YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE NEGRO AND THE NATION
A History of American Slavery
and Enfranchisement

BY
GEORGE S. MERRIAM

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1906

Copyright, 1906
BY
GEORGE S. MERRIAM

Published February, 1906
CbS.S'i

CONTENTS

£THR : I.

I.';

jIL
III. iIV. V.
VI. ¦IL
IILIX. X.
XL
QL
<IIL
f, tlV.XV.
XVL
XVII.
XVIII. XIX. XX.
XXI.
XXII.
XXIII. XXIV. XXV.
XXVI.
XXVII.
XXVIIL XXIX. XXX.

PAGH
How Slavery Grew in America  i
The Acts of the Fathers  8
Conflict and Compromise  21
The Widening Rift  28
Calhoun and Garrison  46
BiRNEY, ChANNING AND WeBSTER  58
The Underlying Forces  67
The Mexican War  71
How to Deal with the Territories  79
The Compromise of 1850  84
A Lull and a Retrospect  92
Slavery as It Was  97
The Struggle for Kansas  112
" Fremont and Freedom "  122
Three Typical Southerners  132
Some Northern Leaders  140
Dred Scott and Lecompton  147
John Brown  158
Abraham Lincoln  172
The Election of i860  185
Face to Face  197
How They Differed  205
Why They Fought  211
On Niagara's Brink — and Over  221
The Civil War  237
Emancipation Begun  248
Emancipation Achieved  258
Reconstruction : Experiments and Ideals .... 267
Reconstruction : The First Plan  274
Congress and the " Black Codes "  281
iii

iv Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
XXXL Reconstruction: The Second Plan  294
XXXII. Reconstruction: The Final Plan  306
XXXIII. Reconstruction: The Working Out  316
XXXIV. Three Troubled States  33 1
XXXV. Reconstruction: The Last Act  344
XXXVI. Regeneration  i,54
XXXVII. Armstrong  162
XXXVIII. Evolution-  :7i
XXXIX. Ebb and Flow  82
XL. Looking Forward  91
Index  13

THE NEGRO AND. THE NATION
CHAPTER I
HOW SLAVERY GREV/ IN AMERICA
An English traveler, riding along the banks of the Potomac
in mid- July,. 1798, saw ahead of him on the road an old-
fashioned chaise, its driver urging forward his slow horse
with the whip, until a sharp cut made the beast swerve, and.
the chaise toppled over the bank, throwing out the driver
and the young lady who was with him. The traveler — it
was John Bernard, an actor and a man of culture and
accomplishments, spurred forward to the rescue. As he
did so he saw another horseman put his horse from a trot
to a gallop, and together they reached the scene of action,
extricated the woman and revived her from her swoon with
water from a brook; then righted the horse and chaise,
helped to restore the half-ton of baggage to its place;
learned the story of the couple — a New Englander return
ing home with his Southern bride — and saw them safely
started again. Then the two rescuers, after their half-hour
of perspiring toil in a broiling sun, addressed themselves
courteously to each other ; the Virginian dusted the coat of
the Englishman, and as Mr. Bernard returned the favor
he noticed him well, — " a tall, erect, well-made man, evi
dently advanced in years, but who appeared to have retained
all the vigor and elasticity resulting from a life of tem
perance and exercise. His dress was a blue coat, buttoned
to the chin, and buckskin breeches." The two men eyed
each other, half recognizing, half perplexed, till with a smile

2 iThe Negro and the Nation
the Virginian exclaimed, " Mr. Bernard, I believe ? " and,
claiming acquaintance from having seen him on the stage
and heard of him from friends, invited him to come and
rest at his house near by, to which he pointed. That familiar
front, the now wholly familiar face and form, — " Mount
Vernon! Have I the honor of addressing General Wash
ington ? " With a charming smile Washington offered his
hand, replying, " An odd sort of introduction, Mr. Bernard ;
but I am pleased to find you can play so active a part in
private and without a prompter." There followed a long
and leisurely call at Mount Vernon, and Bernard, in his
volume of travels which did not see the light for nearly a
century, has given a most graphic and winning picture of
Washington in his every-day aspect and familiar conversa
tion. To the actor's keen eye, acquainted with the best
society of his time, the near approach showed no derogation
from the greatness which the story of his deeds conveyed.
" Whether you surveyed his face, open yet well defined,
dignified but not arrogant, thoughtful but benign ; his frame,
towering and muscular, but alert from its good propor
tions — every feature suggested a resemblance to the spirit
it encased, and showed simplicity in alliance with the sub
lime. The impression, therefore, was that of a most perfect
whole." The talk ran a various course. Washington inciden
tally praised the New Englanders, " the stamina of the
Union and its greatest benefactors." The Englishman
acknowledged a tribute to his own country, but Wash
ington with great good humor responded, " Yes, yes, Mr.
Bernard, but I consider your country the cradle of free
principles, not their arm-chair." He had proceeded a
little way in a eulogy of American liberty, when a black
servant entered the room with a jug of spring water. Ber
nard smiled, and Washington quickly caught his look

