caime from aU quarters of our country. The
orphan asylum, the coUeges, the societies, drew upon their little
sto7jes to deck his quiet resting-place. Many thousands passed
W' ( ping by the bier where he lay in state, in his suit of con-
f/ erate gray, guarded by the men who had fought for the cause
/,/ loved, and who revered his honest, self-denying, devoted
life. His old comrades in arms carae by thousands to mingle
their tears with ours. The governors of nine states came to
bear him to his rest The clergy of all denominations carae to
pray that his rest be peaceful, and to testify their respect for
and faith in him. Fifty thousand people lined the streets as
the catafalque passed. Few, if any, dry eyes looked their last
upon hira who had given thera his Kfe's service. The noble
array of the West and that of Northern Virginia escorted him
for the last tirae, and the Washington Artillery, now gray-haired
men, were the guard of honor to his bier. The eloquent

328 The Brothers' War
Bishops of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the clergy of all
denominations, delivered short eulogies upon him to weeping
thousands, and the strains of ' Rock of Ages,' once more bore
up a great spirit in its flight to Him who gave, sustained, and
took it again to himself."
These aptly chosen words come short of describing
the general grief. Nobody can yet tell all of it. One
but feebly expresses it by saying that when Jefferson
Davis died, broken-hearted men, women, and children
gathered in funeral assemblies everywhere in that vast
area from Mason and Dixon's line on the north to the
Mexican border on the south, wept over his bier, and
hung the air and heavens with black.
In 1893 his remains were carried to Richmond, the
dead capital of the dead Confederate States, and there
reinterred. The ceremonies were impressive, and
thoroughly in keeping with those I have narrated in
the foregoing.
And in 1896 the corner-stone of a monument to him
was laid in Monroe Park. On this occasion General
Stephen D. Lee delivered an oration which, as a monu
ment itself, will long outlast the stone one.
Thus has the overthrown and most evilly entreated
president ofthe Confederate States become, by some mar
vel of fortune, far more than the proudest conqueror. The
honors which every one who " can above himself erect
himself" estimates as the very richest, Mr, Davis has had
given him more prodigally than any other man. These
honors that make everything else shabby in appearance
and cheap, are the spontaneous offerings of sincere love
from those who know us. Smiles, tender words, prayers
for blessing, tears of joy, admiration, pity, and sympathy,
flowers — how dear are any of these from a friend,
brother, sister, father, mother, sweetheart, wife, child.

, Jefferson Davis 329
For almost a generation aU these tokens were given the
ex-president by everybody in the south, and each year to
his death they were given in greater profusion. And
really the whole south mourned at his burial. Our wives,
mothers, and other dear ones give us up, and we give,
them up, to fight and perhaps die for the country. We
are so made that we love the great brotherhood better
than we do ourselves. And so an offering of regard from
that brotherhood — to be made to feel that throughout
the whole of it one is recognized as most worthy of love
— the true man would prize this above every other.
Before this time this great honor has been given only by
happy ones to their victors — to such as Washington,
Lincoln, Grant, But the south has begun a new era.
In the misery and ruin of her subjugation she magnifies
her deposed chief. Much of the applause heaped upon
the victor is selfish and feigned, but the whole of that
given the conquered hero comes direct and straight from
the hearts of his countrymen. It seems, therefore, to
me that this decoration of the conquered hero is the
crown of crowns of this world. It is Davis's historical
uniqueness that he has won this lone crown.
The achievement is so counter to common-sense that
it is not yet credited nor understood. I cannot help be
lieving that when all the fog raised by the brothers' war
has cleared away, and our historians tell what brought
and what followed that war with unclouded vision of
cosmic agency, that Jefferson Davis will be perma
nently placed high in the American temple of fame.
There he will be the world's contemplation, showing
something like Hester Prynne. As what was at first
to her the branding placard of guUt turned to a
badge of the greatest righteousness, so has that which
was unutterable obloquy and disgrace to him become
unparalleled fortune and glory.

CHAPTER XIV
THE CURSE OF SLAVERY TO THE WHITE, AND ITS
BLESSING TO THE NEGRO
THE master got the curse and the negro the
blessing of slavery.
We set out by mentioning how certain ants
have been injured by becoming masters. Before this
they were doubtless the equals of any non-slaveholding
tribe in self-maintenance. Now they " are waited upon
and fed by their slaves, and when the slaves are taken
away the masters perish miserably," ^ It did not be
come so bad as this with human slaveholders ; but the
consequent disadvantage was very great, as we shall now
exemplify with some detail. We shall throughout keep
to the average and typical man and woman. And for
brevity's sake, we shall not look beyond the domestic
and agricultural spheres, because when the reader has
learned what slavery did in these, he can of himself
easily add the little required to make complete state
ment of its entire effect.
In non-slave communities baby is tended only by
mother and near relatives. Though petted and indulged,
it is steadily constrained into more obedience to those
who tend it. In due time the child is taking care of
itself in many things, and is also doing light chores.
Until the parental roof has been left he or she has every
day something to do. What we may call the open-air
home-work is done by the boys, and the inside by the
1 Encyc. Americana, article " Ant."

The Curse and Blessing of Slavery 3 3 1
girls. But in the old south baby commenced its life as
a slaveholder with a nurse that it learned to command
by inarticulate cries and signs before it could talk. And
to the end, as grandfather or grandmother, self-service in
many common things, as is usual with all other people,
was never learned, but great expertness in getting these
things done by slaves was learned instead,
I was only fifteen years old in 185 1, when I entered the
sophomore class in Princeton College, never having been
out of the south before. Of course much of my time at
first was consumed in observing and thinking over many
sights very novel and strange to me. I came in August.
Soon afterwards I saw them saving their Indian corn.
In the south we " pulled " the fodder, and some weeks
later we " puUed " the corn, leaving the stripped stalks
standing. But the New Jersey farmers, without remov
ing the blades or the ears, cut the stalks down, put them
up in stacks, and after a while hauled them to the barn.
This was such a wonder that I described it minutely in
a letter to my mother. The next great surprise that I
had was to note the lady of the family and her daughters
doing everything in and about the house, which I used to
see at home only the negroes do. They were marvel
lously more expert and neat in despatch than the negroes.
Their easy and, as it seemed, effortless way of getting
through their daily employment grew upon me steadily.
What I intently observed in those times and reflected
over much subsequently, I have had a recent experience
to refresh and enforce. In the summer of 1902 two
ladies from Pennsylvania took a house in Atlanta next
to mine. They had never before been in the south, I
found out these lonely strangers at once, and was soon
seeing much of them. They kept no servant. The two
did all the household tasks. The younger washed the
clothes. This is something which but few city southern

332 The Brothers' War
ladies, except those whose ancestors were not slave
holders, have ever consented to do. The laundry of
even the poorest families in our towns is nearly always
the care of a negro washerwoman. Although their work
was every day punctually done by my two new-found
friends, and their house always the tidiest, like the New
Jersey ladies of my boyhood at Princeton, they were
never flustered nor worried, but were always pleasant
and agreeable.
Plainly they lived in far more ease and comfort than
the native housekeepers. There are two classes of the
latter. In one is the woman who is greatly plagued by
the waste, dishonesty, and eye-service of her negro cook
and housemaid, and always in craven fear that she wiU
wake up some morning to know that they have taken
French leave. In the other class is the woman who often
must, with the help only of her children, do everything
at home. What a laborious, fatiguing botch they make
of it ! Their day-dream all the year round is to find
that needle in a haystack, a servant who will take no
more than the established holidays and always come in
time to get breakfast.
I sorrow for these present housekeepers of the south.
They all know by heart and often retell to their children
the tales of their mothers and grandmothers, — how,
early in the morning, the affectionate and faithful nurses
stole the children out of the room, without waking papa
and mamma ; how the cook and the waiters, not super
intended, had the best of breakfasts ready at the right
time ; how at this meal there was happy reunion of the
family beginning a new day, the children bathed and in
their clean clothes, each one pretty as a picture and
sweet as a pink ; and how all the affairs of the household
under the magic touch of angel servants were fitly de
spatched without trouble or worry to mamma, until the

The Curse and Blessing of Slavery 333
day ended by the nurses' bathing the little tots again,
putting them to bed, and mammy's getting them to sleep
by teUing " The Tar Baby '' or some other adventure of
Brer Rabbit over and over as often as sleepily called for,
or by singing sweet luUabies, With this vision of a real
fairyland in which their ancestors lived not so very long
ago, how can any one of these mothers of the new south
contentedly make herself the only nurse, cook, and house
servant of her family? For many a year yet, to do every
day the drudgery of all three will be the extreme of dis
comfort and sore trial to her. We must give her loving
words and sympathy without ceasing, and trust her to
the slow but sure heahng of inevitable necessity.
This lamentable condition of our southern woman is
due, as plainly appears, to the miseducation given their
ancestors by slavery. Slavery went forty years ago;
but it left the negro, and the dependence of these women
upon her as their only servant. It is indispensable that
they cut loose completely from this dependence. Their
resolve should be firm and unwavering that they will
learn to minister to themselves and their dear ones, and
teach the blessed art to their children ; as their northern
sisters have always done, I would have them here re
ceptively contemplate, as a part of the new lesson which
Ijhey must learn, this true and enchanting picture of a
New England home:
" There are no servants in the house, but the lady in the
snowy cap, with the spectacles, who sits sewing every afternoon
among her daughters, as if nothing had ever been done, or were
to be done, — she and her girls, in sorae long-forgotten fore
part of the day did up the work, and for the rest of the time,
probably, at aU hours when you would see them, it is done up.
The old kitchen floor never seems stained or spotted ; the tables,
the chairs, and the various cooking utensils never seera deranged
or disordered ; though three and soraetiraes four meals a day

334 The Brothers' War
are got there, though the family washing and ironing is there
perforraed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are in some
silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence," ^
Of course it is not to be demanded that the southern
woman exactly reproduce the New England system of
fifty years ago just described by Mrs, Stowe, But she
must learn to be entirely independent of servants in
the era of co-operation, electric dish-washers, and other
helping machines, about to begin.
Let us see how it has been with the fathers and boys.
The planting of the old south required proportionally
less cash outlay annually than any common business
that I now call to mind. The owner of 750 acres of
land — an ordinary plantation — worth $6,000, thirty
slaves worth $18,000, and mules and live-stock
worth $1,000, had usually but five considerable items
of expense : the overseer with his family was " found "
— to use the then current vogue — and paid not more
than $150 yearly wages; a few sacks of salt to save
the pork — a little to be given the live animals occasion
ally; a few bars of iron for the plantation blacksmith
shop — the latter being furnished with bellows, anvil,
tongs, screwplate, vise, and a few other tools, all hardly
amounting to $100 investment; sometimes coarse cot
ton and woollen cloth for the clothes of the negroes,
made by the slave-women tailors (even in my day this
cloth was, on many plantations, spun and wove at home
from the cotton and wool grown by the owner) ; and
the fifth item was a moderate bill of the family physician
for attendance upon the sick slaves. The whole would
seldom amount to $350; and remember the income
yielding capital was $25,000, This planter paid no
wages for his labor ; he bred his slaves, and all animals
1 Uncle Tom's Cabin and Key, vol, i. 206 (Riverside ed.).

The Curse and Blessing of Slavery 335
serving for work, food, or pleasure ; — in short, the
establishment was self-supporting. The good manager
sold every year more than enough of meat, grain, and
other produce to pay the expense itemed a moment
ago, and so the $1,200 from the sale of his crop of
thirty bales of cotton was often net income.
The natural increase of slaves which I have explained
above operated in many cases to encourage wastefulness
and idleness. But even in the majority of these cases
the estates more than held their own.
Let us illustrate the change wrought by emancipation
by having you to contemplate a small middle Georgia
farmer of to-day. If he employ but four hands to his
two plows, he will, in wages, fertilizers that have come
into general use since the war, purchase of meat, corn,
and other supplies that the slaves used to produce,
necessarily lay out annually more than did the planter
making thirty bales as we mentioned above. If this
small farmer makes twenty bales — which is far above
the average — worth, if the price be, say, eight cents,
$800 — more than half of it will be needed to cover
his outlay. It is to be emphasized that as a general
rule this farmer and his boys have not yet been trained
to work as steadily and diligently as their circumstances
demand of them. As the women slight in the house
what they regard as fit employment only of negroes, so
the men do the same in the farm. The whites of both
sexes cling to the negro instead of making good workers
of themselves.
In the old south money grew of itself. Now constant
alertness is needed to see that every dollar laid out
comes back, if not with addition, at least without loss.
To keep from faihng behind, the farmer must have a
very much higher degree of mercantile capacity than he
could ever acquire under the old system. And he and

336 The Brothers' War
his boys ought to supplant much of the negro labor he
now employs by their own systematic and steady work.
All these necessary lessons are very hard to learn,
because to do that we must first unlearn widely differ
ent ones.
This examination shows that the men of the new
south are almost as inadequate to the demands of the
day as we found the women to be,
I do not mean to say that our women and men have
not improved at all in their respective spheres in the
last forty years, I believe that when due allowance is
made for the unavoidable effect upon them of the sys
tem into which they were all born it must be conceded
that the little improvement which they have made is
greater than what could have been reasonably expected.
But I see clearly that the habits of thought and the
modes of house and farm economy, bred first from our
contact with the negro slave and then with the negro
freedman, are yet an oppressively heavy load upon our
section, I have now to do with a still greater evil as part of
the curse of slavery to the southern whites ; which is,
that it prevented the normal rise in the section of a
white labor class. If one but look steadily at develop
ments, either now in progress or surely impending, in
Germany, France, England, the Enghsh colonies, and
the United States he sees that the workers most of aU
are influencing the other classes to pursue the best
pohcy in aU departments of government. The truth is
that in every stage of society there is the leading energy
of some particular class. Let me make you reflect
over a few well-known examples. In their unremitted
struggle with the patricians, the plebeians of Rome
graduaUy climbed out of their low estate into complete
political, civil, and social equality with the former who

The Curse and Blessing of Slavery 337
had long been the constituency of the so-called repubhc.
Some centuries later a tacit combination of those
belonging to each division of the middle class dried aU
the fountains of civil disorder and made domestic peace
sure and permanent by estabhshing the Roman empire.
Much later employers of the free labor which had
displaced slavery made European towns democratic,
and set them in such strong array against the feudal
barons that the latter were at last restrained from plun
dering the new industry. The American revolution
and the French revolution were each mainly middle-
class movements. By them the middle class cleared
out of its way, as far as it could, distinctions of birth,
title, rank, and all other special personal privileges. But,
unawares, it put in the place of the old hereditary lords
and monopolists, known as such by everybody, a
nobility in disguise. The members of this nobihty
make no claim to our labor or substance by reason of
their having had such and such fathers or having re
ceived such and such grants or patents to themselves as
natural persons. They pose as government agents in
such functions as the transportation and monetary, of
which efficient, cheap, and impartial performance is vital
to the general welfare. Clandestinely they have had
the law of the land made or interpreted and the prac
tice of government shaped each as they want it; and
sitting in their masks wherever these sovereign powers
must be invoked by producer or worker, it is these
usurpers and not the legitimate public authorities who
must be applied to and given, not the just cost of the
service, but the supreme extortion possible. These
masked rulers toll our wages, profits, and property as
insidiously and deeply as does indirect compared with
direct taxation. In fact they are government licensees,
levying upon us for their own benefit all the indirect

338 The Brothers' War
taxation that we can bear. Some — I may say, a large
number — of middle-class property owners and pro
ducers are heart and soul in strong and strengthening
resistance now forming against the tyrants they have
unwittingly set up. But the initiative and most effec
tive elements of this benign uprising do not come from
the middle class. It was the workers who excited and
kept at its height the righteous indignation of the
country that shamed the coal-trust into decency. It is
the workers who are the most influential of all that
strive to arm us with those plutocracy-destroying weap
ons, direct nomination and direct legislation ; and of all
who demand that the railroads pay just taxes ; of all who
would lay the axe at the root of pubhc corruption by
having government resume its powers and do every one
of its duties without favor or prejudice to a single
human being. It is clear that the laborers are gathering
all the anti-monopoly interests and classes of society to
their banner, and that from the steady and increasing
impulsion of these laborers, in unions and political cam
paigns, industrial democracy will at last come in, to
open the miUennium by keeping every man, woman, and
child, except the wilfully idle and criminal, permanently
supplied with necessaries and comforts.
Who are the laborers that are both to spur and lead
us forward in this great course? Why, the white labor
ers, whose interests and whose qualifications to share in
governments are the same as those of the rest of us ;
who are really part and parcel of the body pohtic and
whose sons and daughters can be married by our sons
and daughters without social degradation to themselves
or degeneration of the proud Caucasian stock in their
children. The negroes cannot do the great work we
are contemplating. They are strangers in blood. They
are as yet far too low in development. It is idle to

The Curse and Blessing of Slavery 339
think of making these aliens, whose highest interests are
irreconcilably antagonistic to ours and our children's,
allies of the white laborers — a point which will be
treated at large in later chapters.
To bring out the situation more clearly, suppose that
instead of the eight millions of negroes now in the south
we had eight miUions of native white workers and no
negroes at all. Would it not be far better for us of the
section? Would it not be far better for the anti-mono
poly cause in the north ? Ought there not to be a real
labor party in the south instead of what we now see ?
The so-called labor party of the south has a large per
centage of leaders whose chief activity is to win posi
tions in the unions, in agitation, in the city and State
government wherein they can serve themselves by de
hvering the labor vote to corporate interests, or doing
the latter legislative or official favor — a sure symptom
that the movement is as yet merely incipient. In no
northern State have the railroads and allied corporations
such complete command of nominative, appointive, and
legislative machinery as in Georgia ; and it seems to me
that Georgia is but fairly representative of all the sbuth
except South Carohna, which has advanced further in
direct nomination than any other one of the United
States, In many places the people of the north are
successfully rising against the corporation oligarchs.
In New York and Michigan the latter have been made
to pay some of the taxes which they had always been
dodging. In a recent Boston referendum the street
railroad, which for years had ridden roughshod over the
public at wiU, was snowed under, although it had the
machine, aU the five daily papers but one, and the out
side of that, fighting for it with might and main, Los
Angeles, followed by three or four other towns, has just
made a beginning with the Recall. Oregon has direct

340 The Brothers' War
legislation. lUinois has pushed ahead with both direct
nomination and direct legislation. Cities here and there,
in very grateful contrast with the apathy prevalent in
this section, have awakened to the importance of rightly
guarding the common property in pubhc-service
franchises. I could cite many other examples which
show that the anti-plutocratic tide gathers .force all over
the north. Why is it that there is this blessed insurgence
against corporation misrule there, and hardly a trace of
it here ? Simply because the north has and the south
has not the motor of insurgence^ a real labor class,
growing steadily in zeal and organization, and rapidly
increasing in numbers.
That a southern State has no real labor class with
potent influence upon the pubhc, puts it as far behind
the most enlightened communities in pohtical and gov
ernmental condition, as it was with its slaves behind
them in productive condition. Such a State lacks a
most essential organ ofthe highest types of democracy.^
To sum up : Slavery disqualified the white men and
women of the south for the domestic and business man
agement proper to this era ; and ever since emancipation
the presence of a large number of negroes available for
labor in house and on the farm, and preventing the
coming in of any other labor, has powerfully helped both
races in their efforts naturally made to retain the familiar
ways of the old system. Thus the south has been sadly
retarded in her due economical rehabilitation. In the
second place, it has kept the pohtical influence of labor
at the minimum, and consequently sent her backwards in
1 Says John Mitchell : " The Southem States, which have made rapid
progress, especially in cotton manufacturing, have, as a general rule, not
responded to the demand for a shorter working-day — the south lacking
effective labor organizations to compel such legislation." (Organized
Labor, 122.) He might have said the same as to the desired prohibition
of child labor.

The Curse and Blessing of Slavery 341
true democracy, while England, the English colonies, and
the northern States, are slowly but surely going forward.
These are the main things. Let me in briefest men
tion suggest some of their results, which, at first blush,
seem to be independent.
Slavery engendered among the whites a disrespect for
labor, which, although now at last dying out, is still of
hurtful influence.
As negroes were always and everywhere in number
sufficient to do every task of labor, there was but little
demand for labor-saving machines and methods — a
fact which prevented the southern whites from develop
ing the inventive faculty equally with their northern
brothers. We all are beginning to see that, except in
much of agriculture and other activities in which the
process is that of nature and not of art, the future of
industry belongs more and more to the constantly
improving machine.
Think of such things as these in the brood of evils
brought forth by slavery ; — agriculture primitive or
superannuated in many particulars ; our entire structure
of investment, production, and occupation bottomed
upon slaves, property in which could be, and was,
totally destroyed by a stroke of the pen ; immigration
both from Europe and the north repelled ; slowness in
exploiting our water power and mines ; inferior common
schools, and lack of town-meeting government due to
the sparseness of the population and their roving habits
which were incident to the plantation system, I have
given some consideration to these in the " Old and New
South," and I refer you to that,^
Of course had there never been any negro slavery in
America we should have escaped the brothers' war, its
spiUing of blood, its waste of wealth, and the long sick-
l Infra, pp. 431-438,

342 The Brothers' War
ness of the section unto death which has ensued. And
to-day in solid prosperity, institutions, government, and
progressiveness in everything good, the section would
be abreast of the other. Nay, her better climate, her
agricultural products — especially her cotton, which she
would have learned to make with white labor — these
and other resources would, I fully believe, have by this
time pushed her far into the lead. As it actually is, she
is far, far behind. She has been sorely scourged, not for
any moral guilt,
" Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt."
It was because she did that which the wisest and best
had done — the Greeks who gave the world culture and
democracy, the Jews who gave it religion, the Romans
who gave it law and civil institutions. She really did
far better than they did. She did not enslave the free.
She merely took some of the only inveterate slaves
upon earth out of lawless slavery, in which they would
have otherwise remained indefinitely without recognition
of the dearest human rights, and placed them in a far
other slavery which was for them an unparaUeled rise
in liberty and well-being ; which was, as becomes more
and more probable with time, the only opportunity by
which any considerable portion of the negro race can
ever evolve upward into the capability of enlightened
self-government. In doing this she unconsciously antag
onized the purposes of the iron-hearted powers guard
ing the American union, and when the critical moment
of that union came, they dashed her to pieces.
It will be many a year before the pathos of southern
history can be fuUy told, I must satisfy myself here by
saying only that the curse of African slavery to her has
been of magnitude and weight incredible, and that one
cannot yet be sure when it wiU end.

The Curse and Blessing of Slavery 343
The title of the chapter demands that I now tell you
of the blessing of African slavery in the United States
to the negro. Of course there are many who have been
born into the unequahfied condemnation of every form
of slavery, which was resolutely preached for years all
over the north by conscientious men and women of
great ability and influence. Such will exclaim against
me, and perhaps some of them will not even read the
rest of the chapter. But it is my note, which becomes
surer and more confident every year, that the great body
of men and women shrink from every over-positively
urged dogma. I have already mentioned those who
are trying to curb the evils of drink. All the while an
increasing majority of them recognize that to assert
that any use of liquor, wine, or beer is a moral wrong,
as do a noisy few in season and out of season, is too
extreme to be true or even politic. The ultra democrat
will zealously justify the assassination of Julius Caesar,
while the wisest friends of the people become more
firmly convinced every century that the empire which
Caesar founded was, by reason of the circumstances, the
best possible government for the Romans of that and
the succeeding times ; — the surest guaranty that the
main benefits of. ancient civilization should be preserved
for the human race. And as there has now and then
been something of substantial good in even absolute
government, there has also been good to the slave in
his slavery. Surely it was an improvement of the cap
tor and a bettering of the condition of the prisoner of
war, not to barbecue the latter, as was the custom for
ages, but to have him work for a master. Perhaps
the fabulist Msop had been a slave. Terence, a great
Roman dramatist, surely had been, Horace's father
had been one. It may well be true that it was slavery
that gave each one of these three immortals his oppor-

344 The Brothers' War
tunity. The more familiar you become with ancient
history the larger you estimate the number of those to
have been who as slaves got many of the benefits of
Greek and Roman civilization, which benefits they after
wards transmitted to free descendants. I need not repeat
what I have already told — how the negroes in the mass
were advantaged by transfer from slavery in Africa to
slavery in America, But do let me inquire, would
Professor DuBois have ever outstripped aU the white
children in a New England school, graduated creditably
from two American universities, studied at the univer
sity of Berhn, acquired the degree of Master of Arts
and then that of Doctor of Philosophy, been made in
sociology fellow of Harvard and assistant of the univer
sity of Pennsylvania, become president of the American
Negro Academy, got the professorship of economics
and history in Atlanta University, and pushed forward
as an author into prominent and most respectable
place; all before he was thirty-six years old — would
Professor DuBois have surpassed this briUiant career, if an
" evil, Dutch trader " had not seized his " grandfather's
grandmother — two centuries ago " ? ^ If the transfer just
mentioned had not been made what would now be Fred
Douglass, Booker Washington, Richard, R. Wright, Pro
fessor DuBois, Bishop Turner, and other great negroes,
their good works and glory? Would Hayti have ar
ranged for some of its young men to be trained in farming
at Tuskegee? more especially do I ask, would negroes
educated at Tuskegee be now teaching the missionaries
how to christianize the Africans of Togoland? Who
would now be arousing people north and south in behalf
ofthe race? and where could nine millions of blacks be
found — or even half a miUion — as far above the African
level of to-day as ours?
J The Soiils of Black Folk, 254.