How Slavery Grew in America 3
and answered it : " This may seem a contradiction, but
I think you must perceive that it is neither a crime nor
an absurdity. When we profess, as our fundamental prin
ciple, that liberty is the inalienable right of every man,
we do not include madmen or idiots; liberty in their hands
would become a scourge. Till the mind of the slave has
been educated to perceive what are the obligations of a
state of freedom, and not confound a man's with a brute's,
the gift would insure its abuse. We might as well be
asked to pull down our old warehouses before trade has
increased to demand enlarged new ones. Both houses and
slaves were bequeathed to us by Europeans, and time alone
can change them; an event which, you may believe me,
no man desires more heartily than I do. Not only do I
pray for it on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly
foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can per
petuate the existence of our Union, by consolidating it in
a common bond of principle."
These words of Washington, with the incident that sup
plies their background, are an epitome of the view and
attitude of that great man toward slavery. Before meas
uring their full significance, and the general situation in
which this was an element, we may glance at the prelim
inary questions ; how came slaves in Virginia and America ;
whence came slavery; what was it?
Primitive man killed his enemy and ate him. Later, the
sequel of battle was the slaying of all the vanquished and
the appropriation of their goods, including women and
other live stock. Then it was found more profitable to
spare the conquered warrior's life and set him to do the
victor's disagreeable work; more profitable, and incidentally
more merciful. Civilization advanced; wars became less
general; but in the established social order that grew up
there was a definite place for a great class of slaves. It

4 The Negro and the Nation
was part of Nature's early law, the strong raising them
selves upon the weak. Morality and religion by degrees
established certain limited rights for the slave. But the
general state of slavery was defended by philosophers like
Aristotle; was recognized by the legislation of Judea,
Greece, and Rome ; was accepted as part of the established
order by Jesus and the early church. It is beyond our lim
its here to measure either its service, as the foundation on
which rested ancient society; or the mischief that came
from the supplanting of a free peasantry, as in Italy. We
can but glance at the influence of Christianity, first in
ameliorating its rigor, by teaching the master that the
slave was his brother in Christ, and then by working
together with economic forces for its abolition. By com
plex and partly obscure causes, personal slavery — the out
right ownership of man — was abolished throughout
Christendom. Less inhuman in theory, less heartless in
practice, though inhuman and harsh enough, was the serf
dom which succeeded slavery and rested on Europe for a
thousand years ; till by slow evolution, by occasional bloody
revolt, by steady advance in the intelligence and power
of the laborer, compelling for him a higher status, the serf
became a hired laborer and thence a citizen throughout
Europe. The recrudescence of slavery came when the expanding
energies of European society, in the seventeenth and eight
eenth centuries, dashed against the weak barbarians of
Africa and America. The old story was retold, — the
stronger man, half-savage still under the veneer of civiliza
tion and Christianity, trampled the weaker man under foot.
In Europe there was little need or room for slaves — ^the
labor supply was sufficient, but on the new continent, in the,
words of Weeden (Economic and Social History of New'
England) : " The seventeenth century organized the new

How Slavery Grew in America 5
western countries, and created an immense opportunity for
labor. The eighteenth coolly and deliberately set Europe
at the task of depopulating whole districts of western Africa,
and of transporting the captives, by a necessarily brutal,
vicious and horrible traffic, to the new civilization of Amer
ica." The European was impartial between African and
Indian; he was equally ready to enslave either; but the In
dian was not made for captivity, — he rebelled or ran away
or died; the more docile negro was the chief victim. The
stream of slavery moved mainly according to economic con
ditions. Soil and climate in the Northern States made the
labor of the indolent and unthrifty slave unprofitable, but in
the warm and fertile South, developing plantations of to
bacco, rice, and indigo, the negro toiler supplied the needed
element for great profits. The church's part in the business
was mainly to find excuse ; through slavery the heathen were
being made Christians. But when they had become Chris
tians the church forgot to bid that they be made brothers
and freemen. Some real mitigation of their lot no doubt
there was, through teaching of religion and from other
conditions. Professor Du Bois says that slavery brought
the African three advantages: it taught him to labor,
gave him the English language and — after a sort — the
Christian religion. But it ruined such family life as had
existed under a kind of regulated polygamy. Again we must
decline to measure the good and the evil of the system.
Probably the negro was in better condition in America than
he had been in Africa, as he certainly was in far worse
condition than he was entitled to be — ^and was in future
to 6e.
The traffic was maintained chiefly by trading companies
in England, — at first a great monopoly headed by the
Duke of York, then rival companies. The colonists made
some attempts to check the traffic, — ^growing alarmed at

6 The Negro and the Nation
the great infusion of a servile and barbaric population.
Virginia long tried to discourage it by putting a heavy
import tax on slaves, which was constantly overruled by
the English government under the influence of the trading
companies. At a later day every one tried to put the
responsibility of slavery on some one else, — the North on
the South, the South on England. But in truth the respon
sibility was on all. The colonists did not hesitate to refuse
to receive tea which England taxed; equally well they
could have refused to buy slaves imported by trading com
panies if they had not wanted them; but they did want
them. The commercial demand overrode humanity. The
social conscience was not awake, — strange as its slumber
now seems. Stranger still, as we shall see, after it had
once been thoroughly roused, it was deliberately drugged
to sleepy But this belongs to a later chapter.
New England had little use for slaves at home, but for
slave ships she had abundant use. With a sterile soil, and
with the sea at her doors swarming with edible fish and
beckoning to her sails, her hardy industry found its best
field on the ocean. The fisheries were the foundation of
her commerce. The thrifty Yankee sold the best of his
catch in Europe (here again we follow Weeden) ; the
medium quality he ate himself; and the worst he sent to
the West Indies to be sold as food for slaves. With the
proceeds the skipper bought molasses and carried it home,
where it was turned into rum ; the rum went to Africa and
was exchanged for slaves, and the slaves were carried to
the West Indies, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Rum and
slaves, two chief staples of New England trade and sources
of its wealth; slave labor the foundation on which was
planted the aristocracy of Virginia and the Carolinas, —
alas for our great-grandfathers ! But what may our great
grandchildren find to say of us?