The Curse and Blessing of Slavery 345
My conclusion is that the whites and the negroes of the
south ought to learn wisdom and interchange their holi
days and great annual rejoicings. The former ought to
keep the anniversary of the emancipation proclamation
as the southern 4th of July, and the blacks ought to
observe that day by wearing mourning and eating bitter
herbs. Further, the negroes of America ought to cele
brate the day when the Dutch ship landed the first
Africans at Jamestown as the dawn of their hopes as a
people.

CHAPTER XV
THE BROTHERS ON EACH SIDE WERE TRUE PATRIOTS
AND MORALLY RIGHT — BOTH THOSE WHO FOUGHT
FOR THE UNION, AND THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR
THE CONFEDERACY
THE proposition of the heading has really been
demonstrated in the foregoing chapters, I feel
that the demonstration should have impressive
enforcement. It wiU surely be for the great good of our
country if the brothers of each sectipn be truly con
vinced that those of the other were morally right in the
slavery struggle from beginning to end.
Let us begin by noting the ambiguity of the word
" right," Something may be right in expediency, pohcy)
or reason, and yet wrong ethically. Likewise something
may be a mistake and wrong in policy while it is right
in morals. General Sherman was a conspicuous exam
ple of the almost universal proneness to confound right
in the sense first mentioned above with it in the other.
The two are widely different — not merely in degree, but
in kind. That which is right or wrong in expediency
is decided by the understanding — by the, head ; that
which is right or wrong ethically is decided for every
human being by his own conscience — by his heart. To
try with all my might to do a particular thing may be
my highest moral duty ; to try with all your might to
keep me from doing it may be yours. The brothers
who set up the southern confederacy and defended it,
the brothers who warred upon it and overturned it —

Brothers on each Side True Patriots 347
they were on each side sublimely conscientious; for
every one — to use the high word of Lincoln — was do
ing the right as God gave him to see it. No people ever
waged a war with deeper and more solemn conviction of
duty than did our northern brothers. Rome, rising un-
vanquished from every great victory of Hannibal, much
as she has been most justly lauded by foremost historians,
fell behind them in supreme effort — in undaunted per
severance in spite of disaster after disaster until the diffi
culty insuperable was overcome. We of the south
should be proud of this unparalleled achievement of our
brothers. Most of all should we be proud of the com
plete self-abnegation and unwavering obedience to con
science with which they waded a sea of blood, for the
welfare of future generations rather than their own, I
am glad to observe that many who most affectionately
remember the lost cause have come at last to concede
without qualification that the restoration of the union by
force of arms was morally right. But I note that as yet
only a few at the north — men like Dr, Lyman Abbott, Mr.
Charles F. Adams, and Professor Wendell — have learned
that the south, in all that she did in " The Great War," ^
was likewise morally right. To show that the confeder
ates were exemplary champions of a legitimate govern
ment, I need not repeat what I have said above when I
told how southern nationahzation had given them a
country of their own as dear to them and as much
mistress of their consciences as the union was to the
northern people. If there are those who cannot bring
themselves to allow the all-potent coercion of the na
tionalization mentioned as justification, and who still
1 In an address mentioned in the next footnote Major Joseph B. Cum
ming rightly insists that this is the proper name for what is called " the
American Civil War " with some show of justification, and " the war of
rebellion " without any justification whatever.

348

The Brothers' War

think of us as traitors and rebels, I beg them to give
due consideration to the feehngs with which the south
erner now looks back upon his life in the confederate
army. I call a most convincing witness to testify. I do
not know a man who ever followed what his conscience
pronounced right more faithfully, who was truer to the
better traditions of the old south, and who was a more
devoted soldier in the brothers' war, nor do I know
another who now draws from every class in his com
munity more respect for real manhood and honesty.
All who know him will believe his word against an ora
cle or an angel. Here is what he said thirty-seven years
after the close of the war :
" That period of my life is the one with which I am the most
nearly satisfied. A persistent, steady effort to do my duty — an
effort persevered in in the midst of privation, hardship, and danger.
If ever I was unselfish, it was then. If ever I was capable of self-
denial, it was then. If ever I was able to trample on self-indul
gence, it was then. If ever I was strong to raake sacrifices, even
unto death, it was in those days ; and if I were called upon to
say on the peril of ray soul, when it hved its highest life, when
it was least faithless to true raanhood, when it was raost loyal to
the best part of man's nature, I would answer, ' It was when I
followed a battle-torn flag through its shifting fortune of victory
and defeat,'
My corarades, how easy it is to name the word that charac
terizes and strikes the keynote of that time and should explain
our pride to all the world — self sacrifice — that spirit and that
conduct which raise poor mortals nearest to divinity. Oh, God
in heaven, what sacrifices did we not raake ! How our very
heart strings were torn as we turned from our home, our parents,
our children ! , . , How poor we were ! How ragged ! How
hungry I When I recall the light-heartedness, the courage, the
cheerfulness, the fidelity to duty which lived and flourished under
such circumstances, frora the bottom of my heart I thank God
that for four long years I wore, if not briUiantly, at least faithfully

Brothers on each Side True Patriots 349
and steadfastly, in camp and bivouac, in advance and retreat,
on the march and on the battlefield, the uniform of a confeder
ate soldier." ^
The passage just quoted most truly expresses the
feelings with which the southern people stood by their
cause and now look back upon the support which they
gave it. In this matter their word will be taken by
everybody. Their actions before, during, and ever since
the war speak louder than their word. There can be
no doubt that in founding the Confederate States and
waging the resulting war everything they did was coun
seUed by the most tender and enlightened conscience.
Bear in mind how they clung to Davis and how they
StiU remember him, winning the precious eulogy
" — he that can endure
To follow with allegiance a fallen lord
Does conquer him that did his master conquer,
And earns a place i' the story."
Bear in mind how truly they keep Memorial Day. The
love which the south gives Davis and her dead soldiers
protests to all the earth and heaven the righteousness of
her lost cause. Calmly, serenely, confidently she awaits
future judgment upon her love. It needs that all the
north appreciate this fealty as the height of heaven-
chmbing virtue.
The real soldiers of each section — those who — to use
a confederate saying — were " in the bullet department,"
and fighting every day, learned great regard for their foes ;
and when the war ended they became at once advocates of
speedy reconciliation. And the non-combatants on each
side felt far less resentment towards the actual fighters
1 Address of Major Joseph B. Cumming, entitled " The Great War,"
before Camp 435 of United Confederate Veterans, Augusta, Ga., Memo
rial Day, igo2.

350 The Brothers' War
of the other than they did towards its political leaders.
It is a common error to overrate the accomplishment of
potent and ambitious men in tumultuous times. As the
world long ascribed meteorological phenomena to the
mutations of the moon, conspicuous above all things
else as the apparent cause, so most people now beheve
that revolutions are caused by the men who appear to
be leading. We have explained above that the only
effective leaders — even of revolutions — are those who
are the most completely led by the people. To lead, the
leader must keep on the tide and let it lead him. If he
makes serious effort to balk it, he is at once stranded as
a piece of drift thrown out of the current. AU of us —
both those north and those south of Mason and Dixon's
hne — ought to learn this truth thoroughly. The former
should correct their false judgments as to Calhoun,
Toombs, Yancey, and Davis ; the latter as to Sumner,
Garrison, and Phillips, It was but to be expected that
these false judgments would be cherished all through
what we may call the era of civil fury. That begins
with the excitement over the admission of California and
extends to the time after the war when the project
of giving a negro constituency the balance of pohtical
power in each southern State was abandoned. But now
as the brothers can look back upon those evil days with
at least the beginning of dispassionate calmness, the task
of convincing the whole people of each section that the
more prominent figures of the other in the era men
tioned were all true men and patriots, should be pushed
forward with his whole might by every one who loves
his country. It is not demanded that we claim too much
for them. To begin illustrating: Toombs's Tremont
Temple lecture on slavery is such an able and powerful
defence of the south that its reputation must forever
increase. Yet as we consider it now we see that

Brothers on each Side True Patriots 351
what he believed with aU his heart to be the perpetual
piUar and weal of his community was in fact its woe and
ruin. We see, as to Calhoun, that if he had but given
the resources of southern slavery against the implacable
oppugnancy of free labor, roused for decisive combat,
the sure and marvellous vision with which he searched
the innermost nature of money, he would have had to
acknowledge that the proud structure of southern society
was wholly builded upon sands. The rains descended
and the floods beat, and we saw the great fall. Of
course we must admit that had our leaders been endowed
with unerring prescience they ought to have warned us,
and striven heart and soul for compensated emancipa
tion. I need merely allude to State sovereignty, treated
fully above. We of the south now see that though in
advocating it we showed that the fathers were with us,
and thus got the better of the argument, yet that the
north was right in historical fact, and right also as to the
true interest and welfare of America. Thus I have in
dicated some important acknowledgments which we of
the south must make to our brothers of the north. Now
I must state some that they must make to us.
The root-and-branch abolitionists and many following
their lead interpreted the statement in the declaration
of independence that all men are created equal and
with inalienable liberty as both intentional and actual
condemnation of the slavery then existing in our country.
They shut their eyes to the significant fact that the same
document published to the world, as one of the causes
justifying the solemn act therein proclaimed, that the
king had " excited domestic insurrections amongst us " ;
which means he had instigated the slaves to rise against
their masters. Many of the signers owned slaves then
and to the end of their lives afterwards. Palpably the
declaration did not mean to say that the negroes in

2S2 The Brothers' War
America were unjustly held in slavery, but did mean to
say that inciting them — as John Brown with the ap
proval of PhiUips, Garrison, and such, afterwards sought
to do — to gain their liberty by insurrection was inhuman
and atrocious. These root-and-branch abohtionists con
fidently alleged that slavery in America was proscribed
by the christian rehgion. Yet Jesus, the founder, who
definitely reprehended every particular sin, never once
denounced slavery, Paul, or some one else, whom the
canon accepts as speaking with the authority of Jesus,
says: "All who are in the position of slaves should
regard their masters as deserving ofthe greatest respect,
so that the name of God, and our teaching may not be
maligned. Those who have christian masters should
not think less of them because they are brothers, but
on the contrary they should serve them all the better,
because those who are to benefit by their good work
are dear to them as their fellow-christians. Those are
the things to insist upon in your teaching. Any one
who teaches otherwise, and refuses his assent to sound
instruction — the instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ —
and to the teaching of rehgion, is puffed up with conceit,
not really knowing anything, but having a morbid crav
ing for discussions and arguments." ^
The passage last quoted — to which several others
from the new testament, almost as strong, can be
added — demonstrates that Christianity did not disap
prove of slavery. Further, as I have already suggested,
the slavery not rebuked by Jesus and his apostles was
mainly that of kin in blood and race, of those who had
been in a measure free themselves or descendants of the
free. The slaves of the south were far remote in blood,
1 I Timothy vi. 1-4. I have quoted the Twentieth Century Testament
because of its extremely faithful version. Of course the italics are mine.

Brothers on each Side True Patriop 353

and their native condition so bad that American slavery
was for them elevation and great improvement.
The new testament, the declaration of independence,
and the federal constitution — surely three very respec
table authorities, in America at least — stand together
in solid phalanx. They clearly demonstrate that the
charge that southern slavery was heinously wrong in
itself, and that the masters were wicked man-stealers and
kidnappers, made for a long while in every corner of
the north, was mere opprobrium and abuse. Both sec
tions ought to learn that there was nothing in negro
slavery to shock the moral sense, but that on the con
trary it was in its general effect of the utmost benefi
cence to the slave. Both ought to learn also that the
white-hot zeal with which the institution was fought was
due mainly to these things :
I. Free labor had long been in an uncompromising
hand-to-hand struggle with slave labor. Years before
this commenced the employing class had subconsciously
divined it was far more profitable to hire the laborer
only when his work was needed, and then let him go
until he was needed again. The worker with the ad
vance of democracy had become more and more hos
tile to a system coercing his labor and denying him all
political and civil rights. The co-operation of employer
and laborer had expelled slavery of white men from
Europe, The feeling towards slavery had become one
of decided opposition,
2, In America the opposition to slavery was power
fully re-enforced, first, by the new cause the latter gave
in competing with free labor for the unsettled public
domain, and then in its operation to nationalize the
south into a separate federation. With this combined
the growing conception among the northern people of
the negro as a man who had reached the stage of devel-
23

354 The Brothers' War
opment characterizing the typical white. This huge
mistake, hugged to their bosoms and championed with
unflagging zeal by the ablest and most influential root-
and-branch abolitionists, had a prodigious propagandic
effect. It identified the cause of the negro slave, whom
evolution had not yet made ready for liberty, with that
of the oppressed European who had been long ready
for it; and consequently that cause was continuously
advocated with the passion which the French revolution
had started against human inequality. The root-and-
branch abolitionists at last excited a pseudo-moral
paroxysm among thousands at the north and kept it
increasing for a long while.
Facts which cannot now be gainsaid plainly justify me
in denying that conscientious conviction was the real
primary motive. The northern and southern churches
split, all the wisest and best of the former standing
against, all those of the latter for slavery. You must
see that their moral convictions were secondary, not
primary motives ; that some superior power had given
to one side to regard slavery as wrong and to the other
to regard it as right ; that it really had given the two
sides differing consciences. If you but invoke the uni
versal history of mankind this fact now under considera
tion will cease to appear marvellous. You will find it
to be the rule that the struggle for existence develops
in every community an instinct which resistlessly
prompts to the maintenance of its great economic inter
est. This instinct is the special preserver of the family,
of the neighborhood, of the country. It is not strange
that that which gives sustenance and comfort to one's
family, and what he sees all the best of his neighbors
using as he does, will seem unquestionably right to him.
It is not strange that, in such a serious conflict of inter
est as the intersectional one of dividing a vast empire

Brothers on each Side True Patriots 355
between such fell competitors as ¦ free labor and slave
labor, each side will differ diametrically in conscience as
to right and wrong. Also it is not strange that they
should lose temper, shower abuse upon their opponents,
and fill the land with mutual accusations of heinous
m.oral offences.
It is just as far wrong to regard the controversy
between anti- and pro-slavery men — which was at bot
tom but a quarrel between north and south at first over
the division of the Territories between the free labor
system and the slave labor system, and later over the
other question whether a slave republic should divide
the continent with the United States — as a contest over
a moral question, as it would be to make either the
American or the French revolution such a contest. All
three — the intersectional struggle as to slavery and the
two revolutions — were mainly impelled by a desire of
each side in every one to better or hold on to its material
resources — that is, the leading impulsion was economic.
Of course the combatants on each side claimed that they
themselves were right and their adversaries wrong in
morals. The rencounter between free labor and slave
labor was very much like that now on between capitalists
and labor organizations. Note how each side denounces
the conduct of the other, alleging it to be against moral
justice. The most superficial observer discerns that the
real cause of difference between them is not one of con
science, but one of interest. We ought to understand
that the crimination of the root-and-branch abolitionist
and the recrimination of the fire-eater were each but
stage thunder. The southern master must be wholly
exonerated from the charge that in working his slave he
committed moral offence against the dearest American
rights ; the claim for the African, who was in a far lower
circle of development, of equal civU and political privi-

356 The Brothers' War
leges with the white must be disallowed ; and it be fully
conceded that the southern people, leaders and all, were
but doing their conscience-commanded duty throughout.
Also we of the south must learn that the root-and-
branch abolitionist, even in his wildest moments — Sum
ner refusing in the United States senate to show respect
to Butler's gray hairs, Wendell PhiUips degrading Wash
ington below Toussaint, Garrison denouncing the slavery-
protecting constitution as a covenant with death and an
agreement with hell, John Brown's raid into Virginia —
was just as conscientious as Robert Lee was when he
was defending the soil of his native State, They were
each irresistibly constrained by the powers working to
save the union to think his particular action right and
the highest patriotism.
When the quarrel is over, when the broil and the feud
have been fought out and the survivors have shaken
hands, when the lawsuit has become a thing of the past
and the litigants have renewed their old relations, no
wise and good man keeps repeating the accusations of
bad faith and of unrighteous conduct which he passion
ately hurled against his adversary during the variance.
Rather he confesses to himself, "I wronged him when I
said those hot words ; " and his repentance does not bring
complete peace until he has found his brother and taken
all of them back.
If it only could be, the nation ought to have a great
reunion, a feast of reconcilement, where, with proper
solemnities, the people of each section, with their fore
fathers and leaders, should be fully and finally excul
pated as to everything done for or against slavery by
the people of the other section. It is plain that both
ought to forget and forgive. They ought to do stUl
more. They ought to compete each in utmost effort
to vindicate the favorites and loved ones of the other

Brothers on each Side True Patriots 357
the more intelligently, and to admire and praise them
the more enthusiastically. This would be to bring the
millennium nearer, and give our country "a nobleness
in record upon " all others. It only needs for this
consummation to cast aside the remnant of greatly
diminished prejudice, and make a brief study of a small
volume of material evidence and of the ordinary princi
ples which guide the conduct ofthe good citizen. Such
study will show that southerner and northerner through
out their fell encounter have each the very highest claims
to the respect and love of the entire nation.
What a golden deed it was of President McKinley
when, December 14, 1898, fully using a rare oppor
tunity, he spake in his high place to the members of the
Georgia legislature this message of reunion :
' ' Sectional fines no longer mar the map of the United States,
Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each
other. Fraternity is the national anthem, sung by a chorus of
forty-five States and our Territories at home and beyond the
seas. The union is once raore the coramon altar of our love
and loyalty, our devotion and sacrifice. The old flag again
waves over us in peace with new glories, which your sons and
ours have this year added to its sacred folds. What cause we
have for rejoicing, saddened only because so raany of our brave
men fell on the field or sickened and died from hardship and
exposure, and others returning bring wounds and disease from
which they will long suffer. The memory of the dead will be
a precious legacy, and the disabled will be the nation's care.
Every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war
is a tribute to American valor. And while when those graves
were raade we differed widely about the nature ofthis governraent,
these differences have been settled by the arbitrament of arms.
The tirae has now come, in the evolution of sentiment and feel
ing, under the providence of God, when in the spirit of frater
nity we should share with you the care of the graves of the
confederate soldiers. The cordial feeling now happily existing

358 The Brothers' War
between the north and south prompts this gracious act. If it
needs further justification, it is found in the gallant loyalty to
the union and the flag so conspicuously shown in the year just
passed by the sons and grandsons of these heroic dead."
By the favor given Fitzhugh Lee, Joe Wheeler, and
other old confederates, and his earnest and successful
efforts for universal amnesty to all who had helped our
cause, Mr. McKinley had already won the hearts of the
southern people. This speech increased our love a hun
dred fold. We repeated the " soft words " over and
over, companioning them with
" O they banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead."
On each one of our three subsequent Memorial Days
during his life he was thought of as tenderly as the
precious dead. And since the death of Jefferson Davis
there has been no sorrow of the south equal to that
over his assassination. This is the age of funerals that
crown with supreme popular honor the doers of high
deeds for country and race. The imposing obsequies
given the president, the demonstrations in his own sec
tion, and those in foreign lands, have rarely been out
done. But he had a greater glory. It was the genuine
lamentation over him that day by reconciled brothers
and sisters in every southern household. You that
know history better, tell me when, and where a whiter
and sweeter flower was ever laid upon a coffin.
Let all of us on each side of the old dividing line
strive without ceasing to give the good work which the
great peacemaker begun so well its fit consummation.
And replacing hate and anger with love, fiction with
fact, and false doctrine with true, let the people of the
north and the people of the south join heads, con
sciences, and hearts to ascertain what is our duty both to
negro and white, and then join hands and do that duty.

CHAPTER XVI
THE RACE QUESTION — GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY
I. T ^^ENSE fogs from various sources have settled
I 1 over this subject. The root-and-branch abo-
Jl^  ^ litionists have made many believe that eman
cipation of the slaves was the great object of the north
in the brothers' war. The authors and defenders of the
three amendments — especially of the fifteenth — have
made many others believe that the inferiority ofthe south
ern negro is the effect of American slavery ; that the cause
having been removed by emancipation he became at
once ready and well prepared for the exercise of political
privileges ; and that the practical denial to him of this
exercise is a heinous crime of the southern whites. Pol
iticians want southern negro ballots in national conven
tions and the northern negro vote in elections. The
bounty, both pubhc and private, founding, sustaining,
and multiplying colleges, schools, and other negro edu
cational institutions, finds a growing host of beneficiaries
— such as site-owners, who scheme to sell for two prices,
those who want to be presidents, principals, professors,
teachers, even janitors and floor-scrubbers, schoolbook
publishers, and still others — who would keep it copiously
flowing ; and so they all magnify the ability of the typical
negro and the benefit to him ofthe institutions mentioned.
Respectable and influential magazines and newspapers,
with an increasing number of negro readers, really be
lieve that very many more can be added by a little
effort, and so they champion what these readers favor.
Persuasive speakers and writers like Mr, Edgar Gardner

360 The Brothers' War
Murphy, unconsciously influenced either by employers
who would always have a wage-depressing lever at
command, or by those who would have Cuffee do what
they ought themselves to do, overrate the importance
of negro labor as a southern resource. And the last fog
makers whom I shall mention are the inveterate opti
mists — amiable beyond expression — who wiU not
admit that there is now any serious menace to either
race in the south.
The several fogs enumerated overlay one another in
an aggregate too opaque for the uncleared eye to pierce.
As examples ot their obscuring effect, consider anything
said in the census as to the negro, and the articles
" Negro Education," " Negro in America," and especially
" Hayti " in the Encyclopedia Americana lately published.
The authors ofthe fifteenth amendment, in making voters
and rulers of late negro slaves, repeated what had been
done in Hayti, It seems therefore that the Encyclo
pedia must tell nothing of the island but what is good.
So we read in the relevant article that it abolished
slavery in 1804, being " the first country to rid humanity
of such a sad practice ; " that there education " is com
pulsory and gratuitous," a sixth of the revenues being
devoted to it, and the most pleasant things concerning
rehgion, liberal naturahzation practice, natural and
artificial products, railroads, telegraph, and telephone.
One without other information would surely think the
community greatly advanced and blessed. Its true con
dition is thus told in Brockhaus by somebody who does
not swear by the fifteenth amendment : " It may be said
in general that the country is sparsely populated, partly
because of incessant civil wars, partly because of a high
infant death rate." ^
1 "Where Black Rules White," by Hugo Erichsen, in the Pilgrim for
July, 1905, deserves the title " Hayti As It Is." The Americana article
ought to be conspicuously labelled " Hayti Whitewashed."

The Race Question — Introductory 361
These fogs must be lifted. Great harm to each race
wUl follow if we persist in keeping the facts concealed,
2, Do not confound the feeling that you are different
from Jew, European, protestant, catholic, absolutist,
socialist, anarchist, or any other white, with the feeling
that you are different from negroes ; for to do this is to
keep you from all clear thinking upon our present sub
ject. The former are all of our own race, and we can
and do intermarry with them to the improvement of our
population. If the per cent of negroes was no greater
in the south than in the north, fusion could not be a very
grave matter; for should it become complete, our lily-
white would not be diminished bythe fraction of a shade.
But to absorb the eight millions of them now in our
section would make us chocolate, if not mulatto. Their
color is the smallest racial objection. Although their
schooling for two centuries and more in American slavery
has elevated them — as Mr, Tillinghast proves — far
above what they were in native slavery, still their cranial
capacity, brain convolutions, and moral, intellectual, and
social development — inherited without fault of theirs —
from West African ancestors, are still greatly inferior to
ours. Remote generations of our forefathers were much
lower than the present American negroes, as Darwin
admits in the oft quoted passage, describing his first
sight of the Fuegians, We should never forget that the
Caucasian was once on a level with those Fuegians,
The negroes when they came to America were little
better. And yet they have gone up so much higher, it
is plain that evolution, if only permitted to work in a
proper environment, will do for them what it has done
for us.
But the whites cannot consent to intermarriage. That
would greatly benefit the negroes. While some who
have never had good opportunity of actual observation

362 The Brothers' War
confidently contend that there are no backward or lower
races, we southerners have noted all our lives that a very
great majority of the negroes who climb above the level
and prosper in occupation, have a large admixture of
white blood. It would be an enormous rise for the mass
if fusion were assured. But for us — why, we should
disinherit our children of their share in the grand destiny
of the Caucasian race if we made average negroes their
fathers or mothers.
Southern dread of amalgamation is not to be scouted
as a mere bugbear. Think of the half-breeds that lined
all the border between the States and the Indians ; of
how the whites have mixed with native races in Mexico,
Central and South America; of white and negro inter
mingling in Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, in the United States,
and especially in the south. Think of whites and
negroes now legally married and marrying in the neigh
boring States of the Union. In 1902, eight white women
were living with negro husbands in Xenia, Ohio ; ^ and
there were children of all these mixed marriages except
one,2 Consider also that prominent negroes advocate
these marriages, Douglass had a white wife. He
preached that the American negro must set before
himself assimilation as his true goal. Professor DuBois
is really a disciple of Douglass, as appears from some
of his utterances. We give in a footnote what another
prominent negro has recently said in pubhc* The
1 Bureau of Labor Bulletin, No. 48, September, 1903, pp. 1006, 1013,
1019. 2 Id. 1020.
* Bishop Lucius H. Holsey, D.D., of the colored M. E. Church, is
much more in touch and sympathy with the negro masses than Professor
DuBois. Here is something recently said by him :
" As long as the two races Uve in the same territory in immediate con
tact, their relations will be such as to intermingle in that degree that half-
bloods, quarter-bloods and a mongrel progeny will result. This is not only

The Race Question — Introductory 363
moment that the negro became an influential factor in
southern pohtics, a real agitation against the anti-inter
marriage laws would begin. There would come a small
number of negroes, controUing votes, of so much prop
erty and respectabihty that their children would be re
garded as eligible matches by some of the poorer and
more destitute whites. Marriages between such, solemn
ized on a visit to a State permitting, would occur. And
our laws last mentioned would be more and more evaded
and their repeal become gradually more probable-
When they had won political equahty with the patri
cians, the Roman plebeians repealed the prohibition of
intermarriage which the former had stubbornly main
tained. These two orders were of the same race. There
fore intermarriage could not be the boon to the plebeians
that it would now be to the southern negro, lifting him
up as it would do. If he has opportunity, he will strug
gle for it more resolutely than the plebeians did, A small
number of negroes have already been assimilated in
Ar]iierica, and a few more are still to be assimilated, as
^o^nsjfa now, but is destined to annihilate the true typical ante-bellum
( type, and put in his place a stronger, a longer lived, and a more
t5-Saxon-like homogeneous race. In other words, the negro to come
hot be the negro of the emancipation proclamation, but he will be
I Anglo-Saxonized Afro-American. It seems true, as has been said,
'No race can look the Anglo-Saxon in the face and live.' Certainly no
other race can hold its own in his immediate presence. Being in imme
diate contact and underrating the mental and moral virtues of others and
exercising a sovereignty over them, his opportunities are enlarged to
n)ake other races his own in consanguinity. This he never fails to do."
Address before the National Sociological Society at the Lincoln Temple
Congregational Church, The Possibilities of the Negro in Symposium,
107 (Atlanta, Ga.).
In the same address, just a little above the quotation just made, this
occurs : " Legal intermarriage in the south, although not wrong in its
consummation, is a raatter as yet undebatable, and belongs only to the
future." Id. 107.
These words of Bishop Holsey are weighty proof that the negroes
strongly desire and expect amalgamation.

364 The Brothers' War
I shaU explain later on. This sure deliverance from
the destruction which now threatens is more and more
sought after by the intelligent few. And if the vote of
the negroes was allowed to count, it would not be long
until, under the example and appeal of their leaders, all
of them would be making for that haven of refuge, Mon-
grelism beats upon the border all around the south; it
threatens to burst forth from an exhaustless source
within. We know we must keep it out as Holland
does the ocean. Subconsciously discerning that fusion
would probably follow the entrance of the negro into
government, the whites have made of the race primary
and other measures de facto disfranchising him, dikes
against the filthy waters of mongrelism which they would
not have to wash over themselves. This is not because
we hate the negro. We love and cherish him. It is not-
to be demanded of us that we sacrifice ourselves, our
children, and our children's children for his sake. We
will gladly do all that friends — nay, that near relatives
— can with justice ask of one another, to better his con
dition and rescue him. We cannot give him political
power at the cost of our degeneration.
I would enforce the foregoing contents of this section
with these profoundly true and very forcible words of
a northern man, now residing in Columbia, South
Carolina :
" A word about race hatred, race revulsion, or race antipathy.
Many people in the north believe the devil is the author of it,
and sorae people in the south are more devoted to it than to
religion. Race antipathy is really a race instinct, a moral anti
toxin developed by nature in the individual whose environment
involves constant and close contact with an inferior race in
large numbers. It works for the salvation of the purity of the
superior race." ^
1 Edward B. Taylor, The Outlook, July 16, 1904, p. 670,

The Race Question — Introductory 365
Professor DuBois says that "legal marriage is in
finitely better than systematic concubinage and pros
titution," ^ And some writers seem to think it would be
well to coerce miscegenators to legitimate their relations
by intermarrying. An innocent girl — a maid — un
done; all good men and women are agreed that her
seducer should be made to marry her,^ But that is
only where the marriage would be tolerated by society.
Thus it would not make man and wife of parties to an
incestuous liaison. No morahst contends that one who
has received a favor from a public woman is under
obhgation to become her husband. The miscegenation
common is that between white men and promiscuous
black women. How idle is the attempt to put these
cases on a par with that of the ruin of a virtuous woman.
And Professor DuBois could not have rightly weighed
the words in which he represents them to be as criminal
as those horrible offences which especially provoke
lynching ; that is, that the negro woman who consented
most willingly to the embraces of her master was as
foully wronged by him as her mistress would be by a
slave who outraged her against her will,^ No, Inter
marriage of these mixed lovers is not demanded by any
principle of justice. But the public weal does demand
that such a tremendous evil as amalgamation be kept
off by the surest and most decisive measures. It is
playing with plague and curse unspeakable for us of the
south to permit the existence of any condition which
tends even in the slightest degree to legalize inter
marriage.* 1 The Souls of Black Folk, io6.
' See Exodus xxii. i6.
« The Souls of Black Folk, io6.
* May 6, 1905. Having finished my work I read two days ago, " The
Color Line. A Brief in behalf of the Unborn." By William Benjamin
Smith N. Y., 1905. It ably and vividly explains the transcendent im-

366 The Brothers' War
3. Writers still under the speU ofthe root-and-branch
abolitionists who were wont to exalt Toussaint, the
Haytian general, above our Washington, strain hard to
conceal the real cause of the lamentable conditions now
prevailing in Hayti and San Domingo, One tells us
that because of the many mountains, there being no
railroad system, separate communities are defended by
almost impregnable natural barriers, and as neighbor
ing peoples are hereditary enemies, there is always war
somewhere. The remedy recommended is to build
railroads in the island as the English have done in
Jamaica, Another writer tells us that we must not
jump to the conclusion that all the inhabitants of
San Domingo are degraded negroes; that while the
population of the interior are sunk in ignorance, super
stition, and barbarism, yet in the capital and the coast
towns there are some people of apparently lily-white
strain, well educated, speaking two or three languages,
who supply the mulatto republic with generals and
political leaders. The masses of these Dominicans are
very patriotic, and would indeed do finely if they were
not divided into hostile parties by self-seeking agitators.
And you may consult many others who keep back the
real explanation. There is one cardinal fact which
stands forth in the history of Hayti as prominently as
portance of keeping the blood of Caucasians in America uncontamiriated
with that of the African, and demonstrates that to do this the color line
must be rigidly maintained between negroid as well as coal-black, on one
side, and white on the other. The utter impossibility of making the man
of a particular race like the man of another extremely remote one by
even the most careful education is shown with startling effect. The
inability of the black to hold his own against white competition, and
his gradual and sure expulsion is proved by overwhelming evidence.
The book is useful as an introduction to all the literature of the subject.
The only fault that I note is its excessive warmth and combativeness —
especially in the first half. With the dispassionate serenity of Mr,
Tillinghast, it would have been perfect.

The Race Question — Introductory 367
slavery does in the train of American events which
brought on the brothers' war. It is this: soon after
the outbreak of the French revolution the mulattoes
were accorded pohtical privileges, and then a littie later
— it was in 1794 — France equalized the negroes of her
colonies just freed with the whites in pohtical and civil
rights. This made the negroes of Hayti, who were in
intelligence and development somewhat below those of
the south when the latter were emancipated, full-fledged
self-governing republicans. The whites were but few.
What of them were not massacred at once by the blacks
fled for their lives. The history of both the Haytian
and the Dominican republic (the latter achieving its
independence in 1 844) is the same. Their people make
a hell on earth of the most beautiful and fertile of islands.
As slavery was plainly the cause of the southern con
federacy, the grant of political power to the mulattoes
and negroes not at all qualified to use it is just as
plainly the cause and sole author of chronic civil war
and anarchy in Hayti and San Domingo.
This enfranchisement of semi-barbarians was from the
'prentice hand of a new repubhc, without any expe
rience in free institutions. The English did far better
when they emancipated the Jamaica negro by the act
of 1833. They gave him full protection of his liberty,
person, and contract and property rights. Five sixths
of the 800,000 of its present population are colored
people or blacks. These — to quote the Encyclopedia
Americana — " have no share in the government what
ever," It further says : " The Jamaica negroes are
fairly good laborers when well fed ; the menial work
of the island is performed by them, and they are re
garded as cheerful, honest, and respectful servants,"
This happy condition of quiet and content is not due
to the fact that the railroads prevent settlement of the

368

The Brothers' War

negroes in separate neighboring communities to quarrel
and fight with one another ; but it is because the Eng
lish never allowed them to get the taste of blood as the
French permitted to their brothers in Hayti ; they have
not been incited by unseasonable pohtical power to
license and riot.
The negroes of Jamaica are evidently bettering in
condition slowly. They need only enough of Booker
Washingtons to rise much faster, I beg attention to
this comparison of Jamaica and Hayti, made by a well-
informed negro, a native of the former, who lived there
until some nine years ago, and who has lately lived
several years in Hayti : ^
"They [the negroes of Jamaica] aim at rising, but many
make the mistake of not rising in but out of labor : the raost
inteUigent flock to the professions, civil service, &c. Few tum
their steps to what is for the real upbuilding of the country,
agriculture, that for which it is best adapted.
The people of Hayti and San Domingo are of a political turn
of mind, and sacrifice everything for politics, or are made to
do so. That island produces as fine coffee and cocoa as can
be found anywhere, but the most intelligent keep out and de
prive these crops of scientific cultivation,"
The negroes of Hayti and San Domingo spurred by
their politics into perpetual fighting and bloodshed;
the negroes of Jamaica peaceful and ripe for industrial
training, which it seems the English have resolved to
give them — if Booker Washington had to choose one
of the two islands for his future activity, do you not
know that he would decide he could do great things in
Jamaica and nothing in the other?
The thirteenth amendment emancipated the slaves in-
1 The quotations which immediately follow are from a letter of J. B. A.
Walker, dated Tuskegee, Ala., July 27, 1904, written to S. H. Comings,
who has kindly permitted me to make use of it.

The Race Question — Introductory 369
stantly and not gradtially, the fourteenth made them
complete citizens of the United States and of the
particular State wherein they reside, and 'the fifteenth
practically conferred unlimited suffrage upon them.
The Hayti, and not the Jamaica, precedent was followed.
The brothers that had conquered were blind from civil
fury: and they had been brought by the root-and-
branch abolitionists into full persuasion that the south
ern negroes were ready for and entitled to these high
privileges. By the amendments they confidently tried
to railroad the African slave in one instant of time up
the long steep to the topmost Caucasian who had
established liberty and self-government over a conti
nent, and made it perpetual. We pray that they be
forgiven, for they knew not what they were doing. Had
the white population of the south been at the time as
disproportionate to the black as it was in Hayti in 1794,
it would also have been massacred. But the section was
full of late confederate soldiers. When the fates had
decided against the dear cause for which they had
fought for four years they accepted peace in good faith.
Now their conquerors turned loose a horde of black
plunderers to despoil the little that war had left. When
I read Professor Brown's inability to say whether the
work of the Ku-Klux was justifiable or not,^ I thought of
Christ's asking if it was right to do good on the sabbath
day. The lesson to be learned here is that while it is now
too late to make the thirteenth amendment what it ought
to have been, and there is perhaps no need to alter the
fourteenth, yet there must be abrogation of the fifteenth
as to the great mass of southern negroes. In fact this
has really come already through the white primary.
1 Lower South in Am. Hist. 223. When Professor Brown read "The
Clansman" doubtless his hesitation ended,
24

37° The Brothers' War
Booker Washington is a great, a decisive authority
on this question. He counsels the negroes to eschew
politics. This is wise. It is the solid interest of the
negro masses that they accept the inevitable ; just as
the south gave up slavery when we could hold on to it
no longer.
4. The southern negroes have split into what I sh^ll
roughly distinguish as an upper and a lower class. The
former includes property owners and such as are in
higher occupations, trades, and professions. I do not
believe that the entire class contains three per cent, but
I shall take it to be five per cent of the whole negroes
in the section. Exact accuracy here is not important.
It needs only to be remembered that the lower class
outnumbers the other many times over. They are mov
ing in different directions. The dominant inclination of
the upper class is towards incorporation as citizens,
exercising all the rights of the white. The dominant
inchnation of the lower class is towards segregation in
their own circles. A true representative of the former
would always travel in a white railroad car, while a true
representative of the other is perfectly content with the
shabbiest Jim Crow, if the whites be kept out of it.
Thousands in the south never think of any negroes but
those of the lower, thousands in the north never think
of any but those in the upper class. The lower class
subsists mainly upon agricultural, domestic, and day la
bor. There is a rural and urban section of each one of
the two. The rural section of the upper class has little
promise of permanence and growth, but its urban section
seems to have securer foothold. For a while this urban
section will probably increase and rise in condition —
both slowly. This upper class is now steadily sending
some of its members from country and town, to settle
in the north. As I read the signs its destiny is ultimate

The Race Question — Introductory 371
dispersion over the entire country and gradual disap
pearance. The lower class settles downwards steadily.
The outlook for it is gloomy in the extreme.
5, Somewhere about 1890 — which year we may
regard as approximately beginning the manufacturing
era of the South — many whites in the section had
broken with the old ways and methods and resolved to
substitute their own for negro labor as far as possible.
These awakened men and women multiply. They are
pushing the lower class out of aU rural labor, and both
classes out of agriculture; and they are also pushing
some of the upper class out of the trades and more
important occupations in both town and country. Evi
dently the powers have decreed that the labor class of
the south shall be white and homogeneous with that of
the north. These piowers who delivered the white labor
ers of the west from the Chinese will also deliver the
white laborers of the south from the negroes,
6, There is soon to be a New Industrial South, in
which the most advanced machinery and laborers of the
very highest skill are to be chief factors. A little later
there is to be a still more important New Agricultural
South, In this, the empirical restorative methods of the
Chinese, which Liebig, in his day, showed to be ahead
of the world, must be far surpassed. Economy of the
enormous mass of fertile elements now washing into the
sea; adequate exploitation of the nitrogen of the air
and of all accessible mineral elements needet^ ; scientific
dairy industry, stock rearing, fruit culture, and all related
branches; farmers of the mo.st efficient training, and
laborers whose deft hands are the proper instruments of
the strongest brains — all these must combine to give
the south that perfect intensive culture which she will
add to her blessings of chmate and soil in order to sup
ply the fast growing demand of all the world outside for

372 The Brothers' War
her especial products. Further, as everything now
seems to indicate, the southern yield of the more impor
tant minerals and metals will lead that of the entire
country. Further again, the bulk of transcontinental
railroad traffic must be across the south on snow-free
routes, and the upbuilding which in time will follow
from this is as yet incalculable. And when the inter-
ocean canal connects us with the Pacific trade — what
new impetus will this give to our development ! What
needs and opportunities there will then be for skUled
labor, for inventive talent, for managerial ability, for
every element ofa most highly organized community of
unwontedly many diversified prospecting interests. The
demand will be for a vast population of the very best
strain and breed, knowing the best methods of physical,
moral, and self-subsisting education of their children,
out of whom will come the best of all workers and pro
ducers. To attempt to do the required tasks of the new
south of the near future and hold our own against the
competition of the world — to try to do these with negro
laborers, negro farmers, negro producers, negro employ
ers, would be like substituting the ox-wagon for the pres
ent railroad freight train. Nay, it would be more like
one with a wooden leg, and a millstone around his neck,
offering to run against a trained racer. The negro laborer,
farmer, manufacturer, and contractor show more clearly
every day that they are hopelessly outclassed in the
struggle with white competitors. As a body where
they now are they are becoming useless and an incubus.
They will soon be still more in the way, and a more
serious hindrance to southern development. They keep
back the immigration which is especially called for.
That is the immigration of northern and European
farmers, producers, and manufacturers of all kinds to
teach us their advanced methods, and the mo.st skiUed

The Race Question — Introductory 373
labor in every department to stimulate with example
our native white labor to its highest accomplishment.
The northern people would come south very largely if
there were no negroes here. Their desire to come
increases steadily, and so does our desire to have them
come. The whites of both sections naturally co-operate
more and more earnestly to effect their joint wishes.
The disinclination of the United States supreme court to
overturn the recent anti-negro amendments of the con
stitutions of southern States, and the palpably growing
favor showed these amendments at the north are very
significant signs that the south is to be made more to
the liking of northern settlers.
Since the last sentence was written that court has
ruled it to be a crime, punishable severely, to hold one
to the performance of a contract to pay his debt by
laboring for you,^ The average negro has no resource
but credit on the faith of such a contract. So soon as
it becomes generally known that he cannot be lawfully
held to its performance, the credit will be denied. As
has been suggested to me by an observant and far-seeing
man, the decision overturns the main pUlar of the
negro's subsistence. It will powerfully favor northern
immigration, as well as the substitution of white for
black labor — that is, if it is vigorously enforced.
7, I believe that the two races together, in the same
community as they are now in the south, are oil and
water. Meditate the course and portent of these facts.
Immediately upon emancipation the negroes set up
their own churches and schools; they manifested ap
proval of the separate passenger car for themselves,
politely hinting in season that the whites ought to be
kept out of it ; and they influenced the planter to re
move their cabins out of sight and hearing of the Big
1 Clyatt V. United States, March 13, 1905,

374 The Brothers' War
House, They showed a great disinclination, the men
to do agricultural work by the year for standing wages,
the women to hire as house servants. It was some
while before the whites really recognized this drift of
the negro towards segregation, when many of them —
especially the wives and mothers — gave the rein to
much unreasonable resentment. Now, if you but know
how to look, you will find everywhere the proofs of
deepening antagonism. The black driver will not see
even a white lady — not to mention a man — on the
crossing, but he will always see a negro of either sex.
The face of the white inconvenientiy stepping aside
flushes with momentary anger. If your colored servant
tells you there is a lady at the door you may know it is
a negro woman; he never calls a "white 'oman" a
lady. A negro woman is prone to make the most
prominent white lady give the street In Atlanta, a
negro man or a white boy cannot safely go at night
the former through the factory white settlement,
the latter through Summer Hill; a negro residence
quarter, I have been informed that where the mill
operatives of Anderson, South Carolina, have their
cottages, there is conspicuously posted, " Nigger, don't
let the sun go down on you here," I hear that the
same is true of certain places in the Texas Panhandle ;
also that a negro settlement in the Indian territory dis
plays a similar warning to the white man,^ Parties of
black and white chUdren meeting on unfrequented
streets of Atlanta nearly always exchange opprobrious
language, often throw stones at one another, and some
times fight — a proof so significant that, whenever I
see it, it always makes me serious. The most decided
change from old times that I note is that white society
everywhere proscribes mixed sexual intercourse and
1 Possibly this is the village of Boley, mentioned in the next chapter.

The Race Question — Introductory 375
the procreation of mulattoes with rapidly increasing
severity. The advocate of mixed marriages is more
and more regarded as a fiend. The white woman
seized by a negro man — how gladly would she change
place with the victim of the torturing savage or of the
tiger that would mangle and eat her alive ! This
menace is everywhere, and naturally it is magnified by
excited imagination. It increases in fact. The trial of
negroes for capital offences was given the superior
court of Georgia in 1850, From then until the end of
the brothers' war but two cases of rape of white women
by negroes are in the supreme court reports ; ^ and I
never heard of but two other cases occurring in that
time. But there have been many since. It steadily
becomes more frequent. Women more and more dread
to be left alone. And now there is hardly a man in the
Black Belt who, when he is to be a night away from
wife, daughters, mother, and sisters, without help at call,
does not have uncomfortable thoughts of the sooty
desecrator. The increasing effect of these multiplying
outrages and the increasing horror which they cause is
proved by a fact which ought to receive more intelligent
recognition from everybody. This fact is that lynching
of a negro for rape, and lately for other crimes of vio
lence against whites, whether in the south or in the
north, seems to be every time marked with a greater
outburst of popular fury. The public grows more
decidedly anti-negro. They give as little heed to the
appeals of the papers in these matters as they do to the
editorials always advocating the projects of the machine
and corporations. The mob sweeps aside the mihtary.
The military will not load its rifles. If they were loaded
it would probably refuse to fire, or would fire into the
1 They are Stephen, a slave, v. State, 2 Ga. 225 ; Jesse, a slave, v.
State, 20 Ga. 161.

376 The Brothers' War
air, A few exclaim against lawlessness, while it is plain
that the great mass of the whites do not really condemn
in their hearts.
Let us try to understand the real cause of these
things. The plainest parallel that occurs to me is the
riots and violence excited by attempts to execute the
fugitive slave law. The greatest of our southern states
men misunderstood. What they thought to be lawless
ness was in fact the struggle of nature by which the
social organism of the United States expelled all cause
of dissolution. These hostile demonstrations of the day
against negroes are, as they seem to me, far other than
acts of unenlightened and ignorant race prejudice, to
which some writers ascribe them. They indicate, I
think, another struggle of nature to expel a foreign and
death-breeding substance out of the American body
politic ; they are each the protest of the self-preserving
instincts against keeping the negro with us to counteract
our progress, to debase our politics, to corrupt our
blood, to injure us more than even successful secession
could have done. How aptly has Matthew Arnold said,
" O man, how true are thine instincts, how overhasty
thine interpretation of them ! "
8, Plainly the disparity of the negro in the deadly
struggle with the white over every resource of subsist
ence fast becomes greater ; plainly does his stay in the
south more and more injure both sections; plainly
under the effects of hard life, growing idleness and
growing crime, increasing ravages of disease, and the
naturally engendered feeling of helplessness, the average
negro in the lower class gravitates downwards ; plainly
this negro ought to have, in a sphere of his own, oppor
tunity and stimulus for self-recovery and progress.
Plainly whites and negroes ought to be separated. The
latter seriously clog the evolution of the desired south-

The Race Question — Introductory 377
ern labor class, and the southern whites completely
exclude the negroes from public life. The two are
really each different communities in juxtaposition, but
not united. You may think of them as plants, one of
which has a diseased root, and the other has its top
kept in the dark and out of the sun. Both these evils
result unavoidably from keeping the two races together.
So let us give the negro his own State in our union.
That will allow the root of the one plant to get well, and
it will give the top of the other permanently to the sun.
We are rich enough and have land enough to give
the negro this State, which is his due from us. His
especial need is to exercise political and civil privileges,
in his own community, all the way up from town
meeting to congress.
If something hke this is not done it is extremely
probable that the great mass of the lower class of the
negroes will die out. Let not this crime be committed
by the American nation.
9. We should be extremely hberal to the negro in
education — in primary, in industrial, and also in the
higher. Especially ought we to combine the second
with the first, and give it the lead for both races.
10. All the southern states should at once by proper
constitutional and legal provisions substitute judicial for
mob lynching.

CHAPTER XVII
THE RACE QUESTION — THE SITUATION IN DETAIL
THE distinction between the two classes of south
ern negroes, glanced at in the last chapter, isto
be always kept in mind — at the beginning, in
the middle, and at the end, of our discussion. Its im
portance commands that we say something of it here.
Consider how enormously the two differ in numbers.
Five per cent of these negroes, that is, some four hun
dred thousand, in the upper ; ninety-five per cent, that is,
seven miUion and four hundred thousand, in the lower
class. The latter, being nineteen times as large as the
other, first demands attention.
In the country many of the men are croppers. A
group of negroes — generally parents and children — do
the labor of preparation, cultivation, and gathering, while
the owner contributes the land, necessary animals, and
feed for the latter. The croppers get half the crop, and
the land owner half. The latter retains out of their half
whatever he has advanced the croppers. The advances
must be hmited with firmness, otherwise they will cause
loss. These croppers are the great bulk of the agricul
tural laborers. So few of the men work for standing
wages that they need not be noticed. In the towns the
men subsist upon day labor, the pay of which ranges
from so cents to $1,25. It hardly averages 80 cents.
Some of the women, both in country and town, take
places as house servants and nurses at weekly wages
that vary from $1 to $2 with board. The growing dis-

The Race Question — in Detail 379
inclination of the women to these places is much stronger
in the country than in town. In country and town the
women do laundry for the whites at an average price
per family of a doUar a week ; and they get jobs of sew
ing, cleaning kitchen utensils, scrubbing, etc. In the
country these women do some field labor, sometimes
plowing, often hoeing. If trained in childhood they
make expert cotton-pickers. But the women agricul
tural workers steadily decrease in number.
The negro has inherited from a thousand generations
of forefathers, bred in the humid and enervating tropical
West African climate, a laziness which is the extreme
contrary of Caucasian energy and enterprise.^ Thus we
are told of him in Jamaica, " In many cases a field negro
will not work for his employer more than four days a
week. He may tih his own plot of ground on one of
the other days or not as the spirit moves him," ^ The
first Saturday in June, 1904, I saw the thriving littie
town of Abbeville, South Carohna, thronged with idle
negroes from the surrounding plantations, A merchant,
who was kept busy in his store, offered to pay several of
them 75 cents to cut up a load of firewood — something
more than the market price. They do not work on
Saturday unless compelled by something unusual ; and
so each one rephed at once, without any inquiry if the
logs were large or smaU, seasoned or not, and thus finding
whether the job was hard or easy, that the weather was
too hot. And yet these negroes all exhibited in their
clothes and hungry looks unmistakable signs of want.
Those that superintend the gangs working for contractors
in Atlanta and the vicinity, all — except now and then
one who has managed to form a small party of picked
laborers — teU me that it is very seldom that a negro
1 See Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America, 10-14.
2 New Encyc. Britan., Article, " Jamaica."