How Slavery Grew in America 7
The social conscience was not developed along this line ;
men were unconscious of the essential wrong of slavery,
or, uneasily conscious of something wrong, saw not what
could be done, and kept still. Here and there a voice was
raised in protest. There was fine old Samuel Sewall, Chief
Justice of Massachusetts; sincere, faithful man; dry and
narrow, because in a dry and narrow place and time; but
with the capacity for growth which distinguishes the live
root from the dead. He presided oVer the court that
adjudged witches to death ; then, when the community had
recovered from its frenzy, he took on himself deepest
blame; he stood up in his pew, a public penitent, while the
minister read aloud his humble confession, and on a stated
day in each year he shut himself up in solitude to mourn
and expiate the wrong he had unwittingly done, and,
almost alone among his people, he spoke out clear and
strong against human slavery.
A little later, in the generation before the Revolution,
came the Quaker, John Woolman, — a gentle and lovely
soul, known among his people as a kind of lay evangelist,
traveling among their communities to utter sweet persua
sive words of holiness and uplifting; known in our day
by his Journal, a book of saintly meditations. Sensitive
and shrinking, he yet had the moral insight to see and the
courage to speak against the wrong of slavery. The
Quakers, rich in the virtues of peace and kindliness, were
by no means unpractical in the ways of worldly gain, or
inaccessible to its" temptations ; they had held slaves like
their neighbors, though we should probably have preferred
a Quaker master. But the seed Woolman sowed fell on
good ground; slavery came into disfavor among the
Quakers, and when sentiment against it began to grow
they lent strength to the leadership of the public con
science.

CHAPTER II
THE ACTS OF THE FATHERS
The revolt of the colonists from British rule was not
inspired originally by abstract enthusiasm for the rights
of man. It was rather a demand for the chartered rights
of British subjects, according to the liberal principles set
forth by Locke and Chatham and Burke and Fox; a
demand pushed on by the self-asserting strength of com
munities become too vigorous to endure control from a
remote seat of empire, especially when that control was
exercised in a harsh and arbitrary spirit. The revolutionary
tide was swelled from various sources : by the mob eager to
worry a red-coated sentry or to join in a raid under Indian
disguise; by men who embodied the common sense and
rough energy of the plain people, like Samuel Adams and
Thomas Paine; by men of practical statesmanship, like
Franklin and Washington, who saw that the time had
come when the colonists could best manage their own
affairs; and by generous enthusiasts for humanity, like
Jefferson and Patrick Henry.
With the minds of thoughtful men thoroughly wakened
on the subject of human rights, it was impossible not to
reflect on the wrongs of the slaves, incomparably worse
than those against which their masters had taken up arms.
As the political institutions of the young Federation were
remolded, so grave a matter as slavery could not be ignored.
Virginia in 1772 voted an address to the King remonstrat
ing against the continuance of the African slave trade,
8

The Acts of the Fathers 9
The address was ignored, and Jefferson in the first draft
of the Declaration alleged this as one of the wrongs suf
fered at the hands of the British government, but his col
leagues suppressed the clause. In 1778 Virginia forbade
the importation of slaves into her ports. The next year
Jefferson proposed to the Legislature an elaborate plan
for gradual emancipation, but it failed of consideration.
Maryland followed Virginia in forbidding the importation
of slaves from Africa. Virginia in 1782 passed a law by
which manumission of slaves, which before had required
special legislative permission, might be given at the will
of the master. For the next ten years manumission went
on at the rate of 8000 a year. Afterward the law was made
more restrictive. Massachusetts adopted in 1780 a con
stitution and bill of rights, asserting, as the Declaration
had done, that all men are bom free and have an equal and
inalienable right to defend their lives and liberties, to
acquire property and to seek and obtain freedom and happi
ness. A test case was made up to decide the status of a
slave, and the Supreme Court ruled that under this clause
slavery no longer existed in Massachusetts. Its 6000
negroes were now entitled to the sufifrage on the same
terms as the whites. The same held good of the free blacks
in four other States. In all the States but Massachusetts
slavery retained a legal existence, the number ranging in
1790 from 158 in New Hampshire to nearly 4000 in Penn
sylvania, over 21,000 in New York, 100,000 in each of
the Carolinas, and about 300,000 in Virginia. Ships of
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the Middle States were
still busy in bringing negroes from Africa to the South,
though there were brave men like Dr. Hopkins at Newport
who denounced the traffic in its strongholds.
Jefferson planned nobly for the exclusion of slavery from
the whole as yet unorganized domain of the nation, a meas-