380 The Brothers' War
can be induced to work Saturday ; if that does happen he
wiU make up his lost holiday by not returning to work
before Tuesday. Your cook, nurse, maid, or black ser
vant of any kind will every now and then suddenly in
convenience you by taking an utterly unnecessary rest.
When Booker Washington was starting his system of
industrial training, as he tells us, " Not a few of the fathers
and mothers urged that because the race had worked for
250 years or more, it ought to have a chance to rest," ^
The negro has likewise inherited lack of forecast and
providence. If at the end of the year he finds himself
with a small purse from his part of the crop, standing
wages, or profits from a tenancy, he will often squander
much of it for a top buggy, a piano which none of his
family can play, or expensive furniture. Those in the
gangs just mentioned always want to fool away their
money before it is made. If one has been advanced $4,
and his wages amount to $5, he will hardly ever abridge
his holiday by turning up to get the dollar balance when
the others who have not been advanced are paid Satur
day night. He will waste his cash on watermelons and
fish that an average white will not even smell. When
forced down to it he can live contentedly upon almost
nothing. A very large proportion of both sexes are
happy upon a real meal every two or three days, and a
sly change of mate every two or three weeks. Toombs,
who was always looking at Cuffee, pronounced him
" rich in the fewness of his wants." Bring him out more
clearly to yourselves by comparison with an Irishman
struggling up from starvation wages of hard daily work
into comfort and ease. Reflect over the only success a
cotton mill has had with black labor, which was due to
whipping the operatives for breach of duty,*
1 Working with the Hands, 40.
2 Tillinghast, book cited above, 180, 181. Consider the quotation there

The Race Question — in Detail 381
In Atianta — which of course is but like other south
ern cities in the particular now to be mentioned — many
of the men live upon their women. It is a common say
ing that you cannot keep a colored cook if you do not
allow her to carry the keys. There is great complaint
that the colored washerwomen help their dependents
out of the clothes. The criminal class of negro men,
women, and children is large and growing much faster
than that of the whites. Two very striking develop
ments are the negro burglar and the negro footpad.
There are many breakings and entries every year in
Atlanta, many holdups of pedestrians, and nearly all of
them are by negroes. Now and then a negro snatches
a lady's purse from her on the street. The prisoners
sent to the Atlanta stockade during the twelve months
beginning December 15, 1902, were
Colored. Wtiites.
Men  2325 1030
Women  1168 100
Boys  471 18
3964 1 148
According to the twelfth census, the negro population
of Atlanta was 35,727, and the white 54,090. So, while
there are in every thousand of the whites 2 1 of these
criminals, there are in every thousand ofthe blacks no.
But the case is worse still. About an equal number of
convicts escaped the stockade by paying fines. Allow
ance for this will much increase the per cent of negro crim
inals, I wish I could get the approximate number whose
fines are paid by their employers, white friends, mothers,
wives, and other relatives. I have observed facts which
make me confident that it is large. The number of boys
made from Thurston, the negro manager, in which he asserts that it is
only by this means that negro operatives can be made to do good work.

382 The Brothers' War
that in one year were sent to the stockade — 471 — is a
most important fact, showing as it does that a large per
cent of negroes become criminals in childhood. Nearly
all of these boys have been abandoned by their fathers.
There are just as many abandoned girls in the city. Of
course under the prevailing conditions the proportion of
criminals in each generation must increase portentously.
The depth of the negroes' debasement is shown in the
impurity of the women. This is another inheritance from
their ancestors. The " ancient African chastity " alleged
by Professor DuBois,^ if it ever existed, was entirely pre
historic, A white who has not been bred in close contact
with the race is quite unable to understand the degree
and universality of this impurity, I will illustrate by a
case which occurred in a prosperous town of Middle
Georgia not very long before I settled in Atlanta, A
prominent negro preacher had been caught in adultery.
The woman, who was the mother of several children,
and her husband, were both members of the same church
as the preacher, and of unctuous piety. The detection
was so complete and certain, and it had immediately
become so notorious that church notice was unavoid
able. The problem was how to whitewash the affair.
The office of a lawyer friend of mine in the town
last mentioned was waited on by a member of the church
— a say-nothing sort of negro, who always applied for
leave to attend the meetings at which the preacher was
being tried. This office boy had returned several times
with the news, when inquired of, that nothing had been
done. At last, one day he answered that they had
cleared the preacher. My friend commanded that this
be explained. The darkie said, in his laconic way,
" Well, he 'fessed de act, but he 'scused de act," " How
in the world did he excuse it?" was asked, "He said
» Souls of Black Folk, 9.

The Race Question — in Detail 383
his heart was n't in it." " Were you fools enough to
believje that?" was ejaculated. The negro, with an air
as superior as was compatible with the great politeness
of his race, rephed, "He said it was de debble dat had
his body dar ; but aU de time his soul was at de throne,
praying for God's people. In course we could n't blame
him for what de debble done,"
This defence, suggesting the make-believe loan of his
body by the friar in the Decameron to the angel Gabriel,
which, of course, had never been heard of by the ac
cused, convinced the church, wilhng to be convinced.
It appeased the injured husband, wiUing to be appeased.
It fully vindicated the gay clergyman and the erring sis
ter, who were in effect told to go and sin no more with
such httle discretion.
Had this case, or another like it, occurred at that time
or since in any other negro church of that region, there
would have been acquittal and justification of the ac
cused, although perhaps the good plea and the right
psychological moment to make it might not have been
so aptly found,^
The habits and customs of the race mix men and
women always and everywhere; and in these oppor
tunities each one of the young and the old, married
and unmarried of both sexes -^~ of even children just
arrived at puberty — chases a short-lived amour with
ever eager zest,^ The blacker the Lothario the more
1 During the years after the war until the end of 1881, when I came
to Atlanta, I kept my eye upon the negro preachers in the country.
Whenever I could closely observe one and had opportunity of sifting
members of his congregation, I generally found him to be vir gregis.
My acquaintances tell me that there has been no perceptible change.
Compare what Mr. Edward B. Taylor, a northern man, now residing in
Columbia, S. C, says of "the immoral negro preacher" in The Outlook
of July 16, 1904.
2 William Hannibal Thomas, a negro of Massachusetts, says the same

384 The Brothers' War
show of white blood he seeks in his fancies. Now
and then furious desire for real white overmasters him.
Surprising some unattended angel of a girl or matron,
he chooses to see Rome and then die. Her avengers
pour kerosene on him and burn him to a crisp. His
lusty fellows think to themselves what Hermes, in the
song of Demodocus, says to Apollo of the mishap to
Ares and golden Aphrodite — that is, that for the same
brief pleasure they would each gladly endure thrice the
penalty. Professor DuBois says that the chastity of the negro
women has improved so greatly " that even in the back
country districts not above nine per cent of the popula
tion may be classed as distinctly lewd," ^ Inquire of hon
est witnesses who have good opportunities of observing
— the farmers, small and large, and the storekeepers, in
the country, those who do contract work and the police
in the cities — of all who have close access to negroes
at all times, and especially at night ; and the concurring
report will be that right correction of Professor DuBois'
statement just given cannot stop with mere inversion of
his percentages; that the fact is, no negroes in this
lower class which we are now dealing with are chaste
except those whose physical condition has made a virtue
of necessity,^
It is sadly true that men of all races are too prone to
unchastity. It is chaste women that give human amelio-
as to the early corruption of children and " marital immoralities " both of
the poor, the ignorant, and the degraded among the freed people, and
also of those who assume to be educated and refined. Quoted by Mr.
Page, The Negro ; The Southerner's Problem, 82-S4.
1 Encyc. Am. Article, "Negro in America."
» Noticing Mr. Page's book just mentioned. Professor DuBois treats
William Hannibal Thomas as utterly unworthy of credit. All of us in
the south familiar with negroes know that Thomas's statement quoted
by Mr. Page is unqualifiedly true.

The Race Question — in Detail 385
ration its main propulsion ; for they make every husband
to know that the children around his fireside are his own.
If I were asked in what one particular had my life-long
comparison convinced me that the two races are farthest
apart, I would unhesitatingly answer, in the character of
the women of each — the average white woman, from
her marriage on, forgetting all other men but her hus
band, the black wife always with a paramour, if to
be had.
The tie which holds the family stanch is wanting.
The men often cast aside their domestic burdens, and
begin their lives over in a distant region with a new
woman. The wife and mother left behind does not
mope. She has generally prearranged satisfactorily
with another man.
Disease is making great ravages in this lower class of
negroes. I never knew of a case of consumption among
the slaves, and I can recall but one serious case of
pneumonia. Now these two diseases slay the negroes
by hundreds. Before the war the negro was regarded
as immune from yellow fever, and almost immune from
dangerous malarial affections. He has lost his charm
against these also. There has been a dreadful increase
of insanity among them. The only ante-bellum case
that I can recall was due to an accidental injury of
the head.
It is but natural that the death rate among the negroes
mounts fearfully. Their great multiphcation has far out
run their reasonable means of subsistence. We note
what a heavy burden a large family is to a man in hard
times, I must believe that the thirteenth census wiU
show a stiU greater negro death-rate.
We shall sum up as to this lower class after we have
described the displacement of black by white labor.
Now we must consider the upper class. We need
as

386 The Brothers' War
look only at its main divisions, to wit, the negro farmers,
and the well-to-do urban negroes.
The rose-colored statements of Professor DuBois as
to the former cannot impose upon residents of the
south,! I shall begin with the negro farm owners of
Georgia, In what he says of them in the second Bulle
tin mentioned in the last footnote he hardly ever looks
away from the report of the comptroller-general of the
State, I shall deal with relevant facts about which the
comptroller-general is not required to concern himself —
and of which the census takes but little note. Where
agricultural land commands only a few dollars per acre
a large part of it wiU get into possession of purchasers
under title-bond who expect to work it and pay for it in
annual instalments out of its produce. Of course the
vendor sees to it that he himself escapes taxation on
this land, and so the purchasers, although they may
have paid him but a trifle or nothing at all, are assessed
as if they were the real owners, while the vendors are
retaining the title as security. Soon after the war many
a white planter, in order to get out of a faihng business
and procure capital for something else, sold his land in
whole or part. He could find no purchaser but some
exceptional negro; and the latter could buy only on
credit. Much of the lands so sold had to be retaken
because the purchasers failed to meet their payments.
It was my observation when I left Greene county twenty-
three years ago that in that and the adjoining counties
the number of negro owners of agricultural land was
decreasing, and it is my information that such is now
1 That part of Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau Census,
Bulletin 8, called " The Negro Farmer," is by him. Consider the extrav
agant claims made therein for the magnitude of negro farming in the
United States in the comment on Table xxxv. p. 92. Professor DuBois
is also author of the " Negro Landholder of Georgia," Bulletin of Depart
ment of Labor, No. 35, July, 1901,

The Race Question — in Detail 387
the case. This indicates an important fact not shown in
the reports of the comptroUer-general, to wit, that a
large number of the negroes appearing therein as owners
are really not owners, and are losing their holdings.
The next fact to be mentioned is that, as I learn from
residents, many farms of which a negro had acquired
the fee are heavily encumbered, and often fall to the
local merchants.
Further, as Professor DuBois states, " the land owned
by negroes is usually the less fertile, worn-out tracts." ^
According to the comptroller's report for 1903 the
acres of white ownership are 29,762,259, returned at a
value of $121,629,094; which is $4,139 per acre. The
per cent of the total value owned by the blacks is 4.07.
This result — that the negroes own a fraction over four
per cent of the improved lands of Georgia — must be
corrected by proper deduction for purchase money
debts, and also for encumbrances. It must be further
corrected by another deduction. The negro's land is
considerably below the average of the rest in quality
and market value. Yet while the white returns at $4.08
an acre, the other returns at $4.13. This higher valua
tion is not because of conscientious avoidance of tax-
dodging. It comes from that optimistic exaggeration
characterizing the race, which is vividly iUustrated in
Booker Washington's gravely stating that the love of
knowledge by the average negroes of the south has
become the " marvel of mankind," ^ and in the extrava
gant assertion of Professor DuBois as to their chastity
commented on a few pages back.
There are a few negro owners of farming lands that
are prospering, but I am credibly informed that as a
class they are falling behind,
1 Bulletin 8, before cited, 75,
2 Article, " Negro Education," Encyclopedia Americana,

388 The Brothers' War
The tenants — the renters, as they are commonly
called — are the more prosperous negro farmers. The
whites hold on to their lands more firmly than they
did some years ago, and the tenantry class both of
whites and blacks is becoming larger. The whites in
the Black Belt all believe that the negroes generally
belong to societies, in which they have bound themselves
not to hire to the former as house servants or for stand
ing wages except when they cannot otherwise subsist.
So most of the cotton is made by tenants and croppers.
They grade as many bad and mediocre, and a few good.
The latter work with a will, and make fair crops. They
send their children off to expensive schools. When
they die the property they have accumulated is dis
tributed and squandered, and a new tenant — generally,
of late years, a white — succeeds.
It is to be observed everywhere that some reliable
white man is generally backing or superintending a
negro farmer that can get credit. The negro farmers,
in almost any large county in the Black Belt that you
may select, that are an exception can usually be counted
on the fingers of one hand.
Their implements and methods are primitive ;! and
they employ hardly any labor except that of their own
famihes,^ As soon as the negro farmer's children have
grown up they leave him; the negro laborers in his
neighborhood become more idle every year, and they
become also more scarce. It is not to be thought of
that he employ white labor. This class will give no
help to the new agriculture, which I have glanced at in
the last chapter.
Twenty-odd years ago when I left the planting section,
the white landowners all preferred negro tenants. But
white tenants are now preferred. They do not send
1 Professor DuBois, Bulletin 8, cited above, 73. 2 Id. 77,

The Race Question — in Detail 389
their children to school as much as the negroes do, but
keep them at work while the hoeing, which is the first
main thing to the cotton farmer, and the gathering,
which is the second and last and greatest by far, are
unfinished. The negroes' hoeing and other cultivation
are bad ; and after the crop is laid by until Christmas,
during which time comes the all-important laborious
cotton-picking, they spend so much of their nights at
church they are incapacitated from doing good work.
They lose much time by going to camp-meetings in the
late summer and early autumn, and riding on railroad
excursion trains at every opportunity. The white
tenants and their famihes, by careful " chopping out "
and hoeing, get the proper " stand " and they pick
clean; the negroes fall behind in both respects. The
bettering credit of the white steadily hits the negro
harder. The only tenants who are good for the rent
are the class a few of whom have cash of their own and
the rest can get credit with the local merchant for neces
sary supphes. Such tenants the landowners seek after,
and find every year more and more among the whites,
and less and less among the blacks.
Every year a larger part of the staple crops of the
south is made by whites. The negroes have lately
decreased in Kentucky. Mr, TiUinghast brings forward,
from Hoffman, weighty proofs that in the State just
mentioned, which has just become the principal seat of
tobacco growing, and also in the largest yielding
counties of Virginia, that black labor constantly grows less
of the crop,! f^g yggg Hoffman, too, to show that white
labor is slowly expeUing black from rice production,^
The old south beheved that rice culture was sure death
to the white, Mr. Tillinghast quotes, as to the greatest
agricultural product of the south, this from Professor
1 Book cited, 183-185. ^ Id. 184.

39° The Brothers' War
Wilcox : " It would probably be a conservative state
ment to say that at least four-fifths of the cotton was
... in i860 grown by negroes; at the present time
[i. e., in 1899] probably not one-half is thus grown."!
Compare this further : " He [Hoffman] finds that
' with less than one-half as large a colored population as
Mississippi, . . . Texas produced in 1894 almost three
times the cotton crop of the former State,' Even more
significant is the fact that with almost twice the colored
population of i860, Mississippi, in 1894, produced less
cotton than thirty-four years ago,' " ^
Very significant are the facts lately published by the
Agricultural Department which show that in an area of
some sixty-three per cent of the production, the white
outpicks the negro, " One hundred and fifty-two
counties, with a negro population amounting to seventy-
five per cent of the whole, averaged one hundred and
eleven pounds per day, whereas one hundred and ninety-
two counties, with a white population constituting sev
enty-five per cent or more of the whole, averaged one
hundred and forty-eight pounds per day," ^ that is, the
white picked one-third more than the black. There are
other statements in this bulletin of importance here, I
can give this one only:
" In the Indian Territory and Oklahoma, where the whites
represent about eighty per cent of the population (including
Indians) the average number of pounds picked is greater than
in any of the States except Arkansas and Texas. The highest
number of pounds picked in any State is one hundred and
seventy-two in Texas, the counties represented having a white
population of eighty per cent." *
In Arkansas the population of the counties men
tioned was fifty-nine per cent white, the rest negro.
^ Book cited, 184. 2 /^r jg^^
» Bureau of Statistics — Bulletin No. 28, p. 71. * Id. 72.

The Race Question — in Detail 391
It is almost certain that the foregoing estimates do
great injustice to the whites. They assume that there is
no inferiority of the negro to the white except the per
diem quantity of cotton picked. Ponder the statement
as to a county of Georgia which I now give,
"According to the ginners' report, Madison county made
sixteen thousand bales of cotton in 1902, Its negro popula
tion is about three thousand, its white, twelve thousand. The
negroes are one-fifth and the vriiites four-fifths, and out of
every five bales the negroes ought to have made at least one
and the whites four. But the former do not average as well as
the others. The white who runs one plow, whose wife and
children do the hoeing and picking, probably makes ten bales.
The negro who runs one plow, whose wife and children hoe
and pick, hardly makes more than five or six bales. The
greater part of the cotton credited to negro labor is made by
negroes who are superintended by white men." ^
Weighing all that I have just told, I am as sure as I
can be of anything in the near future, that the negro
will soon be of greatly diminished importance as
laborer, cropper, renter, or farming landowner in the
staples of southern agriculture.
There are other kinds of property than improved
lands set out in the report of the comptroUer-general,
such as $3,531,471 of horses, cattle, and stock of all
kinds, $810,553 of plantation and mechanical tools.
Such needs no separate consideration. These holdings
1 Extract from a letter of Hon. James M. Smith to the author. He is,
I believe, the largest planter in Georgia. His lands lie in the adjoining
edges of Oglethorpe county, which is in the Black Belt, and of Madison
county, which is outside. From his experience, and because of the great
accuracy of his observation, which I have noted for nearly forty years, I
regard him as better qualified than any one else who can be suggested,
to give a correct opinion on the subjects he deals with in the quo
tation. Especially do I emphasize his exceptional advantages for
comparing whites and negroes as farmers, tenants, croppers, and laborers
for standing wages, in making cotton.

392 The Brothers' War
do not, in view of what we have told, give the negro
farmer any strong foothold.
Nearly all that remains of the rural upper class — the
negroes in trades, professions, mercantile business, etc,
— is so evidently dependent upon the masses of the
lower class, now gravitating away from the country that
the most of it can be incidentally disposed of at certain
places later on in the chapter and the rest be treated as
negligible. The " city or town property " ofthe negroes of Georgia,
according to the report of the comptroller-general for
1903, amounts in value to $44,668,620, From all that I
can learn, while it is largely, it is considerably less,
encumbered than the real and personal property of the
negro farmers.
A large admixture of Caucasian blood marks nearly
every member of the upper class both in country and
town. I note that occasionally a coalblack acquires
property, on which his miser grip is tighter than that of
an accumulating Irishman; but such are very few.
There is hardly a well-to-do negro in work, occupation,
profession, or property, who is not several shades at
least removed from coalblack. Mr, TUlinghast observes
" that the porters, cooks, and waiters on a Pullman train
are usually mulattoes, while the laborers in the gang on
the roadbed are nearly all black," ! In this day when
the pictures of prominent men and women are in many
illustrated magazines and papers, it is to be observed
that hardly one of a negro shows unmixed blood. Thus
a recent monthly contains pictures of Judson W, Lyons,
R. H, Terrell, Kelly Miller, Archibald H, Grinke, T,
Thomas Fortune, Daniel Murray, and Booker Washing
ton.^ Of these the third only, to my eye, seems aU
1 Book cited above, 121, 122.
2 The Voice of the Negro, September, 1904 (Atlanta, Ga.) — Con-

The Race Question — in Detail 393
negro ; and I cannot be confident that he is wholly with
out appreciable white blood. His head has the shape
of a white man's.
It is my observation that a negro entirely pure in
blood hardly ever gets out of the lower class ; and that
if he does he is much more unprogressive than an aver
age member of the upper class, • Note what Bishop
Holsey says of how amalgamation with the white im
proves the descendants of the blacks, in a passage
quoted later herein.
This upper class contains only persons of exceptional
blood, talent, or some other rare fortune. The higher
education, and the education which is now best of all
for the negro — industrial education — is for this little
circle only. Hampton and Tuskegee do not open to all
comers, Mr. Tillinghast convincingly proves that those
who have got really good training at the two institutions
just named are far above the average negro in physical
stamina, education, and other important particulars.! The
graduates go forth, not to benefit their brothers in the
lower class, but to win for themselves surer and higher
standing in the upper class.
Some of the resources which this urban section of the
upper class have enjoyed for a whUe they are losing, as
I shaU tell when I hereinafter summarize the details of
white encroachment. But other resources open to them.
Such are professions like dentists, eye, ear, and throat
sider picture of " Board of Directors of the True Reformers' Bank, Rich
mond, Va.," in number of same magazine for November, 1904. These
directors are nine in all, and there is but one who is decidedly black.
Six of them look tci be more than three-quarters white. The number
for March, 1905, contains a sketch of William Edward Burghardt Du
Bois, Ph.D., stating that the Professor's ancestry is largely white and
his color a rich brown. The picture of his mother shows her hair to be
straight and her complexion bright.
1 Book cited above, 213-215.

394 The Brothers' War
surgeons, doctors, barbers, and others who must content
themselves with only colored patronage ; such the grow
ing retail trade, multiplying boarding-houses, restaurants,
and saloons, finding their custom exclusively in the in
creasing negro town population. The number of negroes
who become teachers, lecturers, preachers, authors,
etc., steadily augments. Other resources of this upper
class can be pointed out, but it needs not here. Although
nearly always when the father who has struggled up
dies, his property, as we saw to be the case with the
negro farmer, goes, and no child succeeds to his occupa
tion, there is perhaps generally compensation for his
loss by the accession of some other who has got up out
of the lower class by an extraordinarily lucky jump. It
is clear that the class is without the wholesome influence
of uninterrupted inheritance, from generation to genera
tion, of faculty and character progressively improving.
Take this inheritance away from the men and women of
any enhghtened nation and it would be to lower them
very near to the level of barbarism. It is also nearly
certain that there will be no further infusion of white
blood into this class, by reason of the hostility to inter
mixture which becomes stronger — yea, intenser — every
year. The probable consequence wiU be the dilution of
much of the white blood now in the upper class through
the lower class to such an extent that it will prac
tically disappear. But some of it, I think, will persist,
perhaps increase in degree — preserved by the aversion
of many to intermarriage with persons less white than
themselves, and occasional intermarriage with white
persons in northern States,
Exceptional ones of this class enjoy privileges of the
higher education, afforded by schools and colleges opu
lently endowed by private persons, which education is
bringing forth fruit in teachers, clergymen, and repre-

The Race Question — in Detail 395
sentatives of the learned class. There are already some
•good books, as weU as sermons, speeches, poems, essays,
and short articles, by negroes which have won favorable
opinion in our hterature ; and there is evidently to be
steady increase.
There is among some of this urban upper class the
beginning at least of better things under the lead of
better mothers. We must not be unreasonable in our
demands that these women who carry in their veins a
very appreciable proportion of polyandrous blood shaU
become immaculately chaste at once. Leave them to
the influence of the improving society in which they
move ; to the noble and faithful efforts of such as Mrs,
Booker Washington ; their persistent imitation of white
mothers; the teachings of the really christian pastors
whom the negro universities are beginning to send
abroad in numbers far too few ; but especially of all to
devoted conjugal, maternal, and domestic duty. This
last has made the pigeon mother unconquerably true to
her life mate. It will do the same for the negro woman,
— Let us consider the class further for a moment.
The longer you look at it with unbefogged eyes the
more plainly you see it is really a natural aristocracy
hugging its special privileges more jealously every year,
and that cleavage in interest, affection, and destiny be
tween it and the other class goes on so steadily that it
must after some little while yawn in the sight of the
entire nation. Here in Atlanta, as seems to be the case
in all the southern cities, there are respectable negro
districts and also negro slums. The latter are the more
numerous and far more populous. The inhabitants of
these several districts are almost as wide apart as are
the whites in the fashionable circle and the million of
poor folk without.
I must postpone my final contrast of these two classes

396 The Brothers' War
until I have completed what remains to be said of the
displacement of black by white labor. For a few years
after the war it was so slow moving that I was not con
fidently aware of it. Now it has proceeded so far, and
so much accelerated its pace, that I can indicate it with
something like accuracy. In the thirteenth chapter I
noted its beginning. This was when the mother and
her girls took upon themselves the daily indoor work,
and the father and sons took upon themselves the out
door work, morning, noon, and night, around the house
and the horse-lot, — the word which in the south corre
sponds to the barnyard of the northern farmer. Es
pecially significant is it that a large per cent of the white
matrons in the country have at last discarded the negro
laundry-woman and habitually themselves use the wash-
tub for their families. The impulse to supplant negro
labor showed its greatest energy where the black popu
lation had been sparse, I have heard my friend, F, C,
Foster, a resident of Morgan county, often mention that
what were before the war the rich and poor sides of that
county have become interchanged ; where most of the
large slave-owners lived was the rich, but now is the
poor side; and the other, where there were but few
slaves, is now the rich side,
I see many proofs in every quarter that the whites of
the Black Belt have commenced to learn good lessons
from their neighbors outside, and show every year a
greater self-reliance. Many more causes than I have
space to set down conspire to increase this self-reliance.
The smaU farmer must, by himself or his wife and chil
dren or white help, do such things as these : work his
brood mare ; care for his blooded stock, fine poultry, and
bees; handle his reaper, mower, and more expensive
tools and implements ; give all necessary attention to his
orchards and larger and smaller fruits, — industries which,

The Race Question — in Detail 397
with that of the dairy, are now pushing forward with
mounting energy ; for he has learned that the average
negro cannot be trusted in these and many other things
which can be suggested,
I must not overstate the advance of white production
and labor upon black in the country. In the regions of
densest negro populations the whites show a backward
ness in taking to work that is discouraging, A very
observant man familiar with Jackson and Madison coun
ties of Georgia, both of which are out of the Black Belt,
and who now lives where negroes outnumber the whites,
not long ago made this comparison, while answering my
inquiries : " In Jackson and Madison the whites work,
A farmer who runs but one plow does all the plowing.
He hires but one negro. In my present county the one-
horse farmer always hires two negroes, one to plow
and the other to hoe, and the only work he does is to
boss them," But the negroes are going away from
many parts, in fact from nearly all, of the Black Belt,
Wherever they have become scarce, the whites go to
work ; and, as is now occurring in that part of Greene
county called "The Fork," and in places in adjoining
counties, the lands rise greatly in market value. In
many parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Tahaferro, and Greene
counties, where negroes were doing practically all the
agricultural labor when I came to Atlanta, I learn that
many white boys are becoming good all-around workers.
It surprised me greatly to be told that in this region in
different places the white women and children, as soon
as the dew is off in the morning, go to cotton picking,
and they become so efficient that often no extra labor
need be hired to finish that greatest task of all to the
farmer. Before the war, aU of us white boys picked just
enough of cotton to learn that our backs could never be
made to stand picking aU day. The whites now beating

398 The Brothers' War
the negro in what we once thought he only could dq^
and white women in the old slave regions doing the
family laundry, — these begin a marvellous economic
revolution. The cotton mills and other manufactories rapidly
springing up in many southern localities are developing
a class of white operatives. Mining of various kinds is
on the increase. Stone, slate, and marble cutting, cabi
net making, and other trades attract greater numbers to
follow them. White railroad employees, printers, en
gravers, stenographers, typewriters, and those in numer
ous other gainful occupations, grow in numbers. White
women and girls stream to work for employers every
morning. In all places, if you but look long enough,
you catch sight of swelling crowds of the race who once
lived almost entirely from slave labor now doing their
own labor,
I will close what I have to say of this part of the sub
ject by observations of Atlanta. When I settled here,
the barbers, shoe repairers, blacksmiths, band-musicians,
sick-nurses, seamstresses, ostlers, and carriage-drivers
were, so far as I noted, black almost without exception.
Now the first five are nearly all white, and whites steadily
multiply in the rest, although they are far from being in
a majority. The only expulsion of white by negro labor
that I have noted is the substitution by the bicycle mes
senger service and the telegraph of negro for white
messengers, made not long ago. These messenger ser
vices thrive by exploiting child labor. By the change
mentioned they got much larger and stronger boys —
often grown-up ones — for the same price which they
used to pay white children a year or two older than
mere tots. Against the recent loss just told I have these
two recent gains of the whites to tell. There had always
been only negro waiters in the restaurants. In some of

The Race Question — in Detail 399
them the eaters at the lunch counters are now served by
a white man standing behind it ; and what he needs, if
it is not kept in store so near that he can reach it, is
brought to him, at his command, by a negro, whom you
may caU his waiter. This negro also wipes off the
counter. After we became used to white barbers we
generally preferred them to the black ones. And I note
that a growing majority of those who frequent the coun
ters like the white waiters, although I now and then
hear a growler say that he would rather have a waiter
that he can reprimand and speak to as he pleases.
Some of the restaurants begin to advertise that their
help is all white. With the superior alertness and quick
ness of his race, a white behind the counter accomphshes
more than twice as much as the former black. To use a
common saying, the white waiters keep at active work
aU their twelve hours as if they were fighting fire, while
the negroes commanded by them take things easy.
Every one of the whites is constantly on the lookout for
a better place ; and generally he manages somehow, after
a short while,' to get it. One who now serves me studies
bookkeeping two hours every night, and will doubtless
soon be giving satisfaction in his chosen occupation to
some business house. The negroes look out only for tips,
are interested in nothing but amusements, and never get
ariy higher. Bear in mind, they are considerably above
the average negro in qualifications and station.
The other instance is that some co-operating Greek
boys have recently captured a very considerable pro
portion of the shoe-shining. They provide more con
venient and comfortable seats and give a better shine
than the negro does, in a much shorter time, and for the
same price. It looks now as if they are bound to make
fuU conquest of the business. With my experience it
is more of a surprise to me to see clothes laundered,

400 The Brothers' War
tables waited on, and shoes shined by the whites, than
even to see cotton picked by them.
But to go on with Atlanta, Occupations requiring the
management of machinery 'or peculiar skill are nearly
always filled by whites. The street railroad conductors
and motormen are all white. The only negroes con
nected with the road that I, as a passenger, generally
see is the curve-greaser, and now and then a helper on
the construction car. The steam railroads will employ
a negro fireman because of his ability to stand heat, but
they do not trust him to oil and wipe. In the smaller
buildings negro elevator-runners some time ago were
frequent, but now it is clear that the whites will soon
have the occupation exclusively. There is, I believe,
more building, in this year of 1904, in Atlanta than ever
before. The preparation of all the material is done by
white labor in the planing-mills and machine-shops, while
the more unskilled work of putting it in place is done
by the negro carpenter.
The lathers and plasterers are all negroes, there are
more negro brick and stone masons than white, and the
carpenters are nearly all negroes, there being but few
young white ones. The painters are about equally
divided. The negro's standard of living is so much
lower than that of the white, that where there is com
petition he proves victor by accepting a price upon
which the white man cannot live. But the latter does
not throw up the sponge. At the point where race
competition begins he induces the negroes, whenever
he can, to join his union, and soon to have one of their
own. Just now (August, 1904) there are not enough
of brickmasons to supply the demand, and there is both
a white and black union of that trade. But so far there
has been no success in the efforts made for a black car
penters' union. The negroes have of late years kept such

The Race Question — in Detail 40 1
firm hold of the trade, that it seems no young whites
come into it, there being but few white carpenters in
Atianta under forty years of age. The negroes under
stand that their grip is due to their ability to work for
lower pay than the whites, and when the union is pro
posed they say to themselves, that means only more
places for white carpenters and less for us. But the
trend to form unions seems to strengthen. There is a
mixed union of tailors, separate unions of blacksmiths'
helpers, moulders' helpers, painters, and also of brick-
masons, as just mentioned. There is a black union of
plasterers and no white one. It is to be remembered
that the initiative to unionize the negro workman comes
from the other race, the purpose being to balk the exer
tions of employers to depress wages by encouraging the
cheaper worker. Consider the dilemma of the negro
workman invited into the union by whites. He foresees
that if he accepts, his race will after a while be swamped
in the trade by white competition. At the same time
he foresees that if he does not accept, he cannot increase
his income, which in its smallness becomes more and
more inadequate to sustain himself and family under
the constant demands of the day for larger and larger
expenditure. The immediate needs of those depend
ent upon him will generally decide his course, I can
not say how long the negro carpenters of Atianta will
refuse the proposal to federate themselves in a union with
the whites ; but this I can say, that all attempts of the
negroes to keep the whites out of any well-paid vocation
must fail, even with the most resolute and stubbornly
maintained effort. As I view it on the spot the white
forward movement palpably strengthens and the de
fence weakens. Bear in mind that the whites receive
constant re-enforcement from all other white American
and European communities, and the blacks are con-
26

402 The Brothers' War
fined to their own resources of supply, all the while
declining. What I have just told as happening in Atlanta inteUi
gent and observant negroes detect to be but a part of
the general recession before white competition. The
National Negro Business League had its last meeting at
Indianapohs. In one of the resolutions adopted, mainly
because of the influence of Dr. Booker T. Washington,
its president, occurs this allegation, " During our dis
cussions it has been clearly developed that the race has
been steadily losing many avenues of valuable employ
ment." The resolution ascribes this to lack of proper
training, and recommends that the lack be supphed,
A negro makes this acute and true comment, which I
would have attended to here, and considered again
when further on I discuss what the industrial schools
can do:
" That the colored man has of late years been losing many
avenues of employment is quite true, but the conclusion that
this is due to a lack of training is not to be hastily accepted.
Nobody believes that our people are now less capable of work
than they were when recognized in these avenues of labor.
As a matter of fact they are far better equipped now than they
were then, or Tuskegee and Hampton and the other industrial
schools that are crowded from year to year are making a signal
failure. In those days men were picked up here and there and
started in as apprentices as green as they could be. Now
thousands of them are prepared before they go out to work.
The two chief reasons our folks are not employed so universally
now is, first, the fact, that the white south has gone to work with
its own hands, and second, the negro refuses longer to work for
nothing. The continued assertion by some of our leaders that
a man who can labor will not be discriminated against, is untrue.
The preference is given to the white man in almost every case, and
the negro is allowed to do the work he refuses. It is well enough
to ask our people to secure industrial education, but it is wrong

The Race Question — in Detail 403
to place all our ills upon a lack of such training or to recom
mend industrial education as a panacea. Though it was quite
inevitable that the league should adopt such a resolution as an
endorsement of its president's policy," ^
I have itahcized in the quotation the statements spe
cially pertinent here. They are very weighty proofs sup
porting my proposition of fact, to wit, that there is now
waging between the whites and negroes an internecine
war for every opportunity of labor above the very
lowest and unskilled,
I ask also that it be noted that the writer is utterly
unconscious of any negroes than those of the upper
class. Not a thing that he says can be applied to
the ninety-five per cent.
The death rate of the negro is coming close to,
while that of the white keeps far below, the birth rate.
Rapid native increase and vigorous immigration for the
whites, nothing but slow and decreasing propagation
for the negroes; and larger and larger hosts of the
former giving their champions active sympathy and
help — the event of this inter-race struggle over the
trades and occupations may be delayed, but it cannot
be doubtful.
The reader must not forget that the negroes now in
mind belong all to what I have called the upper class.
Their number is so small and its promise of increase so
slight that I should hardly have done more than allude
to them, if the subject did not emphasize so impressively
as it does the inevitable expulsion of negro by white
labor. Let me explain this fully. Professor Wilcox,
summarizing the pertinent information of the twelfth
census as to ten leading occupations competed for by
the two races in the south, states that in the year 1900
the per cent of negroes was larger in seven and smaller
1 The Voice of the Negro, October, 1904, p. 43S-

404 The Brothers' War
in nine of them than ten years before.* That alone
shows white gain. But I want you to add to Professor
Wilcox's statement something of which the census gives
no hint, that is, the bound forward of the negroes on
one side, and the inaction of the whites on the other,
during many years beginning with emancipation in
1865. When that has been done, the encroachment
of white labor upon black effected in the comparatively
short time since its beginning appears almost prodigious.
It is somewhat like the race-horse, who, faihng far behind
in the first stages of a long heat, at last wakes up and
gains so fast that nobody will bet against him. It means
that the whites are now as ruthlessly taking all oppor
tunities of labor away from the blacks, as their fathers
took his lands away from the American Indian.
We can now say our last word in contrasting the two
classes. Many fail to see clearly the difference between
them. Thus Ernest Hamlin Abbott^ and Edgar Gardner
Murphy,^ in their pleasant discussions, only here and
there, and as if casually, say something which momen
tarily implies existence of the lower class, and then re
lapse into claiming for aU of the southern negroes, if not
the actual condition of the upper class, at least hopeful
possibihty of soon achieving it. These two kind-hearted
men represent a large number who firmly believe that
education and the church are now rapidly elevating the
negro masses, when the fact is far otherwise. Many
from the north see nothing but the upper class. In
what he writes of the negroes whom he knew in public
hfe, the late Senator Hoar was utterly unconscious of
the average negro whom all of us in the south know,*
1 Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau of the Census, Bulletin
8, Negroes in the United States, p. 13.
2 I have in mind his late articles in the Outlook.
' See his " Problems of the Present South."
* Autobiography of Seventy Years, vol. ii. 60-62.

The Race Question — in Detail 405
Dr, Lyman Abbott, a most benign example of broad
and almost perfect tolerance to both sections, taking all
southern hearts by his loving sympathy with and full
justice to the better sentiment of our section in every
matter of importance except the appointment of negroes
to oflftce, he never seems to have in mind any negroes but
the prominent ones who are giving their fellows indus
trial or the higher education, and those who have been
blessed with either. Do but consider how pathetically
he lately lamented the case of the " white negro " lady
shut out from the circle of cultivation and kept confined
in one ,of ignorance and lowness. This last circle — its
magnitude, its bad and desperate state — he really knows
nothing about. He can no more study its deplorable
and heartrending conditions than the mother can endure
to have the expectoration of her child threatened with
tuberculosis examined under the microscope, Chicago
has been for some while " farthest to the front " in the
struggle against corporation rule. Her battles for direct
nomination, direct legislation, and municipal ownership
have been chronicled more accurately and intelligently
in the Public than I can find elsewhere. Therefore I
read it with diligence; and I relish more and more Mr,
Post's sound and able anti-machine and anti-plutocratic
advocacy. But in everything that the paper says or
quotes on the race question I am pained to note that
its shortcoming is greater than its very high merit in
preaching democratic democracy. Mr. Ernest Hamhn
Abbott does now and then call the negroes a child
race, but Mr. Post repudiates all backwardness and in
feriority of race. He seems to maintain the equality of
the average negro to the average white in all essentials
of good citizenship with the zeal of WendeU PhiUips,
when the providence of the American union frenzied
and deputed him to infuriate its defenders against the

4o6 The Brothers' War
disunion slave-owners. Mr. Post, as appears to me, be
heves with all his heart in the doctrine of Mrs. Stowe
and Whittier, to mention no others, as to the negro.
Every pertinent utterance in his paper indicates that he
has no thought whatever of the lower class, A most
striking illustration of this is how he treats the story of
the negro Richard R. Wright,! When the latter was
ten years old he won great fame by the answer he made
General Howard, who had inquired of the negro children
at the Storrs School in Atlanta, just after the close of the
war, " Tell me what message I shall take back from you
to the people of the north ? " His face ablaze with en
thusiasm, the boy Richard said, " TeU 'em we 're risin',"
Whittier went as far astray over this as we saw that
he did in his " Laus Deo," In his poem celebrating he
sang — " O black boy of Atlanta !
But half was spoken :
The slave's chain and the Master's
Alike are broken.
The one curse of the races
Held both in tether :
They are rising — all are rising,
The black and white together."
I never read the last two lines without in mind ad
monishing the author, " Praise in departing."
When Mr. Post published the story, he ought to have
mentioned that while the boy who sent forth the winged
words did rise and has become president ofthe Georgia
Industrial CoUege, yet that such negroes are far more
rare than millionaires, and the main host of their people
in the south were sinking at the time, and have been
sinking ever since. It is not true that " all are rising,"
1 By Anne Scribner, and copied in the Public of September 17, 1904,
from the Chicago Evening Post. .

The Race Question — in Detail 407
The whites have recently begun to rise ; five per cent
only of the negroes, most of whom are largely white,
are rising, while the rest of them are doomed, if the
nation does not interpose. And the colored dentist of
Chicago, slighted by some of the white dentists — Mr.
Post sees in him, just as he sees in Richard R. Wright,
a representative of the negro miUions.
These conscientious and amiable gentlemen are wasting
much effort uselessly. There is no very urgent problem
as to the upper class of negroes. It has two strings to
its bow. If the lower class should perish, a large part
of it — perhaps the greater part — will be assimilated.
Every day I detect a larger movement toward the north
among our better-to-do negroes. I hear of girls that
get places as chambermaids and cooks, of boys that find
iplaces as ostlers or other domestic service ; and I have
heard of a few families who have gone in a body, also
of some men who have left wife and children here.
They believe the north will allow their votes to be
counted, will not proscribe them in society as the south
does, and they will probably get for themselves or their
descendants intermarriage with whites. The determina
tion of these southern negroes towards the north will
probably gain in volume and energy. It is plain that
those who go do much increase their chances of final
absorption into the body of whites. This assimilation is
one of the two strings. And if the American negroes
shall one day be conceded their own State, as I hope
and pray for, their leaders must come from the upper
class. That is the other of the two strings.
This upper class of southern negroes has demonstrated
full ability to take care of itself It has its schools and
colleges, newspapers, magazines, and augmenting litera
ture, its widening circle of students and readers, and its
good shepherds and able leaders. It rapidly wins favor

4o8 The Brothers' War
in the south, A few of our residents see no other
negroes but those in this upper class, a most striking
instance of which is Joel Chandler Harris's sweeping
assertion " that the overwhelming majority of the
negroes in all parts of the south, especially in the agricul
tural regions, are leading sober and industrious lives''^
When one who fully understands the situation studies the
assertion just quoted he sees from the context that the
writer was led to make it because he had at the time
in his eyes only a few of the better negroes in the At
lanta upper class. This is powerful testimony to their
prosperity and self-maintaining faculty. Similarly the
Chicago Public rates the four hundred inhabitants of
Boley in the Creek nation as common or average negroes.
According to a news dispatch mentioned in that paper
the town is only a year old, has " two churches, a school-
house, several large stores, and a $5,000 cotton gin,
owned and controlled exclusively by negroes," It is
without a system of law and without municipal govern
ment, and " yet no serious crime or offence of any kind
has been committed in the place," These four hundred
negroes do not permit any white man to settle in the
town. Commenting in conclusion upon the news, the
Public says, " If that dispatch is not a canard, Anglo-
Saxon civilization has something to learn of one race
which it has outraged and abused and despised," ^
Any such place as Boley, if a reality, is peopled only
by negroes of the upper class, and, further, only by
those who have been sifted out from the rest of that
class by a peculiarly drastic selection. Had they not
each had remarkable good fortune, extraordinary ca
pacity, and exceptional experience and training, Boley
1 The passage with the context quoted by Dr. Booker Washington,
" Working with the Hands," 238.
' Issue of October 15, 1904.

The Race Question — in Detail 409
would never have been heard of, I ask that the fair-
minded make two comparisons, i. Suppose four hun
dred negroes— -not naturally selected, but taken in a
body, just as each one comes, from the masses of the
lower class described herein — given opportunity to
found a town of their own amid what we may call Boley
conditions, what would be the result? You may be sure
that what occurred in Hayti when the reins of govern
ment were suddenly given to the negroes at large would
in some sort be repeated. 2, Compare Boley in all its
bloom and happy condition as described in the Public
with certain communities of select whites, which have
flourished now and then for years, without formal gov
ernment; say the Amana community. If this be rightly
done, social organism of select whites will at once ap
pear to be incomparably superior to that of select
negroes. I have tried my hardest to make my readers see as
clearly as one bred in the south ought to see what a
world-wide difference there is between the small upper
class and the numerous lower class of negroes. If I
have succeeded they will agree with me that it is the
better policy to leave the upper class, for the present,
just where it is. If this advice be followed, that class
will flourish, and some day either be assimilated, or be
giving benign salvation to the lower class in the negro
State, Especially should this upper class eschew poh
tics, Booker Washington in preaching this is the only
real American prophet of the day. With all of his zeal
for his race, he is far better appreciated in the south than
in the north, and perhaps just as popular. What a
lamentable arrest of its benign development it would be
to this upper class to turn it away from industrial better
ment of its condition to lead the mass of the negroes at
the polls in a struggle for rule and office ! That would

41 o The Brothers' War
be something hke renewing the conditions that devel
oped the Ku-Klux Klan,
It is the great body of the southern negroes — those
in the lower class, who have no string at all, nor even a
bow — that demands the profoundest attention, I wish
I could make every white man, woman, and child of
America see them just as they are. As I compare them
with what they were in 1865 I note they have advanced
somewhat in mental arithmetic, because of practice in
computing small sums of money involved in their wages
and purchases; that they have learned somewhat of
self-providence, and very much endurance of want
(which last is really a reversion to a trait of their West
African ancestors) ; and that the per cent of ilhteracy
among them has been greatly lessened. On the other
hand, each generation becomes more disinchned to work,
and its vagrants multiply; each generation more prone
to live by crime, more unchaste, and more quick to
desert their conjugal partners and children. Especially
are they far more unhealthy and prone to insanity, and
their death rate rapidly rising. They have no resource
but unskilled labor of the lowest and cheapest grade ;
white competition in agriculture and domestic service,
machinery in other fields, such as the scrape which has
superseded the dump-cart, the improved steam-shovel
and method of handling construction trains, and the
steam laundry, steadily curtailing that resource ; a sloth
ful, improvident, and wasteful disposition curtailing it
StiU further. The resurrecting hand of the trades union
cannot reach down to them. Steadily they are more
useless to every upbuilder of the coming south except
the wage-depresser. More and more they get in the
way of real progress in every direction. And as their
supplies of necessaries diminish they get in one another's
way. Nearly aU of the whites who were bound to them

The Race Question — in Detail 411
in the domestic love of the old south times are dead.
Most naturally and unavoidably as the new generation
discerns the growing incompatibility of their stay in the
section with its true welfare, unfriendliness comes and
grows, Listiess, lethargic, careless, without initiative,
without opportunity and coercion to make use of it,
these multitudes of inveterate have-nothings are in a
bottomless gulf of want, immorality, crime, and disease.
A true philanthropist has famiharized the world with
the "submerged tenth." Mr. Ernest Hamlin Abbott,
Mr. Murphy, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, Dr. Abbott, Mr.
Post, stand beside me on the strand, and fix your eyes,
minds, and hearts upon the slowly drowning ninety-five
per cent of the southern negroes. Lay aside the excess
of your devotion to the upper class. It does not need
it. The Chicago dentist, as the Public itself reports,
was really more than indemnified for the insult given
him because of his color by the sympathetic resentment
of white members of his profession. Why will you keep
agitating the nation in behalf of a few thousands, who
are well able to maintain themselves, and neglect mil
hons who require, as Mr. Tillinghast says, some heroic
remedy for their salvation?
I shall now tell you the utter inadequacy of Hampton,
Tuskegee, and the like, after which I shall consider what,
in my judgment, is the only remedy.
The annual output, as we may call it, of all the negro
educational institutions in the south is a mere drop in
the bucket when compared with the enormous need.
The latest rehable figures accessible to me are those of
Booker Washington for 1897. They are as foUows:
13,581 receiving industrial training, 2,108 coUegiate
education, 2,410 classical instruction, and 1,311 "taking
the professional course," ^ — the last three aggregating
1 Encyclopedia Americana, Article " Negro Education."