ID The Negro and the Nation
ure which would have belted the slave States with free ter
ritory, and so worked toward universal freedom. The
sentiment of the time gave success to half his plan. His
proposal in the ordinance of 1784 missed success in the
Continental Congress by the vote of a single State. The
principle was embodied in the ordinance of 1787 (when
Jefferson was abroad as Minister to France), but with its
operations limited to the Northwestern territory, the coun
try south of the Ohio being left under the influence of the
slave States from which it had been settled.
The young nation crystalized into form in the constitu
tional convention of 1787, and the ratification of its act by
the people. It was indeed, as John Fiske's admirable book
names it, " the critical period of American history." To
human eyes it was the parting of the ways between dis
integration toward anarchy, and the birth of a nation with
fairer opportunities and higher ideals than any that had
gone before. The work of those forty men in half a year
has hardly a parallel. Individually they were the pick and
flower of their communities. The circumstances compelled
them to keep in such touch with the people of those com
munities that their action would be ratified. They included
men of the broadest theoretical statesmanship, like Madison
and Hamilton; men of great practical sense and mag
nanimity, like Washington and Franklin; and they also
included and needed to include the representatives of vari
ous local and national interests. They had been schooled
by the training of many momentous years, and the emer
gency brought out the strongest traits of the men and of
the people behind them.
A prime necessity was willingness to make mutual con
cessions, together with good judgment as to where those
concessions must stop. Large States against small States!
seaport against farm. North against South and East againsti

The Acts of the Fathers "¦ ii
West, slave society against free society — each must be
willing to give as well as to take, or the common cause was
lost. The theorists, too, must make their sacrifices; the
believers in centraUzation, the believers in diffusion of
power; Madisonians, Hamiltonians, Jeffersonians — all
must concede something, or there could be no nation. And
between principles of moral right and wrong, — here, too,
can there be compromise? Easy to give a sweeping No;
but when honest men's ideas of right and wrong funda
mentally differ, when personal ideals and social utilities
are in seeming contradiction, the answer may be no easy
one. The great difficulty at the outset, as to the relative power
in Congress of the large and small States, was settled at
last by the happy compromise of making the Senate repre
sentative of the States in equality, and the House repre
sentative of the whole people alike. But then came the
question. Should the representation be based on numbers or
on wealth ? The decision to count men and not dollars was
a momentous one; it told for democracy even more than
the framers knew. But now again. Shall this count of men
include slaves? Slaves, who have no voice in the govern
ment, and are as much the property of their owners as
horses and oxen? Yes, the slaves should be counted as
men, in the distribution of political power, — so said South
Carolina and Georgia. In that demand there disclosed
itself what proved to be the most determined and aggres
sive interest in the convention, — the slavery interest in the
two most southern States. Virginia, inspired and led by
Washington, Madison, and Mason, was unfriendly to the
strengthening of the slave power, and the border and cen
tral as well as the eastern States were inclined the same
way. But South Carolina and Georgia, united and deter
mined, had this powerful leverage; from the first dispute,

12 The Negro and the Nation
their representatives habitually declared that unless their
demands were granted their States would not join the
Union. Now it had been agreed that the Constitution
should only become operative on the assent by popular
vote of nine of the thirteen States, and it was plain
that at the best there would be great difficulty in
getting that number. With two lost in advance
the case looked almost hopeless. South Carolina and
Georgia saw their advantage, and pushed it with
equal resolution and dexterity. The question of repre
sentation was settled by a singular compromise: To the
free population was to be added in the count three-fifths of
the slave population. The slave was, for political purposes,
three-fifths a man and two-fifths a chattel. Illogical to
grotesquenes's, this arrangement — in effect a concession to
the most objectionable species of property of a political
advantage denied to all other property — ^yet seemed to the
wisest leaders of the convention not too heavy a price for
the establishment of the Union. The provision that fugi
tive slaves should be returned had already been made, appar
ently with little opposition.
But the price was by no means all paid. When the powers
of Congress came to be defined, the extreme South
demanded that it be not allowed to forbid the importation
of African slaves. With the example of Virginia and
Maryland in view, it was clear that the tide was running
so strongly against the traffic that Congress was sure to
prohibit it unless restrained from doing so. Against such
restraint there was strong protest from Virginia and the
middle States. "The traffic is infernal," said Mason of
Virginia. " To permit it is against every principle of honor
and safety," said Dickinson of Delaware. But the two
Pinckneys and their colleague said, " Leave us the traffic, or
South Carolina and Georgia will not join, your Union." The

The Acts of the Fathers 13
leading members from the northern and New England
States actually favored the provision, to conciliate the ex
treme South, The matter went to a committee of one from
each State There it was discussed along with another ques
tion : It had been proposed to restrict Congress from legis
lating on navigation and kindred subjects except by a two-
thirds vote of each House. This went sorely against the
commercial North, which was eager to wield the whole
power of the government in favor of its shipping interests.
Of this power the South was afraid, and how well grounded
was the importance each section attached to it was made
plain when a generation later the North used its dearly-
bought privilege to fashion such tariff laws as drove South
Carolina to the verge of revolt. Now in the committee a
bargain was struck : The slave trade should be extended till
1800, and in compensation Congress should be allowed to
legislate on navigation as on other subjects. The report
coming into the convention. South Carolina was still unsat
isfied. " Eight more years for the African trade, until
1808," said Pinckney, and Gorham of Massachusetts sup
ported him. Vainly did Madison protest, and Virginia,
Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey vote against the
whole scheme. The alliance of New England commerce
and Carolina slavery triumphed, and the African slave trade
was sanctioned for twenty years.
For the compromise on representation it might be pleaded,
that by it no license was given to wrong; there was only
a concession of disproportionate power to one section, fairly
outweighed in the scale of the public good by the establish
ment of a great political order. But the action on the slave
trade was the deliberate sanction for twenty years of man-
stealing of the most flagitious sort. It was aimed at the
(strengthening and perpetuation of an institution which
'even its champions at that time only defended as a

14 The Negro and the Nation
necessary evil. And this action was taken, not after all
other means to secure the Union had been exhausted, but
as the price which New England was willing to pay for an
advantage to her commercial interests.
At a later day, there were those who made it a reproach
to the convention, and a condemnation of their whole work,
that they imposed no prohibition on slavery as it existed
in the States. But if such prohibition was to be attempted,
the convention might as well never have met. The whole
theory of the occasion was that the States, as individual
communities, were to be left substantially as they were;
self-governing, except as they intrusted certain definite
functions to the general government. When only a single
State, and that almost without cost, had abolished slavery
within itself, it was out of the question that all of the States
should through their common agents decree an act of social
virtue wholly beyond what they had individually achieved,
Any human State exists only by tolerating in its individual
citizens a wide freedom of action, even in matters of ethical
quality; and a federated nation must allow its local com
munities largely to fix their own standard of social con
duct. At the point which the American people had reached,
the next imperative step of evolution was that they unite
themselves in a social organism, such as must allow free
play to many divergencies. For the convention to take
direct action for the abolition of slavery was beyond the
possibilities of the case. It was in making provision for
the extension of the evil that it was untrue to its ideal,
sacrificed its possibilities, and opened the door for the long
domination of a mischievous element.
But the main work of the convention was well and wisely
done. Not less fine was the self-control and sagacity with
which the people and their leaders debated and finall|
adopted the new order. Advocates of a stronger goveni-

The Acts of the Fathers 15
ment, like Hamilton, and champions of a more popular sys
tem, like Samuel Adams and Jefferson, sank their prefer
ences and successfully urged their constituents to accept
this as the best available settlement. Slavery played very
little part in the popular discussions, and only a few keen
observers like Madison read the portents in that quarter.
The young nation was swept at once into difficulties and
struggles in other directions.
A word, before we follow the history, as to the senti
ments of the great leaders in this period. Broadly, they all
viewed slavery as a wrong and evil; they looked hopefully
for its early extinction; they recognized great difficulties
in adapting the negro to conditions of freedom; and they
were in general too much absorbed in other and pressing
problems to direct much practical effort toward emancipa
tion. Washington's view is nowhere better given than in the
casual talk so graphically reported by Bernard. He desired
universal liberty, but believed it would only come when
the negroes were fit for it ; at present they were as unquali
fied to live without a master's control as children or idiots.
Washington's way was to look at facts and to deal with a
situation as he found it, and not to try to order the world
by general and abstract ideals. He was intensely practical,
responsive to each present call of duty, and in his concep
tion of duty taking wider and wider views as he was trained
by years and experience. The incident which brought him
and Bernard together was characteristic; if any chaise was
upset in his neighborhood, trust Washington to have a
hand in righting it! The natural reply to his talk about
the negroes might have been : " Since you desire their
freedom, but think them not fit for it, why not make a busi
ness — ^you and the country — of making them fit?" And
the answer fairly might have been : " The country and I
have as yet had too much else to do." Besides his public

1 6 The Negro and the Nation
services, he was a planter on the largest scale; thousands
of acres and hundreds of slaves had come to him by inherit
ance and by marriage. He was most thorough and success
ful in his private affairs ; through all his cares in the Revo
lution, scarcely ever visiting his home, he kept in close
touch with his steward and regulated the plantation's man
agement by constant correspondence. He had the reputa
tion of a just but strict master. His slaves were well fed
and clothed; they were supported in infancy and old age;
they were trained in work according to their capacity, and
taught something of morals and religion ; in point of phys
ical comfort and security, and of industrial and moral
development, they were by no means at the bottom of the
scale of humanity. The slave-holder's position, however
unjust by an absolute standard, and with great possibilities
of abuse, was, in the case of the rightly-disposed man —
and such were common — a position which had its grave
duties and often onerous burdens to be conscientiously
borne. Hardly was the war ended when the country's needs sum
moned Washington again to long and arduous service.
Retired from the Presidency, his successor called him, not
in vain, to head the army which the threatened French war
would call into action. Who can blame him that he did
not undertake in addition a complete reorganization of the
labor system of his own farms and of Virginia? Incon
sistent perhaps it was, — a very human inconsistency, — that
his slaves, who, he told Bernard, were unfit for freedom,
were given their freedom by his will, though not until his
wife's death. That we may take as an imperfect essay of
conscience to deal with a situation so complicated that no
ideal solution was apparent. But we may fairly read as
his unspoken legacy to his countrymen of the next genera?
tion : " My associates and I have won national indepen-

The Acts of the Fathers 17
dence, social order, and equal rights for our own race;
deal you as courageously and strongly with the problems
which remain."
Jefferson was an enthusiast for moral ideals, and a warm
believer in the merit and trustworthiness of average
humanity. He ennobled the struggle of the colonies
against England by writing on the flag the universal and
undying ideas that the authority of governments rests solely
on their justice and public utility, and that every man has
an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap
piness. And Jefferson did not flinch, as did many of his
associates, from giving that right a full and general applica
tion to blacks as well as whites. Nor was he a mere doc
trinaire. As he revolted from the abstract injustice of
slavery, so its concrete abuses as he saw them, filled him
with horror. He wrote : " I tremble for my country when
I reflect that God is just." He described what he had
seen. " The whole commerce between master and slave
is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, — the
most unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading
submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn
to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal. . . . The
parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments
of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller
slaves, gives a loose rein to the worst of passions ; and thus
nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot
but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities."
But Jefferson shared a common belief of his time, that
it was futile to hope to " retain and incorporate the blacks
into the State." He wrote : " Deep-rooted prejudices of
the whites, ten thousand recollections of blacks of injuries
sustained, new provocations, the real distinction Nature
has made, and many other circumstances, will divide us
into parties and produce convulsions which will probably