412 The Brothers' War
5,829. Suppose the entire 17,999 were following indus
trial courses, and that every one graduated with credit;
and suppose there be added the work of the land com
panies providing homes and every other enterprise help
ing the negro in any way — suppose this output to be
trebled annually from this time on (which is far above
possibility for many years yet, to say nothing of prob
ability), what would be its accomplishment? Why, no
more than a slight shower in a few townships during
the drought a few years ago would have done in pre
venting injury to the Kansas corn crop. When you at
tend, you understand that the great advantages of these
excellent institutions are only for a few lucky negroes, —
picked ones of the upper. class, — and not for the miUions
whose crying need is for opportunity to earn honest daily
bread and a really benevolent coercion to use the oppor
tunity. The problem, what to do for this mass, cannot be
solved by philippics against such things as de facto or
constitutional disfranchisement of the blacks, lynching
them, showing them disrespect in military parades, giving
them Jim Crow cars, and not dividing the educational
fund more liberally with them ; nor would it contribute
one jot or tittle towards its solution if every lady in
America cordially received in her drawing-room the few
negroes who have most deservedly won the respect of
the nation. To solve this problem, something must be
found which will train and elevate the average negro,
while the exceptional one is at the industrial school or
college, or studying for a profession ; something which
will check the prevalent reversion away from monogamic
family life, and stimulate that hfe to develop steadily;
something also which will impart to this entire mass per
manent and strengthening impulse to better its condition.
The only thing that can do this is to separate the negro
as far as may be from the whites, give him his own State

The Race Question — in Detail 4 1 3
in our union, and constrain him there with vigilant kind
ness to subsist and govern himself in such ways as suit
him, I have long thought that our negroes had far
stronger claim upon the nation for land than the un-
civUizable redskins on whom we have lavished so much
expense in vain.
Righteousness demands that we give the former fuU
opportunity to develop normally in self-government.
Put him in a State of his own on our continent ; provide
irrepealably in the organic law that all land and public
service franchises be common property; give no polit
ical rights therein to those of any other race than the
African ; compel nobody to settle in this State, but let
every black reside in whatever part of the nation that
pleases him ; let this community while in a Territorial
condition, and also for a reasonable time after it has
been admitted as a State, be faithfully superintended by
the nation in order that republican government be there
preserved, — do these things, and there need be no fear
that the examples of Hayti and San Domingo, which
were not so superintended, will be repeated. Nearly all
of the American Indians, because of rigid adherence to
their old customs and ways, were crushed by Caucasian
rule. But the negro, wherever he comes in contact with
a superior, shows a pliancy, a self-adaptabihty to new
circumstances, to which no parallel has ever been sug
gested, so far as I know. If civilized self-government
will but kindly keep him a while at its labor school
where he -is to learn by doing, I am profoundly con
vinced that he will develop into the very best of citizens.
And I am also just as profoundly convinced that if
something like what I recommend is not done at a com
paratively early day, after some while, as there are now
in America a few prosperous Indians and in New Zealand
a few prosperous Maoris, we will have here and there a

414 The Brothers' War
few prosperous negroes ; but the rest of them will either
be confirmed degenerates, or have gone no one wiU
know whither. And Booker Washington, the moral
exemplar of the day, rivalling Horace's
" lustum et tenacem propositi virum,"
as he resists the pernicious counsels of the overwhelm
ing majority of negroes and keeps to the wise and right
course which they passionately condemn; who is far
more able and who has accomphshed infinitely more
of good than Toussaint or Douglass — he will be a great
hero statesman of a great cause lost. The historian of
the future that has something like Shakspeare's genius
for contrast will make his glory and that of Calhoun
magnify each other by comparison.
The foregoing as to a negro State, which is the result
of years of observation and reflection, had all been writ
ten for some time when I fell in with the address of
Bishop Holsey, mentioned above. It is the proposition
of the address that a part of the United States should
be assigned to the negroes, I add an abstract from the
synopsis of his views given in the address :
I, Negroes and whites "are so distinct and dissimilar
in racial traits, instincts, and character, it is impossible
for them to live together on equal terms of social and
pohtical relation, or on terms of equal citizenship,"
2, The general government only has power to settle
the problem, and it ought to settle it,
3, Separation ofthe negroes and whites "is the most
practicable, logical, and equitable solution of the prob
lem," 4, " Segregation and separation should be gradual
. , , and non-compulsory, so as not to injure , , , labor,
capital, and commerce . . . where the negro is an im
portant factor of production and consumption."

The Race Question — in Detail 415
5. The southern negroes should petition the presi
dent and congress "for suitable territory . . . as , , ,
equal citizens , , , and not go out of their country to
be exposed to doubtful experiment and foreign comph-
cations, Afro-Americans should remain in their own
country, in the zone of greatness, and in the latitude of
progress." 6, The government should, in effecting segregation,
maintain " civU order, peace, progress, and prosperity."
7. The place for the negroes may be in the western
public domain, such as a part of the Indian Territory,
New Mexico, or elsewhere in the west.
8. No white person unless married to a negro, or a
resident federal official, to be allowed citizenship in the
negro State or Territory, but all citizens of the United
States to be protected therein as in the other States.*
9, Only those of reputable character and some de
gree of education, and perhaps those possessed of a
year's support, to become citizens. Criminals and un
desirable persons to be kept out.
It was gratification extreme to me to find a prominent
negro so much in accord with my long-cherished project.
I hope there is a determination of the mass of southern
negroes thitherward, as seems to be indicated by the
activity both of Bishop Holsey and also by that of
Bishop Turner. With nearly all of the negro writers
and speakers now in the public eye upper-class sympa
thies are dominant. But Holsey, demanding a State in
the union, and Turner, putting his whole soul into
immigration to Liberia, are actuated by lower-class
1 But the most drastic provisions to keep the greedy whites from prey.
ing upon the negroes as they did upon the Indians must be adopted, such
as permitting the negro State to tax without limit whites owning prop
erty or doing business therein. This will prevent the result anticipated
by Booker Washington.

41 6 The Brothers' War
sympathies. The others just mentioned really advocate
assimilation, — and at bottom, only the assimilation of
the upper class, — but these two are of far different and
higher ambition. They ,are patriotic, and as true to
their race as that famous heathen who rejected Christi
anity when told that it consigned his forefathers to
perdition. He declared he would go to heU with his
people and not to heaven without them. The others
are representative of only some five per cent, these two
represent the ninety-five per cent — the real negroes.
I never took to Bishop Turner's proposal, for aU of the
ability with which he advocates it, because I want the
negroes where our nation can foster and protect their
State, it matters not what may be the resulting pains
and expense, I highly approve the earnestness of
Bishop Holsey in objecting to expatriation by the
Afro-Americans, Let our negroes have their own State, That wiU be
the fit culmination which was foreshadowed in their
deserting the galleries assigned them in our churches
and flocking to their own churches, immediately upon
emancipation, and their effecting soon afterwards the
removal of their cabins from the old site. Their masses
have ever since been inclining towards a community of
their own by an internal impulsion in harmony with the
external white expulsion. The impulsion and the ex
pulsion are each, as it seems to me, manifestations
of the same all-powerful cosmic force.
Further, I would say a negro State makes a precedent
for the world federation. Each race that ought not to
intermarry with others can flourish under its separate
autonomy. Then loving brotherhood between white,
yellow, red, and black people will bless all the earth.
Whether the proneness of opposites to fancy each other,
progressively going from the smaller to the greater dif-

The Race Question — in Detail 417
ferences, will ultimately compound a universal color, no
man can now tell.
Of course some reader has exclaimed, "Your pro
posal is absurdly chimerical." Is it indeed chimerical
to demand of the great republic that it do its very
highest duty? Suppose an ignorant, neglected child
taken home by a rich man, taught to work, the world
of industry, with all of its prizes, kept in his sight, until
he begins to cherish the hope that some day he can
have a happy fireside of his own ; suppose further that
just as he reaches the age of discretion the adopting
father sets him where he may see the fair world plainer
and long for it more than ever, but so completely strips
him of all means and opportunity that there is nothing
for the outcast but ignoble hfe and uncared-for death.
How you would pity the outcast ! how you would curse
the false father ! I cannot believe that the nation will
prove such an unnatural parent to these its helpless and
lovable children. It may be that some thousands of
them, nay, some millions, may be left to perish in
their dire constraint. But when the people fully under
stand, their consciences will awaken, and they will give
the American negro a bright house-warming.
Suppose we do not give him his State, or suppose it
will be long years before we give it to him, what do you
say we are to do for him ?
We must help Booker Washington and his co-laborers
to the utmost. Grant that they can snatch only a few
brands from the burning. Is it not most praiseworthy
to save even one? Further, I can never abandon the
hope that the nation wiU yet allot the negroes their
State, even if to do it land must be condemned on a large
scale. When that fair day does dawn on America, out
of the scholars of these worthy teachers will come many
a good shepherd for the blacks in their new land. This
27

41 8 The Brothers' War
may now be but a glimmering of hope. All the good
must join in effort to enlarge and brighten it.
We should not begrudge the higher education to the
few in the upper class who can get it. The negroes need
teachers, preachers, writers, and others of the learned
occupations. We should impartially equalize the negro population
to the white in common school privileges. Both ought
to have rational industrial training. The right primary
education is just beginning to show itself. It wiU more
and more recognize what a prominent factor the hand
has been in evolution. Think of the superiority ot
animals with, to those without, hands. What a high
brain the elephant has made for himself by exercising
his single hand; the polar bear kiUs the seal by throw
ing a block of ice ; the 'coon goes through his master's
pockets for sweetmeats ; the greater intelligence of the
house-cat as compared with the average dog is due to
long use of the forepaws as rudimentary hands. Think
of how we note humanity dawning in the monkey ever
busy with his hands. Think of the importance of his
hands to beginning man. With them he could gather
fruits, rub fire-sticks together, make war-clubs, spears,
fish-hooks, bow and arrows, bar up his cave door against
beasts of prey, elevate his roosting place in a tree too
high for night prowlers, and do all other vital things up
the whole ascent to civilization. The steady enlarge
ment of man's brain has been mainly because of his
progressive use of his hands ; for whenever a new thing
was to be done his brain had first to acquii'e faculty of
teUing hands how to do it. To train the hands is the
true way to develop brain power. The negroes in
American slavery had risen far above the level of West
African hand ability, and at emancipation they were
prepared to go higher by leaps and bounds. Had they

The Race Question — in Detail 4 1 9
from that time steadily on been drafted off into their
State, gradually, as Bishop Holsey suggests, and a tithe
of the milhons which have since been lavished in giving
them premature literacy and smattering of learning
been apphed in teaching their children handicraft faculty
and the best methods of labor, the promi.se for them
now would be satisfactory to their dearest friends.
Somebody wisely advises. Never do the second thing
first. Those who took charge of the negro when he
was freed tried to make him do the hundredth or
thousandth thing first. Instead of patiently schoohng
him in handicraft and self-support until he was really
ready to take part in his own self-government, they
made the ignorant and inexperienced slave of yesterday
a complete citizen, and plunged him up to his neck into
politics and letters. What a baleful hysteron proteron
was this. The looming greatness of Booker Washing
ton is that he teaches by his actions that the seeming
advance was in fact prodigious retrogression, and he
strives with all his might to draw the negro backwards
to his right beginning. Let us further his good work
by incorporating the utmost practicable of his industrial
training in our common school system for both whites
and blacks, America has learned important military
lessons from the redskin ; and, as I am almost sure, she
acted on his suggestion when she confederated the
separate colonies. Let her now show similar good
sense in permitting a negro to teach her the true system
of education for the new times,*
1 The best thing upon the joint education of hand and brain known to
me is " Pagan z/j. Christian Civilization," by S. H. Comings (Charles H.
Kerr & Co., Chicago). The title does not indicate, as it ought to do, the spe
cial purpose of the book to show that to give the scholar expertness with
his hands at the first and thus develop his self-supporting ability is far
better than to cram his memory. What the author says in maintenance of
his proposition, that our industrial schools should be operated upon a plan

420 The Brothers' War
Now as to lynching. It is entirely wrong to conceive
of a popular outbreak against one who has outraged a
sacred woman as lawless. It is the furthest possible from
that, being prompted by the most righteous indignation.
The wretch has outlawed himself Society can no more
tolerate such an insult to its peace than it can permit
a tiger to go at large. It is under no obhgation to him
whatever. It is the people dealing with him that should
concern us. We ought to keep them from brutalizing
themselves and their chUdren, We must put down
lynching with gentle firmness. The first thing to do is
to shorten the " law's delay " as much as possible. After
the State has made the enabling constitutional amend
ment, if such be necessary, let an act provide that when
ever an alleged crime likely to excite popular violence
has been committed the governor select a judge to try
and finally dispose of the case, three days only, say,
being allowed for motion for new trial or taking direct
that will make the scholar pay as he goes, out of his own work, for his
subsistence and expense of education during the entire course, deserves
respectful and thoughtful consideration. In its brevity, and at the same
time variety and fulness, coming as it does at the beginning of a new
era, it reminds me of Sullivan's tract which some years ago started the
American agitation for direct legislation, with store of examples and ex.
position almost su£Scient for its entire needs.
The above had been written when Booker Washington's " Working
with the Hands " came along. The well-chosen title informs accurately
as to the subject of the book. Its scope covers working with the hands
from its beginning in childhood to the close of life. As illustration of
his principles Dr. Washington circumstantially tells of the beneficent in
dustrial and moral training given at Tuskegee, in all its many departments,
to children, youth, and adults, in everything which it is important that a
negro of either sex should know how to do. Besides its wisdom, its atten
tion-commanding and interest-exciting style deserves high commendation.
Any reader longing for the day of real education to dawn who opens the
book will go to the end, without skipping, in a delightful gallop. It is
my conviction that it will be of far more advantage to the white in
dustrial and technological schools than to those for which it is specially
intended by the author.

The Race Question — in Detail 421
biU of exceptions; both the supreme court and the
court below to proceed as fast as may be through all
stages until acquittal or execution. Let the governor
earnestly ask for some such measure, and let him also,
after he gets it, impressively appeal to the people to
assist in enforcing the law. With this preparation, more
than ninety per cent of the whites will approve the most
decided action of the military protecting prisoners, if
that be necessary. Just at this time (September 27,
1904) there is a very decided manifestation of anti-
lynching pubhc opinion in the south. We should strike
while the iron is hot, and bring it about that the law
itself make quick riddance of the ravisher. It should be
a spur to us that the party opposed in politics to the
great majority of southerners, finds much support and
help from every lynching in this section. Why should
we play into its hands?
The last thing that I have to say is that the south
ought to invite immigrants only of white blood. We
want no settlers from whose intermarriage mongrels
would spring. All Europeans should receive welcome
— the Germans perhaps the warmest. But in my judg
ment those that will most advantage us are the truckmen,
growers of the smaller and larger fruits, grass, grain, and
stock farmers, manufacturers, miners, builders, contract
ors, business men, and skilled laborers, of the north. It
looks now as if the cotton mills of England as well as of
the north would be profited by coming to tis ; and it
also seems probable that there will be for many years
so great a demand for our cotton that the worn-out soil
of the older parts of the lower south must be restored to
more than virgin richness by the method which Dr.
Moore has patented and made a gift of to the nation, or
some other intensive culture ; and that there must be
consequently great multiplication of southern mill-opera-

422 The Brothers' War
tives and agricultural workers in the near future. Recall
what we have said in the last chapter as to the future
promise of the section. Every day the south by dis
closing some new opportunity cogently makes new invi
tation to immigrants. It is the interest as weU as the
duty of the nation to remove the great clog upon devel
opment of the south. That clog is the presence of some
millions of unassimilable negroes in the section. It is
also the best interest and the highest duty of the nation
to segregate these negroes into a territory of their own.
As Bishop Holsey says, and what I believe with my
whole soul, " The union of the States wiU never be fully
and perfectly retemented with tenacious integrity until
black Ham and white Japheth dwell together in separate
tents." !
I must add an epilogue to these chapters on the race
question as I did to that on Toombs.
Brothers and sisters of the north, you should learn
why there is a solid south. There is but one cause. It
is the menace to the whites from the political power
given the negroes by the fifteenth amendment. There
is nothing in your section — in its past or its present —
from which I can illustrate to you the gravity of this
menace to us. In not one of your States are there igno
rant negroes in so great a number that, by combining with
the debased whites, they can make for it such a constitu
tion and laws and set up such authorities as they please.
We, your brothers and sisters of the south, have lived
under the rule of this foule.st of coalitions. We know
from actual experience how it plunders and preys upon
honest workers, producers, and property owners ; how it
licenses and fosters crime. In my own State, from the
first day that a governor, elected by fiat voters and
1 Book cited, 119.

The Race Question — in Detail 423
ex-whites, as we caUed the latter, was inaugurated, untU
we virtually restored the supremacy of our race by
carrying the three days' election in December, 1870,
fifty dollars would get a pardon for the greatest offence,
and robberies, burglaries, horse-steahng, and the like
each went free for a much smaller sum. Is it forgotten
that the negro speaker was voted one thousand dollars
by a South Carolina legislature, ostensibly as extra com
pensation for unusual services, but really of purpose to
reimburse him for a bet lost upon a horse race? Why,
the foremost of our people in virtue, wisdom, and patri
otism were agreed that these sordid tyrannies should be
subverted at once and at any cost to ourselves. The
emergency justified any practice, device, or stratagem
at the polls by which we could defend our homes, fami
hes, and subsistence against assassins of the public peace,
wholesale robbers of the people, and instigators and
protectors of every crime. It justified the shotgun and
six-shooter in politics just as legitimate war justifies the
musket in the hands of the soldier. It called forth most
righteously the Ku-Klux, That spontaneous resistance
finds a close parallel in the battles of Lexington and
Bunker Hill, fought before American independence was
declared. But the Ku-Klux fought for something still
dearer than the dear cause for which our forefathers
bled in the two battles just mentioned. Had the latter
failed in the war they had thus begun, their children and
people would nevertheless have had such good govern
ment as England is now giving the defeated Boers ; but
had the southern whites failed in their defence, their land
would have for long years been befouled hke Hayti, and
those who had not been slaughtered unspeakably de
graded, I think that aU our countrymen who so right
fully eulogize the heroes of Lexington and Bunker HiU
should also learn to give the greater praise to the south-

424 The Brothers' War
ern heroes whose indomitable spirit routed the madmen
that, with aU the power of the federal government in
their hands, tried their best to give the section over to
negro rulers. Brothers and sisters, " picture it, think of
it," until you can fully understand that hour of our trial.
All my northern acquaintances who have resided in the
south for several years — they are many — come to look
at the subject just as the natives do. A candid and
honest settler from Vermont has told me how he was
made to change his mind. Conversing with a southerner,
he had reprehended the different ways in which the
negro's ballot had been rendered nugatory. The other
replied, " Suppose that there was an incursion of Indians
given suffrage into your State in such a mass as to make
them seventy-five per cent of all the voters, would n't
you whites in some way manage either to outvote or
outcount them ! " The Vermonter answered in the
affirmative. We had to deliver ourselves. We used the
only means at our command.
It was not to be thought of that these negro govern
ments be endured, even if tempered by the Ku-Klux,
for government is in its nature lasting and permanent
while the other was only temporary. They would have
gradually gathered strength. Then there would have
been rapid enrichment of a few exceptional negroes
and rapid expulsion of the whites impoverished by
emancipation, from all their little that was left. And
then, the leading negroes desiring nothing else so
much, there would have come many white men and
women, each one wiUing to climb out of the depths of
want by intermarriage with a prosperous negro. Who
can predict what would have been the future of mon-
grehsm thus beginning? We of the south are most
con.scientiously solid against what we know from actual
trial to be the worst and most corrupting of all govern-

The Race Question — in Detail 425
ment; and we are still more solid against everything
that tends to promote amalgamation. Can you blame
us for standing in serried phalanx by white domination
and against the misrule exampled in the early years of
reconstruction, and for our own uncontaminated white
blood and against fusion with the negro? We must
be sohd in the face of these dangers, and as long as
they are threatened by the presence of millions of
negroes in our midst. There is no other sohdity in the
south. In all matters of the locality republicans and
democrats count alike. When one offers to vote in the
primary, if his name is on the registry list, and he ap
pears on inspection to be white, his vote is accepted ;
and he generally casts that vote, not for the interest of
a political party, but for that of the public. The tri
umphant election in November, 1904, of independents
or democrats, in four northern States which at the same
time went for Mr, Roosevelt, indicates solidity for the
true local welfare of the people as against the behests of
party. So what the white primary has produced in the
south, has commenced in the north. And the result in
Missouri, voting for Roosevelt, republican, and Folk,
democrat, shows that what we may call federal inde-
pendentism has commenced in the south. This will
spread as the people learn it does not hurt them to
split their tickets while voting upon national questions,
if they but maintain their sohdity while voting upon
State or municipal.
Now may I be allowed some decided words, most
kindly and inoffensively spoken, as to appointing
negroes to federal offices in the south. It is no sound
argument for it that now and then some negro may
have been appointed in a northern community which
manifested no opposition. Consider the case of Mr.
Wilham H. Lewis, a negro lately made assistant district

426 The Brothers' War
attorney in Boston by Mr. Roosevelt. He is a Harvard
graduate, was captain of the Harvard eleven while in
college, had represented Cambridge in the Massachu
setts legislature, and the community was not at all
averse to his appointment.^ Therefore when it was
made there was no disregard of the wishes and feelingg
of Boston and the regions adjoining. But when.^P
negro is given office in the south, it is felt by all the
community to be an insult. Would President Roose
velt cram the appointment of a white down the throats
of a northern community in which all the best citizens
protested against it? Would he not confess to himself
that the wishes and feelings of these good people ought
to be respected, even if he considered them foohsh and
unreasonable? It seems to me that he would, and that
he would find for the place somebody else in his party
acceptable to the locality. Why should he not do the
like when his southern brothers and sisters who have
such convincing reasons against the encouragement of
negroes in their pohtics, protest unanimously against
his fiUing an office in their midst with a negro ? WiU
he snub them because a negro has more sacred right
than a white ? Is that what he means by keeping open
the door of hope and opportunity? Or will he snub
them because enough of punishment has not yet been
given them, and because the south is still a province or
dependency on which he is justified in quartering his
partisans and pets without regard to the feelings and
wishes of all the better inhabitants?
Brothers and sisters of the north, I cannot believe
that any one of you who impartially considers the subject,
would ever approve appointing even the most competent
and deserving negro to a southern oflUce in the teeth of
universal objection by the whites of the community.
1 See Collier's Weekly for November 26, 1904.

The Race Question — in Detail 427
My last word is to implore every honest one in the
country to lay aside all prejudice and master the south
ern situation before judging. Whoever does this,
whoever will accurately place himself in the shoes of a
good southern citizen, will, I most firmly believe,
approve the attitude of the south, with his whole heart
and soul.