1 8 The Negro and the Nation
never end but in the extermination of one or the other
race." So he looked for a remedy to emancipation followed
by deportation. But he hesitated to affirm any essential
inferiority in the negro race. He wrote : " The opinion
that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagina
tion must be hazarded with great diffidence." Later he
wrote that "they were gaining daily in the opinions of
nations, and hopeful advances are making toward their
re-establishment on an equal footing with other colors of
the human family."
Jefferson was more than a theorist ; he was skillful to
persuade men, and to organize and lead a party. His gen
eral tendency was " along the line of least resistance," — the
summoning of men to free themselves from oppressive
restraint; and he was highly successful until he called on
them for severe self-sacrifice, when his supporters were apt
suddenly to fail him. Virginia gladly followed his lead
in abolishing primogeniture and entail, and overthrowing
the Established Church. She even consented, in 1778, to
abolish the African slave-trade, being then in little need
of more slaves than she possessed. In 1779 he planned a
far more radical and costly project — a general emancipa
tion. All slaves born after the passage of the act were
to be free; they were to dwell with their parents till a
certain age, then to be educated at the public expense in
" tillage, arts, or sciences," until the males were twenty-one
years old and the females eighteen; then they were to be
colonized in some suitable region, furnished with arms, im
plements, seeds and cattle ; declared a free and independent
people, under American protection until strong enough to
stand alone; and meanwhile their place as laborers was to
be filled by whites sent for by vessels to other parts of the
world. It is hardly strange that the Legislature did not
even take the measure into consideration, and it does not

The Acts of the Fathers 19
appear that Jefferson ever returned to it. Practical legis
lation was not his forte. But his influence told nobly, as
has been related, in barring slavery from the Northwestern
territory, and, had just a little more support been found in
1784, would have saved the Southwest also to freedom,
with almost certain promise of result in early freeing of
the whole country. Just two or three votes in the Conti
nental Congress, — on such small hinges does the destiny
of nations seem to turn.
The inertia which holds men even exceptionally high-
minded from breaking strong ties of custom and conve
nience is shown by a letter of Patrick Henry to a Quaker
in 1773, in which he declared slavery " as repugnant to
humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive
of liberty. Every thinking, honest man rejects it as specu
lation, but how few in practice from conscientious motives !
Would any one believe that I am a master of slaves of my
own purchase? I am drawn along by the general incon
venience of living without them."
There is no need to dwell further on the anti-slavery senti
ments of the group of great leaders who were the glory of
the nation. It is to be noted that Franklin took a char
acteristically active part in aiding to establish an anti-slavery
society in Philadelphia in 1782. Shrewd as he was high-
minded and benevolent, Franklin was always a special mas
ter in organizing men in societies for effective and progres
sive action. His tact won France to the American alliance,
and decisively turned the scale in the Revolutionary war;
and his conciliatory yet resolute spirit was a main factor
in the constitutional convention. This Pennsylvania anti-
slavery society led the way to the early adoption by the
State of gradual emancipation. Franklin, an optimist by
temperament and by his large faith in mankind, looked con
fidently for the early end of slavery ; as fast as men ripened

20 The Negro and the Nation
into honesty and sense, he thought, they would recognize
the folly and wrong of it.
Looking from the leaders to the mass of the community,
in this early period, we see these broad facts. Slavery was
regarded by all as an evil, and by most as a wrong. Even
its champions in the convention claimed no more for it than
that it was a necessary evil ; one of the Pinckneys expressed
the hope of its extinction at an early day, and the other
Pinckney dissented only in thinking this too sanguine.
Further, there was a distinct wave of anti-slavery sentiment,
sympathetic with the lofty temper of the Revolution and
the genesis of a free nation. That wave was strong enough
to wipe out slavery where its economic hold was slight;
it was plainly destined to sweep at least through all the
Northern and Middle States, and hope was high that it
might go farther. But this moral enthusiasm broke help
less against the institution wherever a strong property
interest was involved with it. Manumission in the South
went no further than a few individuals. Virginia and Mary
land, needing no more slaves, ceased importing them; but
South Carolina and Georgia bargained successfully for a
twenty years' supply. Massachusetts, having almost inad
vertently freed her few slaves, was willing that the stream
of misery should still flow on from Africa to the South.
In a word, so far as the negroes were concerned, the sup
posed material interest of the whites remained the dominat
ing factor throughout the country.

CHAPTER III
CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE
For thirty years after the Constitution was established,
slavery falls into the background of the national history.
Other and absorbing interests were to the front. First,
the strife of Federalist and Democrat: Should the central
government be strengthened, or should the common people
be more fully trusted? Twelve years of conservative
ascendency under Washington and Adams ; then a complete
and lasting triumph for the popular party led by Jefferson.
Mixed with and succeeding this came an exasperating and
perplexing struggle for commercial rights, invaded equally
by England and France in their gigantic grapple ; an inef
fectual defense by Jefferson, who in executive office proved
an unskillful pilot; a half-hearted war under Madison, a
closet statesman out of place in the Presidential chair; a
temporary alienation of New England, exasperated by the
loss of her commerce and suspicious of the Jeffersonian
influence; a participation in the general peace which fol
lowed 1815, and a revival of industry. Under this surface
tide of events went on a steady, quiet advance of the dem
ocratic movement. With Jefferson's administration disap
peared the Federal party and the old distrust of the common
people. State after State gave up the property qualification
— almost universal in the first period — and adopted man
hood suffrage. Slavery disappeared from the North; in
New Hampshire it was abolished by judicial decision, as
in Massachusetts; Connecticut, Rhode Island and Penn
sylvania passed gradual emancipation laws, and a little later

22 The Negro and the Nation
New York and New Jersey did the same. In Kentucky,
settled by hardy pioneers from- Virginia, there had been a
vigorous campaign to establish a free State; the Baptist
preachers, strong leaders in morals and religion, had cham
pioned the cause of freedom; the victory seemed decisively
won, by three to one it was said, in the election of May,
1798 ; but a torrent of excitement over the alien and sedition
laws submerged other issues, and the convention sanctioned
slavery as it existed. The African slave trade was made
piracy by act of Congress in 1808, though the extreme
penalty was not inflicted for sixty years, and a considerable
traffic still went on. In furtherance of emancipation, a
colonization society was started in Pennsylvania, and in
a few years it had transported 20,000 freed negroes to
Africa, and established the feeble colony of Liberia. Mean
while the first French republic had freed half a million
slaves in the West Indies ; and Chili, Buenos Ayres, Colum
bia, and Mexico, as they gained their independence from
Spain, had abolished slavery. The European reaction
against the French republic and empire had largely spent
itself; the English tradition of constitutional freedom had
survived and promised to spread; the Spanish colonies in
America had won their independence.
The stiller and deeper current of industrial progress had
moved on apace in the United States. A new New England
was being swiftly built in the Northwest. The Southwest,
too, was growing fast. The acquisition of the Louisiana
territory, — through an exigency of Napoleon's politics, and
the wise inconsistency of Jeflferson — had opened another
vast domain. At the North, commerce, set free again,
spread rapidly, and a new era of manufactures was open
ing. The South— more diffusely settled, with less social
activity, with a debased labor class — caught less of the
spirit of advance. But on one line it gained. Fol-

Conflict and Compromise 23
lowing the English inventions in spinning and weaving,
and the utilization of the stationary steam-engine, a
Connecticut man, Eli Whitney, had invented a cotton-
gin, for separating the seed from the fibre, and the cot
ton plant came to the front of the scene. The crop rose
in value in twenty years from $6,000,000 to $20,000,000.
The value of slaves was trebled, and the border States began
to do a thriving trade in exporting them to the cotton
States — it was said a little later the yearly export reached
50,000. As new States were organized and admitted, those from
the Northwest came in without slavery, which had been
kept out by the ordinance of 1787, and those from the
Southwest, where slaves had been carried by the emigrants
from the seaboard, were allowed without question to retain
the institution. Of the old thirteen. New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York
New Jersey, Pennsylvania (spite of a few slaves linger
ing in the last three) were counted as free States — seven
in all; Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, the two Carolinas,
Georgia, were claimed as slave States — six. Speedily
were added Vermont to the one column, and Kentucky and
Tennessee to the other, making the numbers equal. The
following acquisitions were free and slave States alter
nately: Ohio and Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi,.
Illinois and Alabama, a total, so far, of eleven free and
eleven slave. Of the new Southwestern domain, Arkansas
had been organized as a territory, early in 1819, and a
motion that slavery be excluded had been defeated in the
House by the casting vote of the speaker, Henry Clay.
But in all these thirty years the subject of slavery had
little prominence in public discussion. Now it suddenly
came to the front. A bill was brought into Congress to per
mit Missouri to organize as a State. It was part of the

24 The Negro and the Nation
Louisiana purchase, of which the Southern portion had in
herited and retained slavery ; but Missouri was geographic
ally an extension of the region of the Ohio States, in which
free labor had made an established and congenial home.
It was moved in Congress that slavery should be excluded
from the new State, and on this instantly sprang up a
fiery debate. On one side it was urged that slavery was
a wrong and an evil, and that Congress had full power
to exclude it from a State as a condition of admittance
to the Union. On the other side slavery was defended
not only as an industrial advantage, but as morally right
and a benefit to both blacks and whites. It was strenu
ously declared that the people of each incoming State
had a right to determine their own institutions; and it
was also urged that to keep the balance of power between
the two sections, it was necessary that slave States should
be admitted equally with free. It was disclosed with
startling suddenness that two systems of labor and society
stood face to face, with different ideals, different interests,
and in a mutual opposition to which no limits could be
foreseen. It was plain that with the increase of profit
from slavery all idea of its abolition had been quietly
dropping from the minds of the great mass of the Southern
community. It was equally plain that the sentiment against
slavery in the North had increased greatly in distinctness
and intensity. There was apparent, too, a divergence of
material interests, and a keen rivalry of political interests.
The South had been losing ground in comparison. From
an equality in population, the North had gained a majority
of 600,000 in a total of 10,000,000. The approaching cen
sus of 1820 would give the North a preponderance of
thirty in the House. In wealth, too, the North had been ob
viously drawing ahead. Only in the Senate did the South
retain an equality of power, and, to maintain at least this,