APPENDIX
The Old and New South, a Centennial article for the Inter
national Review, afterwards corrected and published sepa
rately. New York : A. S, Barnes & Co, 1876.
THE approach of the Centennial Celebration is not hailed
in the south with the demonstrative joy of the north.
It would be out of taste to expect that the former should ap
pear to triumph greatly over the hfe of the nation preserved at
the cost of her recent overthrow. Her late antagonist can re
joice in a vast and happy population, great material prosperity,
and the fresh fame of a world-renowned success. It is meet,
while remembering she has so lately saved the union by her
stupendous armipotence, that the north should exult as a
people never did before. The south has been made to feel
the pangs of a sudden impoverishment and the incalculable
discomfort of complete economical unsettlement ; and she has
not learned the new lessons which she must learn to become
self-sustaining and progressive. But her earnest spirits, doing
painfully the slow task of repairing lost fortunes ; seeking after
the system proper to succeed planting ; striving to make their
homes pleasant again and to give their children a fair hope in
the land, — these intent workers, who are most of them scarred
confederate veterans, even if they will not say it loudly,
have come around to hold in steadfast faith that it is far better
the Blue Cross fell, and the American union stands forever un
challengeable hereafter. And they have brought with them the
great mass of their people. They cannot joy so happily as the
north, but they have a warm welcome for the Great Commem
oration, For they see that the evils which followed as the
scourge of defeat are soon to pass away, while the fall of

430 Appendix
slavery and the failure of secession are to prove greater and
greater blessings as years roll on.
And so the time has come for a southerner calmly to dis
cuss the past, present, and future of the south. He has no use
for the methods of popular and unscientific pohtics, wherein
everything is blamed or applauded as being the result of party
measures. The intentions and motives of the actors, on both
sides of the late strife, will give but proximate explanations.
How the two sections became, to use the fine phrase of Von
Hoist, economically contrasted ; how the southern people
and their representative politicians were bred, under their cir
cumstances, into opposition to the union ; and how the northern
people and their representative politicians were bred, under
widely different circumstances, into love of the union ; how the
long clashing in politics culminated in civil war ; how the south
was utterly crushed and her whole industrial system destroyed ;
how she slowly re-erects herself into a new condition better
than the old, -r- the ultimate solution of these questions can only
be found by discussing them in the light of those laws of de
velopment which give every community a policy suited to what
it discerns to be its best interest. These laws are of far more
importance than the politician, who is but their creature. Leav
ing to others to fight over the old struggles of the political
arena and bandy hard words with one another, we will try to
discuss our subject in the manner we have indicated to be
appropriate. To understand the present and future, we must first under
stand the past. To understand the New south, we must first
understand the Old south, the distinguishing feature of which
was negro slavery, Mr. Stephens, then Vice-President of the
southern confederacy, in an address to a large assembly in
Savannah, in March, 1861, said of the new government: "Its
foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth,
that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery —
subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal
condition." There is no doubt slavery was the corner-stone
of southern society ; and when it was removed, four years later,

Appendix 431
a thorough disintegration of the whole fabric was the logical
result. When our country was first settled, the southern regions
were far more attractive in soil and climate ; and their other
natural resources — minerals, good harbors, navigable streams,
water-power idling everywhere, to mention no more — were
equal to those of the other section. The subsequent advance
ment of the north has been so rapid as to excite the wonder of
the world ; while it is said by us of the south, jesting upon our
worn-out and exhausted land, that we have done worse for the
country than the Indians before us, who stayed here many
centuries and yet left the soil as good as they found it.
The plantation system was the great barrier to southern prog
ress. From its first historical appearance, among the Cartha
ginians, from whom the Romans seem to have derived it, this
rude and wholesale method of farming has rested on slavehold^
ing. Its workings have been similar everywhere. In Italy, un
der the Roman republic, absorbing the petty holdings, it drove
out the small farmer ; it destroyed the former respect for trades
and handicrafts, and brought them into disfavor ; it prevented
the development of the industrial arts ; it created a non-recip
rocal commerce. Centuries later, it did the same things in
our southem States,
A sketch of the leading features and results of the plantation
system, as it existed in America, is our proper beginning.
The driver, as the negro foreman was called, was not very
common in the south, and was generally under the superintend
ence of the overseer. Could the planters have made a good
overseer of the driver, of course they would have consulted
their interest, and reproduced the ancient slave-steward of
Rome. Slaveholders keep their slaves under careful surveil
lance, but they do not usually overlook them in person. It is
not often that a master engages in an employment which brings
him into daily and intimate contact with the lowest orders, and
which he instinctively feels to be degrading. The planter
could have neither his first choice, which would have been a
slave overseer, nor his second choice, a superintendent from

43 2 Appendix
his own rank in society ; and so, as the next best thing, he took
as overseer a white hireUng from the non-slaveholding class.
The tillage of the fields was thus intrusted to the overseers,
who were, for the most part, men of httle education and busi
ness skill, and who had no interest in their employment ex
cept to draw its wages. Thus the foremost, if not the only,
southern industry was managed by incompetent and careless
agents. The Roman master, in the later days of the repubUc, having
always vast markets open to him, shunned the expense of pro
viding for women and children, and bought new slaves instead
of breeding them ; but the closing of the African slave-trade,
and the softer hearts and manners of modem times, led our
planters, at last, to rely on propagation as their only source of
supply. The negroes were, therefore, well cared for, and, in a
genial cUme, increased rapidly. This increase, however, did
not keep pace with the increasing demand for southern prod
ucts, and so the market value of the slave rose rapidly. To
the Roman slaveholder, land was almost everything, and his
rustic slaves nothing ; to the southerner, the slaves were almost
everything, and the land nothing. There was no careful culti
vation of the soil, no judicious rotation of crops, and no ade
quate system of fertilization. Southern husbandry was, for the
most part, a reckless pillage of the bounty of nature. The
planter became possessed with a roving spirit, and was con
tinually seeking " fresh land," as virgin soil was termed. In the
older sections, where there was most stability, the best farming
consisted in judiciously eking out the natural fertility of the
fields, and when that was exhausted, in leaving them to recuper
ate by years of rest. Thus a given working force required, year
by year, a greater and greater allowance of land, and the plan
tations became steadily larger, the small farmer retiring, and
the white population becoming continually less. Many of these
older sections turned, from being agricultural communities, into
nurseries, rearing slaves for the younger States where virgin soil
was abundant. The fertile lands of the new settlements, by
yielding bountiful crops, gave fresh impulse to the plantation

Appendix 433
system, and here the small holdings were absorbed more rapidly
than they had been in the older States, The southern slaves,
regarded as property, were the most desirable investment open
to the generality of people that has ever been known. They
were patient, tractable, and submissive, and never revolted in
combined insurrections, as did the slaves of antiquity. Their
labor was richly remunerative; their market value was con
stantly rising ; they were everywhere more easily convertible
into money than the best securities ; and their natural increase
was so rapid that a part of it could be squandered by a shiffless
owner every year to make both ends meet, and he still be left
enough of accumulation to enrich him steadily. And so the
plantation, or rather the slave, system swallowed up everything
else. There were no distinct industrial classes. There were negro
blacksmiths, negro carpenters, negro shoemakers, etc., all over
the land, but they were mere appendages to the plantations,
and far inferior in capacity and skill to the artisan slaves of
antiquity. The commerce of the south was non-reciprocal. She traded
raw produce for manufactures which she should have made her
self, or which she should have got in exchange for manufactures
of her own. The over-mastering energy of slave property, dis
solving, as it were, all things into itself, kept her from that de
velopment of trades, manufactories, and industrial arts which is
the solid and unprecedented progress, and far more durable
wealth, of the north.
There were a few exceptions in the way of restorative agri
culture, and of diversified investments of capital in railways,
manufactories, inland navigation, and mercantile enterprises.
All along the northern border there were efforts to let go slavery,
and non-slave industry was slowly emerging in a few places;
but these things were as dust in the balances. The slave system
was rooted in the best portions of the land, and nearly all of the
productive wealth of the south was in, or dependent upon,
planting. Implacable enemies of slavery were rapidly increas
ing in numbers and power, but she continued blindly sacrificing
28

434 Appendix
everything to rear negroes. When actual emancipation came —
that nipping May frost — the south showed, on a gigantic scale,
in her poverty and one soUtary and portentously dried-up
source of wealth, a parallel to Ireland, smitten with famine by
the sudden failure of her only supply of food. When the char
ity of the world and the returning bounty of nature had again
fed the Green Isle, everything fell back into the old track, and
she could go on smoothly as before. But not so with the south :
her wealth has fled; her occupation, the plantation system,
is gone; and she must, for a generation, grope painfuUy in
the dark, trying novel ways of subsisting, enduring want and
many failures, before finding again the Ught of plenty and
comfort. The duties ofthe planter have changed. The management of
a farm is not hke that of a plantation, and one skilled in the
management of slaves is not necessarily efficient in the directing
of freedmen. Many other countries have been impoverished
by wars ; but is not this instantaneous and almost coraplete
taking away of a great people's mode of living unique in his
tory ? The most resolute secessionist would have lost heart and
put up his sword, could he have seen, before the war com
menced, how easily the solitary prop of southern wealth and
comfort could be overturned, to be set up no more. But in
none of the ablest of the anti-secession arguments of i860 were
the consequences of defeat predicted.
Some portions of our country have been built up into a high
degree of prosperity by a steady influx of foreign settlers. How
much has been added to the power and wealth of the northern
States by the immigration from the old lands of those who, when
first they come, can do no mdre than subsist themselves by
their own industry, almost defies computation. How the force
of the preponderant population of the north pressed upon the
south during the war, and at last crushed her down ! Slavery
repelled the free immigrant from the south, and he went else
where with his power to enrich and defend.
The uniform and rapid advancement of civilization is mainly
due to the struggle ofthe poor to better their condition. These

Appendix 435
efforts result in complex division of labor, accumulation of
wealth, and better than these, in the production of a great
population engaged in diversified industries. In such a popu
lation, improving year by year in business habits, consists the
strength of a nation. The slave had no hope of rising, and the
system of which he was a part repelled free workingmen, and
thus the south lost the benign emulation and energy of a
lower class. The ancient slaves were not alone rural laborers
and domestic servants, as were those of the south. The former,
being of kindred blood with their masters and near their level
in natural capacity, were initiated in the various industries, some
of which flourished greatly under their management. Though
the slaves of old were very degraded, they were not as low and
groveUing as those of our day. Enfranchisement was common ;
and, in a few generations afterwards, the descendants of the
freedman were indistinguishable amid the body of free citizens.
The ancient states were not, therefore, prevented by slavery
from having advanced and diversified industries, nor were they
denied the impulse of a possible rising from the lower to the
higher classes. But the American slave was ofthe remotest race,
far below his master in development, and the horror of receiving
him into the body of free citizens grew continually stronger.
The law discouraged manumission, and frowned upon the in
crease of freedmen. Thus, the African slavery of the south was
the most hopeless form of servitude the civiUzed world has ever
seen ; and, by preventing the formation of a great class of free
men, engaged in respectable industry, it killed the very roots of
social progress. These influences of slavery, so repugnant to
American ideas, wiU be more vividly seen and understood in
the answer to the question. What would have been the pres
ent condition of the south had it not been for slavery ? Un
doubtedly her land would have smUed with a fertility richer than
the endowment of nature ; her industrial arts would, ere this
time, have branched out into muhifarious activity; her own
ships would have been carrying her produce and manufactures
abroad ; and, as the crown of all, she would have had a teeming
population of workers, whose education in the methods of self-

436 Appendix
support would have been the assurance of unUmited future ad
vancement. In brief, in aU the elements of the greatness of a
community, the south might now have equalled, if not excelled,
the north.
But there are some other effects of slavery to be noted before
the oufline of the Old south can be clearly and fully drawn.
Among the planters, costly and Uberal instruction was given
to a few of those who were to adorn places of leisured ease, or
to fiU the necessary professions and public positions ; but, in the
midst of the sparse and shifting rural population, there could
not be that devotion to the education of aU, which is one of the
most conspicuous glories of the northern States.
In consequence of the sparseness of the planters and their
roving habits, there was not that subdivision of different portions
of the counties into small self-governing wards, which Jefferson
so fondly desired. He said of the New England townships,
that they had " proved themselves the wisest invention ever de
vised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-govern
ment, and for its preservation." He also said that he considered
the continuance of repubhcan government as absolutely hanging
on two hooks, to wit, " the pubUc education, and the subdivision
into wards." This government of every vicinage in its home
affairs by itself, as originated in New England, and is now spread
far and wide throughout the northern States, is the most benefi
cent achievement of Araerican deraocracy. By this coercion of
the citizen to participate in the constant administration of public
matters directly concerning his interests, self-government be
comes, as it should be, the business of everybody, and every
body is corapulsorily educated in the best of all learning for
the race.
The finale of slavery remains to be told. As opposition
to it increased from without, the south became more and
more closely united. She honestly beUeved that wanton , inter-
meddlers were attacking her dearest rights. The steady and
continually strengthening warfare against slavery, and her con
tinuous and earnest defence of it, began — it is imposible to
determine precisely when — to knit her into a nationality of her

Appendix 437
own. He who understands what Mr, Bagehot calls " nation-
making " wiU discover, in the past history of the south, if he
looks attentively, many signs ofthis tendency, which steadily pro
gressed unperceived on her part, and still more so on, the part
of the north, until the south began to coalesce into a nation as
compact as her scattered and random elements would permit.
The long advocacy and support of slavery in the political arena
had fevered her whole people, and finally, under these prompt
ings to a national Ufe, poUtics absorbed nearly all of her intel
lectual powers.
There is a striking paraUel between this sustained effort of the
south and the struggle of Ireland, when the latter, for the fifty
years ending with the advent of the present century, was arrayed
against the British, in their encroachments upon her independ
ent government During this half-century, Ireland maintained
that she was an independent integral part of the British Empire,
just as Virginia contended that she was a sovereign in the fed
eration of States, Ireland, like a southern State, challenged
every seeming interference, by the general government, in her
local affairs ; and the claims put forth, in each instance, were
inexorably contested by an adverse government, claiming su
premacy and supported by superiority of power. Both were on
the eve of revolutionary secession without knowing it. The re
sults in Ireland and the south were similar : there was but one
intellectual activity, namely, politics. The memory of aU Irish
men of that time not forgotten — and many of their names are
famiUar words — is nothing but resistance to EngUsh aggression.
Even Curran, Ireland's great forensic advocate, made his world
wide fame in defending Irishmen against the prosecutions of
the British ministry. It was much the same at the south in the
period antecedent to the civU war. She had neither Uterature
nor science ; but she had statesmen and advocates, who wiU be
remembered as long as her soldiers and generals.
The national germ had long been growing below the surface,
in darkness, and at last it burst into view, and shot up into a
body of amazing proportions. There was not the birth of a new
nation at Montgomery in 1861 ; only the majority of this vigor-

43 8 Appendix
ous young member of the family of nations was , there pro
claimed. But, for all of the eloquence of its orators and the
virtue and bravery of its people, it was, as compared with its
adversary, in raw and untutored nonage, and the great disaster
that befell four years afterwards was then preordained. It was
her unshunnable fate that she should be denationalized on the
battie-field. The late war was a conflict between implacable enemies.
Each beUigerent, standing up for national life, was resistlessly
coerced to fight to the last. Neither can be blamed. The past
may be taxed with lack of wisdom. It may be that as Scot
land and, more lately, Ireland have been peacefully denational
ized, a preventive, anticipating the dreadful event of war, might
years before have been devised by statesmanly forecast. The
actual combatants — the southener fighting for the confederacy,
and the northern soldier bearing up the flag of the union — were
equals in manhood and virtue. The survivors, federal and con
federate, at last see this, and therefore they go in company to
decorate alike the graves of the dead of both armies.
The cause of aU these evils — the backwardness and station
ariness of the south ; a wasteful husbandry, without other indus
tries ; the instability of her wealth ; her want of a great class of
freemen engaged in the different arts ; her barbarically simple
social structure ; her neglect of common schools ; the absorp
tion of all her intellectual energies in feverish and revolutionary
politics ; and, finally, secession and the reddened ground of a
thousand battle-fields — was slavery. It is gone. The malig
nant cancer, involving, as it seemed, every vital and menacing
hideous and loathsome death, was plucked out by the roots ; and
after a ten years' struggle of nature, we see the body politic
slowly but surely reviving to a health and soundness never
known before.
Here we find the dividing line between the Old and the New
south. The former ended, and the latter began, with the giv
ing of freedom to the negroes — an event which wiU prove in
the future to have been an emancipation even more beneficial
to master than to slave. Immunity from all the evils of slavery

Appendix 439
which we have catalogued wiU distinguish the New south from
the 01d.i
The sudden impoverishment of the southern people, and the
unlooked-for change in their ways of hving and thinking, had
they occurred in the most peaceful times, and been followed
with the best of government, would have produced a profound
shock and a long paralysis. But the bitterness of subjugation,
and the mistake of needlessly offensive and goading government,
with harsh reconstructive measures, have prolonged the lethargy.
And yet the American union shows benignly in the present con
dition and promised future of the section. The ten years since
1 The English translation of the first volume of Von Holsf s " Consti
tutional and Political History of the United States " has just been pub
lished. The titles of the ninth and tenth chapters, to wit, " The Economic
Contrast between the Free and Slave States," and " Development of the
Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States," are very apt and
striking, and the contents of the chapters are profoundly original and
instructive. Having ample space, the author has, among other merits,
well handled the following incidents and consequences of slavery :
1. Implacable hostility of slave and non-slave labor.
2. Self-protecting necessity to slavery of continuous expansion, and,
to insure this expansion, necessity that the south keep political mastery
of the country.
3. Economic importance to south of invention of cotton-gin in 1793.
4. Exclusive possession by north of wholesale trade.
5. Greater immigration to north.
6. Missouri Compromise, and rise therefrom of geographical parties.
7. Internal improvements and tariff passing inter-geographical ques
tion, 8. Economic decay of south due to slavery, and not to tariff.
9. Opposition of slavery to the spirit of the age.
The following is a brief statement of the chief demerits of the two
chapters :
I. Misstatement that there were different circles of slaveholders;
overstatement of inhumanity of masters; and unjust disparagement of
character of smaller slaveholders.
2. Failure to note the great absorbing energy of slave property.
3. Failure to note the lack of a population of free workers.
But the work, considering the short time the clouds of battle have had
to clear away, recollecting, too, that the author is a foreigner, is, except
ing a little heated partisanship here and there, a most valuable contribu
tion to the history of our country.

44° Appendix
emancipation are instructive. Slowly has the New south been
disentangling herself from the debris of the Old, and she has
emerged far enough to enable us to perceive that a better era
has commenced. Much has been lost, but more has been saved.
All the germs of true wealth and power and the solid well-being
of a community have survived ; and solace for the past and
earnest of a great future may be found in the fact that she has
reached at last, and for the first time, a position in which she can
develop these elements, free from the suffocating hindrances
of former days. We may now properly inquire, What of the
past does the south retain, and in what wiU consist her future
progress ?
She retains her genial climate, her kindly soil, and her many
natural resources. If the peace of the American union is
assured, as everything now graciously promises, these natural
advantages will, in a few generations, far more than compensate
for all her losses, and ultimately place her in the very van of
progress. The best inheritance of the New from the Old south is the
southern people. We have seen how slavery checked industrial
development, and how many of its other effects were hurtfiil.
After allowing fully for all these, there wiU be found a great re
siduum of progressive energy, of inteUectual strength, and of
moral worth in the people of the southern States, They need
not fear a comparison, in these respects, with the most en
hghtened communities. Great men, like Washington, Jefferson,
Calhoun, Jackson, and Lee ; political and mUitary heroes,
judges, lawyers, and orators, such as the south has given birth
to, in unbroken succession, — are the unmistakable signs of a
great people.
The rank and file of the confederate armies have given proof
that the men of the south must be classed, in aU the elements
of complete character, vrith the best that the world has ever
seen. Crime was so infrequent that a single morning of the
term of a rural court, before the war,- nearly always sufficed to
dispose of every indictment ; there was little want or pauper
ism ; virtue was everywhere the rule in private life, and there

Appendix 44 1
was seldom even the suspicion of corruption in government or
the administration of justice. The history of this people since
the war shows that they are possessed of the best Anglo-Saxon
mettle. They are slowly beginning to thrive wherever they
have been left to govern themselves, in spite of the complete
industrial revolution, the loss of property, and change of occu
pation, of which we have written. And in many places, where
reconstruction has been harshest, and negro misrule yet pre
vails, the whites have developed an unlooked-for self-maintain
ing capacity, and have demonstrated that even there must be
the eventual predominance of intelligence and virtue, should
" natural selection " alone work to secure it.
The southern people have learned much vrisdom in the last
ten years. Their heavy vote in 1872 for Horace Greeley — a
man to whom a foreigner would have supposed them unappeas-
ably hostUe — if there was nothing else, would alone suffice to
show that they are rapidly laying aside all hindrances to prog
ress. And now that slavery is gone and she has so quickly
conquered the animosities of the war, the south may be Ukened
to a capable and energetic young man, who, having faUed, as
the result of inevitable misfortune, in a wrongly-chosen business,
has been relievfed of aU embarrassments and has entered upon
his proper calling. More may reasonably be expected of such
a man than of one more prosperous who has not had the like
discipline. As her nationaUzing tendency has been destroyed by the re
moval of slavery, and as her future must necessarily be shaped
by union influences, she will heartily embrace the political creed
of the union. The doctrine of the sovereignty of the States,
which was advocated with very great ability by many of the
southem statesmen — notably by Calhoun, in his speeches in
congress, and in his "Discourse on the Constitution of the
United States," and with stiU more taking effect by Mr, Stephens
in his " Constitutional View of the War between the States,"
 has now no disciples at the south. General Logan gave ex
pression to the prevaiUng creed of the present, when he said,
at a recent reunion of former confederate companions :

442 Appendix
" In considering, then, the future of the sotith, there is one fact
suggested at the outset which has been demonstrated to us by the
logic of events. It is, that under the operation of causes, which,
although unseen at the time, appear now to have been inevitable
in their results, a vast social organism has been developed, and is
now so far advanced in its growth as a national body politic, and no
longer a mere aggregation of States, that unity is a necessity of its
further development. In reviewing the past, we can now clearly
see that this national organism has been gradually developed; and,
while many seek by various theories to account for the failure of
the confederacy, the result may be regarded as the necessary con
sequence of those laws of development under which this social
organism — the United States — was being evolved."
And the south is pleased to observe that there are no genuine
signs of too much centraUzation, On the contrary, the town
system is destined to spread fast and far ; and the increase of
local option laws ; the spUtting of larger into smaUer counties ;
the. strengthening tendency to submit constitutions and many
legislative acts to voters ; the greater disposition often to amend
the State constitutions in the interests of progress ; the vigor
ous growth in each State of its own body of laws ; the rapid
multiplication of towns and cities, with governments pecuUar to
each, are some of the many convincing proofs that local self-
government is increasing and flourishing. Of the last particular
Judge DiUon says :
" We have popularized and made use of municipal institutions to
such an extent as to constitute one of the most striking features of
our government. It owes to them, indeed, in a great degree, its
decentralized character. When the English Municipal Corporations
Reform Act of 1835, was passed, there were, in England and
Wales, excluding London, only two hundred and forty-six places
exercising municipal functions ; and their aggregate population did
not exceed two millions of people. In this country, our municipal
corporations are numbered by thousands, and the inhabitants sub
jected to their rule, by millions."
Reflecting southerners see, in the present condition of the
southern States, the very strongest possible guaranty that the

Appendix 443
true balance between national cohesion and local freedom is to
be preserved. They see that the happy equilibrium is of a
character so permanent and stable as to have survived the con
vulsion of civil war. The southern States are not held as con
quered provinces. On the contrary, aside from the abolition of
slavery and the fundamental legislation securing to the old
slaves the full fruition of their freedom, there has been no per
ceptible change in the relations of these States to the United
States, Surely, to the student of history, wherein vae victis I is writ
ten on every page, this fact has wonderful significance. It
recommends the American form of government to the rest of
the world as the incoming of the new stage of civilization,
wherein oppression and war shaU become unknown. However
long contending armies may devour populations and paralyze
industry elsewhere, we are assured that war-sick America wiU
fight with herself no more. This assurance repays the south a
thousand fold for aU that she has lost and endured.
The great economical interest of the south is her agriculture ;
and in this industry, as well as among those who conduct it, a
constant transition has been taking place during the ten years
since emancipation. There is a melancholy change in the
homes of landholders from the ease and comfort of ante bellum
days. The neat inclosures have fallen; the pleasant grounds
and the flower-gardens, once so trim and flourishing, are a
waste ; aU the old smUes and adornments are gone. Change at
home is accompanied by stiU greater change without. The
negroes — and they constitute the great bulk of the laboring
population — tend to become a tenantry, cultivating the land,
in some • instances, for a part of the produce, but oftener for a
fixed sum of money. Many of these realize from their labors
little more than enough to pay a moderate rent. Others work
for wages, either in money or in some portion of the crop made
by their labor. As the negroes are scarce, and their labor so
important, they have often, directiy or indirectly, a voice in the
area of land cultivated, the mode of cultivation, and the kind of
crop raised. The result, in many places, is reUrogression. The

444 Appendix
face of the country is much altered. Only a smaU part of the
land, as compared with that tilled before the war, is under cul
tivation, the remainder becomes wUd, Could the fallen con
federates return they would not in many places recognize their
old homes. Nearly every man of average business ability could
control his slaves, before the war, with littie trouble ; but it now
requires far more than ordinary capacity to find and keep good
tenants, to employ laborers amid the present scarcity, and to
retain and make them remunerative when employed. The
freedman is a different character from his former slave self, and
is to be governed by different methods ; and the true art of
managing him is cabalism to many who were prosperous plant
ers before the war. Multitudes of these show great despon
dency, for there have been thousands of faUures among them.
But when we examine into this depression, we find that it is
but the result of the transition from the former regime, and not
a deep-seated and fatal decay of the vitals. These are some of
the symptoms of assured recovery, noted within the last three or
four years : a steady contraction of credit, and widening preva-
lency ofthe cash system ; growing conviction that the whites must
depend upon their own labor more, and less on that of the
negroes ; augmenting number of land-owners who decline to
secure the merchants advancing supplies to their tenants and
laborers ; a greater acreage devoted to food crops ; general
advocacy of diversified planting ; spreading dissatisfaction with
the laws giving large exemptions to debtors. Southern econom
ical affairs, in their sinking, " touched bottom " (to use the
forcible expression now in vogue) about the end of 1874."^
There has been a probable increase since of the mass of dis
tress, as the heat of a summer day increases, by accumulation,
for a while after noon, though the sun is imparting less and
less. Steady amelioration will soon be general. A new system
is slowly developing, and can be plainly discerned among the
rubbish ofthe old. The change from former days most notice-
1 I see now — in 1905 — that the statement in the text was a great
mistake ; and that nadir was not reached until some fifteen or twenty
years later.

Appendix 445
able now is the multiplication, increased energy, and continu
ally growing trade of the smaller towns. This is due to the
decay of planting, which was a wholesale system, and the com
ing-in of farming, which is a smaU trading system using much
less concentrated capital. The large moneyed man, for evident
economical reasons, buys in commercial centres — in cities —
but the smaU purchaser must needs buy in the nearest market.
Allowing for the great increase of farmers, and the control by
the negroes of their earnings, there are many thousands more of
small buyers in the south than there were before the war, and
towns build up to seU to them.
There is another fact, not so noticeable as the rapidly grow
ing local trade, but stiU more important, A class of new planters,
consisting mainly of men too young to have become fixed in the
methods and habits of former days, is springing up. They
are new yet ; but there is, in many parts of the south, at least
one who is teaching many watching idlers by deeds and silence.
They have remodeUed their domestic economy, accommodat
ing it to their smaUer incomes and to the uncertainty of house
hold help. They have discarded the outside kitchen, have
substituted the cooking stove for the old voracious fireplace,
and have brought the well with a pump in it, instead of the old
windlass and bucket, under the roof of the dwelling, so that the
household duties may be more easily despatched by their wives
and children. And they have also remodeUed their planting.
They diversify their crops and products, raising more grain, and
introducing clover and new forage plants. Some abandon en
tirely the cultivation of the old slave crops, and supply the
nearest towns with feed and provisions. These planters of the
New south tUl less land, and strive to improve it ; they study
the superiority and economy of machinery ; they provide them
selves with better cotton-gins, often using steam to work them ;
they have presses which require fewer hands than the old pack
ing-screw ; better plows are used ; and harrows, reapers, and
mowers, which, in many parts of the south, were seldom known
before the war, are now common. This httie band keeps pace
with agricultural progress, as recorded in the journals; they

44^ Appendix
seek for and find many new sources of profit ; they prepare the
people for laws fostering the interest of the planter in many
particulars ; they mold the opinion of their neighborhood ; and
their ability, skill, and wealth slowly increase. They struggle
with a new order of things, having to think for themselves at
every turn, and often misstep and faU in the dark, but they pick
themselves up, and find the way again. The light of the new
experience which they are kindling grows brighter each year,
and is beginning to draw some of their neighbors to travel in it.
It is not our object to give a false impression of the influence
of the class of farmers last referred to. They are but few, and
their efforts are but the beginnings of the happy coming change.
Their courage, power, and numbers are manifestly on the in
crease ; and, as there is no other progressive activity in agricul
ture, and they meet no opposition save the passive resistance
of despondency and inaction, it is almost certain that they will
lay deep and sure the foundations of the needed renovation of
the south. It is their belief that, to make agriculture generally
prosperous, and to school the people to habits of thrift and sav
ing, are the first steps, and that manufactories and trades and
heterogeneous industries wiU naturally follow.
They desire northern settiers, to add useful features to agri
cultural economy, and diversify planting. A few have come,
and they are prospering. It seems rational to expect a steady
influx of these for many years, bringing capital and methods
better suited to the needs of the changed times, raising the
value of landed property out bf its impeding prostration, and
strengthening the industrial force. The climate ; the abun
dance of cheap, cleared land ; the long settlement having dem
onstrated the country to be healthy ; the fact that plowing and
other important outdoor work can be done on the farms aU the
winter round; the many railways, the multiplying towns and
growing cities ; the variety of products, and easy access to mar
ket — now that slavery and the animosity of war are gone, and
the misrule of the carpetbagger has ended nearly everywhere —
these, and many other advantages daily disclosing themselves,
excel most of the new States and the Territories in offering in-

Appendix 447
duceraents to immigrants ; and, in due course of time, a vast
number of settiers, both American and foreign, wiU be added
to the population. There are many indications that the immi
gration of stock-raisers, wool-growers, market-gardeners, or-
chardists, bee-keepers, in fine, smaU farmers of every kind,
adapted to the soil and cliraate, wUl soon begin in earnest.
When it does, the rebuilding of the south wiU be rapid.
The coming- in of northern capitalists, to invest in railways,
mines, manufactories, and other large moneyed enterprises —
most especially to develop the great resources of water-power —
raay be expected to begin at once, and considerably, upon the
close of the centennial year. It seeras now that this is the raost
powerful agency that may be expected to begin immediate
work, in introducing the much-needed higher type of industrial
organization. The feelings of the two races toward each other were, for a
few years after the war, bitterly hostUe. The whites had, aU
their lives, seen the negroes in slavery, and from their infancy
they had heard their preachers defend slavery, not in the ab
stract, as their phrase was, but in the concrete. The " con
crete " meant African slavery, which was justified on the ground
that the African was divinely intended in his nature for slavery,
which was to him christianization and civUization, so long as he
remained a slave ; whUe, the moment he was set free, he would
revert to his primitive barbarism. When these God-given
slaves were suddenly cut loose from mastership, and the wealth
of the capitalist, the portion of the orphan, and the mite of the
widow were swept away at once by emancipation, either directly
or as a necessary consequence, there was a great shock given
to the whites. But when, three years afterwards, a new con
stituency was created, in which the slaves, just emancipated,
outnumbered the whites, in many counties, the storm of passion
that burst forth can hardly be described. The whites feared
that the old relation was about to be inverted, and that they
would be made slaves to the negroes. There was many a deed
of violence, and many a poor negro paid his life for a few offen
sive words.

448 Appendix
But a wonderful change has taken place. When the southern
States were "reconstructed," as it is termed, in r868, a negro
school-keeper or preacher, if known to be a republican in
politics — as he generally was — was hardly safe anywhere be
yond the limits of a city. The negro schools were often broken
up by mobs, and sometimes black congregations were attacked
at night in their churches and dispersed by armed whites in dis
guise. Now, the colored children troop securely to school, and
the colored churches and their congregations are sternly pro
tected by law everywhere. Seven years ago a colored person
could hardly get justice, in even the plainest case, from a jury
of the other race. Now, in all of the courts, he has the influ
ence of white men to aid him, and rarely is an unjust verdict
rendered against hira. He raakes better friends of the whites.
There is no need for hira to legislate or hold office over them ;
he cannot yet do these things right for himself. He rises, how
ever, and his importance is felt more and more. His labor is a
necessity. Learning to use it aright, he wiU surely win aU that
he deserves. The healthful sentiment prevails everywhere, at
the north as at the south, and with the late slave also, that to
force his growth is as unfortunate to him as is misjudged parental
assistance, which often keeps adult children from ever becoming
self-reUant. The colored race in the south must be educated
by the struggle for existence into self-maintenance. This train
ing, like the material recuperation of the south, wUl require time,
with patience and hopefulness.
The negro tends resistlessly to a fixed position in his own
class. He does not wish to ride in the same railway-car with
fine ladies and gentlemen, nor could you persuade him to send
his children to a mixed school to be teased by white scholars.
He wiU not be legislated out of his natural circle, where he feels
comfortable, into one where he wiU be ill at ease. He seeks
for himself a separate home, school, church, and occupation, in
aU of which he can, at a distance, imitate the white, to whom he
is ever looking up. The statute books may be covered with laws
having a different purpose, but they wiU be as powerless to check
the current of separation as prescribed rates of interest are im-

Appendix 449
potent to keep down usury when money is dear. In a domestic
world, a company and circle of his own, the negro wiU raake a
start for hiraself.
But the negro is grossly raisunderstood. It is too generaUy
forgotten that he is raany centuries below the white in evolution.
Slavery has elevated him far above the savagery of Africa, and
introduced him to perhaps his only chance of civilization.
His future in the south is a mystery, . Many of his best
friends do not beUeve that he can hold all the great advantages
that he has gained in the last ten years. The whites have been
muzzled by hostile government. They were stunned, while the
negro was stimulated, by emancipation. Their natural effort to
hold on to the ante bellum system has also helped the old slave.
But, when smaU and diversified farming is fully developed, and
accumulating capital brings in the higher industries, there may
be a general need for more efficient and skiUed labor than the
average negro can supply. While he is forever safe poUtically
against the white, he may not be economically safe.
In noticing the leading features of the New south, we have
merely hinted at her rich natural endowments. We have
deeraed of more importance the character of her people, the
new views and principles beginning to assert themselves, the
great economical changes foUowing and to foUow the abolition
of slavery, and the potent effects soon to be wrought by copious
immigration. For upon these the future mainly depends.
The south is in a thorough and long transition. Her fields
are to be raade fertUe and to smile beautifuUy with an infinite
variety of products ; her provisional labor is to be gradually sup
planted by a permanent system ; industries, trades, and manu
factories are to be founded and everywhere multipUed ; she is
to have local organizations which wiU foster more of self-govern
ment; her comraon schools are to be reconstituted and ren
dered truly serviceable to aU ; and she has also her part to do
in literature, science, and art, as weU as in domestic and national
politics. We must not be oversanguine in hope of her im
mediate progress ; but we can certainly take courage, when we
find that every one who perceptibly influences society by precept
29

45° Appendix
or by example — whether he be prominent like Gordon or
Lamar, or only a humble planter leading the fore-row in his
fields — is seeking for and finding the right path. These leaders
must, in the nature of things, have a larger follovring every year.
In due time, their children and their children's chUdren wiU
make the south of a piece with the more prosperous portions of
our country,
[I intended to incorporate in the foregoing these two passages,
but by sorae inadvertence they were not printed in their several
places :
I said of Von Hoist :
" Though he does not equal Mommsen's vivid delineation of the
effects of Roman slavery, his work is in grateful contrast with most
of the anti- and pro-slavery literature of America, by reason of his
freedom from ethical declamation, and his presentation of the real
evils of slavery, in the light of social, and especially economical,
laws." I also said of the negro :
" His flexibility ; his receptivity to civilization, so different from
the inveterate repugnance of the Indian ; his satisfaction and almost
complete freedom from discontent, insuring him against any violent
change ; the probably long necessity for his labor ; are all great
things in his favor."]

INDEX

[To decide what is the right handle to a passage not pointed to
by a chapter title, and place it in an index where an average reader
wiU expect it, is often very hard. An alphabetical list of proper
names and rememberable words that are in or near passages which
one may wish to look for is much more easy to make than a minute
subject-index, and it supplies much surer clews. What an Index
Nominum does for the Latin or Greek scholar suggests the service-
ableness of this Index.]

i6,

oppressed, bleeding,"

A.
Abbott, Ernest Hamlin, 404,
Abbott, Dr, Lyman, 347, 405.
Abolitionists, root-and-branch, 15,
%i,sq.
Achaaan league, 62.
Adams, Charles F., 28, 57, 58, 347.
Adams, John, 59, 142.
Adams, John Q., 20, 256.
,^schines, 69.
iEsop, 343.
Africa, " poor,
180, 185.
Alamance, 77.
Alexander, Tom, 277.
Altgeld, 112.
Amana community, 409.
Aristides, 293,
Aristocracies, natural, 90,
Aristotle, 37, 39, 106.
Arnold, Matthew, 196, 376.
Athens, 89.
Atlanta stockade, 381,'

B,
Bacon, 144.
Bagehot, 437,
Barnett, Samuel, 279.
" Battle Hymn of the Republic," 205.

Bayard, 241, 244.
Beatrice, 195.
Beauregard, 293, 316.
Beecher, Henry Ward, 152,
Beecher, Dr, Lyman 189,
Benjamin, 239.
Benton, 126.
Bentonville, 60.
Bible, the, 39.
Binney, 64.
Bishop, J. P., 141,
Blaine, 39.
Boley, 374, 408.
Bonnivard, 128.
Breckinridge, 266.
Brockhaus, 296,360.
Brooks, Preston S., 237.
Brown, John, 264, 270, 352,
Brown, Joseph E., 317.
Brown, Prof. William Garret, 274, 289,
369-
Buena Vista, 3ro.
Bunyan, 145,
Burgoyne, 317,
Burke 41, 187, 204,
Butler, 244.

c.

Casar, 244, 343,
California, 40, 80,

452

Index

Calhoun Correspondence, loo, 105,
123.
Calhoun, Floride, 99.
Calhoun, John C, 17, 18, 19, 22, 30,
40, 65 sq., 85, 89, 135, r43, 150, 152,
153, 158, 186, 208, 209, 212, 225, 226,
239. 247j 2501 Z5I1 253.254, 255. 299>
3". 351-
Casablanca, 319.
Cass, 239.
Catullus, 151, 278.
Centralizing and decentralizing forces
in America, 5.
Channing, 196.
Chase (of Maryland), 54.
Chase, Salmon P., 21.
Choate, 146, 219.
Cicero, 15, 18, 38, 124, 144, 237.
Classics, ancient, 37,
Clay, 97, 246, 251.
Cleopatra, 19.
Cleveland, Grover, 325.
Clingman, 157.
Clinton, George, 96.
Cobb, Howell, 214, 229, 252, 253, 261,
285.
Cobb, T. R. R., 38, 39, 42, 48, 266.
Coleridge, 202.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, the Anglo-
African composer, 25.
Comings, S. H., 368, 419.
Cone, 218, 222.
Confederate States, its evolution simi
lar to that of the United States, 53 ;
African slave-trade prohibited by its
constitution, 55; its commissioners,
74.
Cornwallis, 317.
Cosmic force and law, 26, 211.
Cotton, 35.
Cowper, 136.
Crawford, George W., 246.
Crawford, William H., 218.
Crittenden compromise, 262.
Crocket, 144.
Cromwell, Oliver, 274, 28r.
Cromwell, Richard, 297, 298,
Cumming, Major Joseph B., 35, 321,
347> 34^-
Curran, 437,
Curtis, 70.

Dahlonega mint, 231, 245,
Dane, Nathan, 64,
Dante, 36, 129, 144.
Darwin, 119,
Davidson, Miss, 322.
Davis, Jefferson, 18, 19, 30, 262, 272,
284, 349.
Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, 22, 238, 300,
301, 302, 305, 306,308,315,318, 323,
327-
Decameron, 170, 383.
Decatur, 79.
Declaration of independence, 41, 42.
Delaware, 45, 56.
Del Mar, 109.
Demodocus, 384.
Demosthenes, 18, 69, 124, 144, 258.
De Quincey, 145.
Dillon, 442.
Dispensary, South Carolina, in.
Dixon, 369.
Doolittle, 266.
Douglas, Stephen A., 21, 262,264, 266.
Douglass, Frederick, 25, 362, 414.
Dred Scott decision, 91.
DuBois, Professor, 171, 193, 344, 362,
365, 382, 384, 386, 387.
Duer, 233.
Dumas, father and son, 25,

"Edwards's Sabbath Manual," 198,
Elizabeth, Queen, 38.
Epaminondas, 273.
Erichsen, Hugo, 360,
Erskine, 218, 237.
Everett, Edward, 70.

Falstaff, 248,
Farmville, 60.
Faust, 118.
Fessenden, 243.
Fire-eaters, 15.
First Manassas, 73, 315.
Force-bill of 1833, 65 sq.
Forrest, 290-293, 294,
Fort Darling, 283.

Index

453

Fort Donelson, 283,
Foster, F. C, 396.
Frankland, 80.
Franklin, battle of, 60.
Freed Slave, the statue, 202.
Free-labor and slave-labor systems, their
antagonism, 45 sq., 49.
Freeman, 62.
Fuegians, 361,

Gaius, 141.
Galpliin claim, 245 sq.
Gardner, James, 286.
Garrison, 88, 350.
Georgia Platform, 8-ix, 183, 209, 215,
259, 260, 261, 263, 266.
Germany, 77.
Gethsemane, 197.
Giddings, 152,
Goethe, 144,
Gordon, 273, 450,
Grady, 326.
Grant, U. S., 20, 30, 293.
Greeley-, 326, 441.
Green, 235.
Grinke, Archibald H., 392.
Grover, 227.
Grundy, Mrs., 274.
" Gulliver's Travels," 202.

Hale, 141, 244.
Ham, descendants of, 38.
Hamilton, Alexander, 59, 64, X41, 247.
Hamilton, Governor, 65.
Hamlet, 319.
Hammond, 246,
Hampton, 393, 411.
Hampton, VVade, 129.
Hannibal, 258, 294.
Hans, the Berlin horse, 25,
Hardeman, S. H., 279.
Harlan, 240 sq.
Harris, Joel Chandler, 408,
Harvey, 141.
Hastings, 60.
Hawkins, Sir John, 38.
Hayne, Robert Y., 30, 82, 144.

Hayti, 360, 366 sq.
Heine, 197.
Henry, Patrick, 2r, 64, 97, 272,
Herculaneum, 43.
Hill, Ben, 277.
Hill, Mrs. Ben, 326.
Hilliard, 254.
Hoar, Senator, 404.
Holsey, Bishop, 362, 422,
Homer, r44,
Horace, 343.
Horatius, 249.
Houmas land, 246.
Howard, Gener^, 406,
Howell, 54.
Hunter, 238.
Huschke, 141,
Huse, Caleb, 289.

I.
Iowa contested election, 240 sq.
Ireland, 51, 52, 437.
Iroquois, 77, 126.
Isabel (steamer), 245,
Italy, 77. J-
Jackson, President, 283.
Jackson, Stonewall, 91, 259.
Jamaica, negroes of, 367 sq., 379.
Jamestown, 36, 37, 345.
Jefferson, 41, 53, 54, 56, 59, 106, 142,
147, 436-
Jesus, 40, 128, 352.
Jevons, 107.
Johnson, Andrew, 307.
Johnston, Joseph E., 284, 316.

K.
Kansas, 209.
Kent, Chancellor, 6;.
Kentucky, 186.
Kimball House fire, 280.
King's Mountain, 61.
Knight, Landon, 296, 303, 305, 3x2,
316, 317, 319.
Ku-Klux, 369, 423.

454

Index

L.

"Lalla Rookh," 187.
Lamar, 450.
Landon, Miss, 177.
Langdon, John, 96.
Lassigeray, 293.
"Laus Deo," 205.
Lear, 128, 202.
Lee, R. E., 20, 21, 128, 259, 276, 299,
356.
Lee, Stephen D., 328.
Legar6, t5o.
Lewis, William H., 425,
Lexington, 77.
Lieber, 187.
Liebknecht, 112.
Lincoln, Abraham, 20, 21, 23, 30, 33,
64, 160, 169, 210, 262, 267.
" Little Giffen," 29.
Livy, 146.
Lloyd, H. D., 187.
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 70, 72, 133, 134,
136,137, r46, 155.
Logan, General, 441.
Lower class of negroes, 24-26, 410 sq.
Lucanian ox, 200.
Lucifer, 273.
Lucretius, 87.
Lumpkin, 83, 219, 222,
M.
Madison, 56-58, 64, 68, 96, 133.
Mallory, 272.
Mann, Horace, 152,
Mansfield, 141,
Maoris, 413.
March, 146.
Marshall, C. J., 141.
Martial, 278.
Marx, Carl, 107, 124.
Maryland, 54.
Mason, Jeremiah, 136,
Maximilian, 298.
McClellan, 294,
McClung, 309.
McDonald, 261.
McDuffie, 222.
McKinley, President, 357,
McMaster, 70, 134.

Megareans, 265,
Mell, Dr., 277.
Memorial Day, 322.
Mexico, 51.
Michaelangelo, 129.
Mill, John Stuart, 106, 107, 265,
Miller, Kelley, 392.
Milton, 136.
Missouri question, 40, 84, 209.
Mitchell, John, 240.
Mommsen, 260, 450,
Monitor, 289.
Monterey, 309.
Morgan, Joshua, 223.
Morgan, Lewis H., 76, 126.
Murphy, Edgar Gardner, 359, 404.
N.
Napoleon, 297 sq., 310.
Nationalization, American, 4, 5, 61-83.
Nationalization, southern, 4, 6-14, 51-
61, 436-438.
National Negro Business League, 402.
Nations, law of, 75.
Natural increase of slave property, 48,
49.
New England, 54, 59 ; environment of
Webster therein, 147-152.
New Jersey, 56.
New York, 54.
Niagara, 251.
Noah's curse, 38.
North Carolina, 80, 109,

o,
CEdipus, 279.
Oregon, 80, 84, loi, 226.

Pace, J. M., 322.
Page, Thomas Nelson, 165, 384,
Parker, Theodore, 152.
Parsons, Prof. Frank, T09.
Pennsylvania, 54.
Pennsylvania ladies, two, 331,
Peonage decision, 373,
Pericles, no, 265.
Philippine, the, 26,

Index

455

Phillips, Wendell, 21, 88, 174, 356.
Pickett, 19,
Pierce, Bishop, 277,
Pierce, President, 299.
Pilgrim, The, 296,
" Pilgrim's Progress," 202,
Pingree, 112.
Pinkney, Gustavus M., 98, 113, ri9,
Pinkney, William, 41, 79,
Plato, 37, 106, 144.
Plautus, 155, 195.
Pliny, 39.
Poe, 143, 150.
Polk, President, 103.
Pompeii, 43.
Pompey, 212.
Pope, 136.
Post, Louis F., 25, 403, 406,
Prentiss, S. S., 305.
Primary, Georgia, nr.
Primary, South Carolina, in,
Princeton, 331,
Propontic, 259.
Prynne, Hester, 329.
Pugh, 239.

Quintilian, 37.

Race question, 23-26.
Randolph, John, 69, 97, 222,
Ransy SnifHes, 87.
Rebellion, 8r.
Reed, of South Carolina, 54,
Renascence, 36, 41.
" Republic of Republics," 64, 68, 69,
• 7', 72, 74-
Rhode Island, 56, 80.
Rhodes, James Ford, 17.
Ricardo, 108, 109, 286.
Roman law as to slavery, 42.
Roosevelt, President, 33, 425,
Ruskin, 202.

Saint Pierre, 43.
Savage, 196.
Sawyer, 307,

Schurz, Carl, 134,
Scipio, 294.
Scott, General, 309,
Scribner, Anne, 406,
Sellers, Mulberry, 288,
Seneca, 37.
Seward, William H., 21, 22, 236.
Shakspeare, 30, 136, 138, 144, 278,
Sharpsburg, 273.
Sherman, General, 346.
Shiloh, 283.
Shirley, 136.
Simmons, 243,
Simonides, 171.
Slavery. (See chaps, ii., iii., x., xiv.)
Slavery, ancient contrasted with soutli
em, 155 sq., 432.
Slave-trade, African, 46.
Smith, Adam, ro7.
Smith, James M., 391.
Smith, W. B., 365,
Socrates, 196.
South Carolina, 54, 90, in.
Southerners and northerners contrasted,
59-61.
Southem Mutual Fire Insurance Co.,
225.
Spaight, 54.
Spencer, Herbert, 144.
Starke, W. Pinkney, 93, 94, 97, 100.
State, for the negroes, 413 sq.
Staunton, 255.
Stephens, A. H., 21, 55, 69, 71, 82, 99,
106, 219, 221, 227, 232, 249, 251, 252,
254, 257, 264, 266, 268, 285, 286 sq.,
290, 306, 430.
Story, 64.
Stovall, 222, 290.
Stowe, Mrs., 185, 187, 189, 197, 333-
Stuart, J. E, B,, 294.
Sulla, 244.
Sullivan, 106.
Sumner, Charles, 89, r52, 356.
Sumner, Colonel, 312,
Surratt, Mrs., 298,
Switzerland, 77.

Taylor, Dick, 273.
Taylor, Edward B., 364, 383,

456

Index

Territories, intersectional strife over, 3,
46-49.
Texas, 51,80, 101.
"The Fork," 397.
Thomas, Thomas W., 266.
Thomas, William Hannibal, 383.
Thucydides, 27.
Thurston, 381.
Ticknor, Dr., 29.
Tillinghast, 163, 166, 194, 36I1 379i
380,389,392, 393, 411.
Timrod, 29, 322.
Titania, 198.
Tobacco, 35, 55.
Togoland, 344.
Toombs, 18, 19, 30, 32, 41, 90, 99, 130-
135, 150, 164, 186, 191, 198, 208, 209,
284, 290, 292, 313, 380.
Toucey, 238,
Toussaint, 366.
Town-meeting, 90, 436.
Trent, 119.
Troup, 256.
Troy, 294.
Turner, Bishop, 416,
Tuskegee, 344, 411.
Tyrtaeus, 29. U,
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," 40, 161 sq.
Upper class of negroes, 24, 25, 370.
Upson, Frank L., 43.

V,

Van Buren, 230.
Vanderslice, 27,
VergU, 145.

Vicksburg, 283,
Virginia, 35, 36, 45, 54, 59, I53-
Von Hoist, 70, loi, 104, 119, 122, 123,
124. 439. 450- W,
Waddell, James, 262.
Waddell, Moses, 93, 94.
Wade, 239, 243, 266,
Walker, J. B. A., 368.
Washington, Booker, 25, 380, 387, 402,
409, 411, 414, 415, 417, 419. 420-
Washington, Mrs. Booker, 395.
Washington, George, 19, 53, 56, 64,
115, iiS, 282, 440.
Waterloo, 60.
Watson, Tom, 224.
Webster, Daniel, 19, 30, 64, 65 sq., 82,
83, 85, 100, 105, 113, 118, 120, 121,
247. 255, 266, 275 sq., 304, 307,
Wendell, Prof. Barrett, 28-30, 161, 162,
163, 206.
West Territory, 54.
White labor class, 336 sq.
Whittier, 29, 88, 406.
Wilfer, Reginald, 207.
Willcox, Professor, 390, 403,
Wilmot proviso, 155, 227.
Wilson, General, 308.
Winthrop, 252.
Wirt, 141.
Wirz, 298.
Wright, Richard R., 344, 406,
Wright, Silas, 242.
Wyeth, 29r.
Wynne, John, 156,

THE INDIAN
DISPOSSESSED By SETH K. HUMPHREY
With sixteen full-page illustrations from photographs
300 pages, i2mo. Cloth, 1^1,50 net. Postpaid, ^1,64.
A PLAIN, connected, carefiilly prepared narrative of the actual
and proved dealings of the United States government with
the subdued Indian — the Reservation Indian, The au
thor's account of governmental oppression and ill-faith, and of
successive removals of the Indians from their homes to regions un
attractive to white settlers, and ofthe confiscation of Indian property,
are supported by extracts from official records. After chapters de
scribing the experience of the Umatillas (with whom the govern
ment held to its treaty), the Flathead Indians of the Bitter Root,
the Nez Perces, the Poncas, and the Mission Indians, comes an im
portant chapter on "Dividing the Spoils," with a graphic and
moving description of the scenes at the opening of the Cherokee
Strip, drawn from the author's personal experiences, A chapter
is devoted to an exposure of the Rosebud Reservation bill, — the
latest example of governmental confiscation, — while the final
chapter gives an original and convincing explanation ofthe remark
able persistence of vicious influences in our Indian system, in the
face of the equally persistent desire of the American people to
grant the Indian fair play, Helen Jackson's "A Century of Dis
honor" has received a valuable companion work in the present
book.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers
254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON

3 9002 00611 9300

V..''

^Ss;.

m