Conflict and Compromise 25
by the accession of new slave States, was an avowed
object of Southern politicians.
The debate was so hot, the underlying causes of opposition
were so obvious, and the avowed determination of the
contestants was so resolute, that the unity and continu
ance of the nation was unmistakably threatened. State
Legislatures passed resolutions for one side or the other,
according to their geographical location; only the Dela
ware Legislature was superior to the sectional considera
tion, and voted unanimously in favor of holding Missouri
for freedom. The alarm as to the continuance of the
Union was general and great. No one felt it more keenly
than Jefferson, startled in his scholarly and peaceful re
tirement at Monticello, as he said, as by " a fire-bell in
the night." He wrote : " In the gloomiest movements of the
Revolutionary war, I never had an apprehension equal
to that I feel from this source." It was a grave omen
that Jefferson's sympathies were with his section rather
than with freedom; he joined in the opposition to the
exclusion of slavery from Missouri. He had no love for
slavery, but he was jealous for the right of each State
to choose its own way, for good or evil; a political theory
outweighed in him the sentiment of humanity.
A compromise was proposed. Let Missouri have sla
very if she will, but for the Northwest let it be " thus far
and no farther " ; let it be fixed that there shall be no
more slave States north of the line which marks Missouri's
southern boundary, the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes
north latitude. Present advantage to the South, future
security to the North; and meantime let Maine be ad
mitted, which keeps the balance equal. This was the
solution accepted by both sides after a discussion lasting
through the Congressional session of 1819-20 until March.
But the smothered flame broke out again. Missouri in

26 The Negro and the Nation
1820 adopted a constitution, and asked for admission accord
ing to promise ; and one clause in her constitution forbade
the entrance of free blacks into the State. This was too
much for the North, already half disgusted with the conces
sion it had made, and when Congress met for the session of
1820-21 the whole question was reopened, and the dispute
was hotter and more obstinate than ever. The issue was
wholly uncertain, and disunion seemed to hover near and
dark, when Henry Clay, who in the first debate had taken
no very important part, but had supported the Southern
claim, now threw his whole power, which was great, in
favor of conciliation and agreement on the original basis.
Clay was a politician, and ambitious for the Presidency,
but he was a patriot and a lover of humanity. As to slavery
he was a waverer, disliking it at heart and sometimes
speaking manfully against it, but at other times respectful
toward it as an established and mighty fact, and even
lending himself to its eulogy. In the first debate he had
advocated the Southern side, had extolled slavery, and
declared the black slaves of the South to be better off
than the white slaves of the North. Now he gave all his
persuasive and commanding eloquence, all the influence
of his genial nature and winning arts, to rally the lovers
of the Union to the mutual concessions by which alone
it could be preserved. He justified the objection to the
exclusion of free negroes, he divested himself of sectional
partisanship, and pleaded with equal skill and fervor for
the compromise. He did not forget that he was a Presi
dential aspirant, but he was a true lover of his country,
and seldom have the traits of politician and patriot worked
together more eflFectively. Though the mass of the North
ern members, strengthened doubtless by the influence of
their constituents at home during the recess, were now
opposed to the whole compromise, and a few Southern

Conflict and Compromise 27
extremists were against it, yet the majority of both House
and Senate were won to its support, and on the last day
of February, 1821, Missouri was admitted as a slave State,
on condition that she expunge her exclusion of free blacks,
which she promptly did. Maine had already been admitted.
The excitement ended almost as suddenly as it had begun.

CHAPTER IV
THE WIDENING RIFT
For the next twelve years, slavery was in the background
of the national stage. But during this period, various influ
ences were converging to a common result, until in 1832-3
the issue was defined with new clearness and thenceforth
grew as the central feature in the public life of America.
From the time of the Missouri debate, the slavery interest
was consolidated and alert, even while other subjects seemed
to fill the public mind. To the North, slavery was habitually
a remote matter, but it was perpetually brought home to
the business and bosoms of the South. The whole indus
trial system, a social aristocracy, and political ambition,
blended their forces. An instance of the subtle power of the
institution was given in a little-marked incident of Adams's
generally creditable administration. By three men as high-
minded as President Adams, Secretary Clay, and Minister
Gallatin, overtures were made to England for a treaty by
which the surrender of deserters from her army and navy
should be her compensation for surrendering our fugitive
slaves! The British government would not listen to the
proposal. The national politics of this period, 1820-32, centred in a
group of strong and picturesque personalities,— Clay,
Adams, Calhoun, Jackson, and Webster. John Quincy
Adams was a sort of exaggeration of the typical New Eng
lander,— upright, austere, highly educated, devoted to the
public service, ambitious, yet not to the sacrifice of con
science, but cold, angular, repellant. Says Carl Schurz
28

The Widening Rift 29
in his Henry Clay — a book which gives an admirable
resume of a half-century of politics : " He possessed in
the highest degree that uprightness which leans backward.
He had a horror of demagogy, and lest he should render
himself guilty of anything akin to it, he would but rarely
condescend to those innocent amenities by which the good
will of others may be conciliated. His virtue Wcis freezing
cold of touch, and forbidding in its look." When the Pres
idential election went into the House in 1824, the influence
of Clay — himself a defeated candidate — was decisively
thrown for Adams against Jackson, and Clay served as
President Adams's Secretary of State. The two men sup
plemented each other well ; Clay less austerely virtuous, but
far more lovable; his personal ideals less exacting, but his
sympathies wider. The co-operation between them was
honorable to both and serviceable to the country; but
partisan bitterness stigmatized it as a corrupt alliance; the
air was full of suspicion and jealousy toward the cultivated
and prosperous class that had hitherto supplied the chiefs
of the government, and the rising democratic sentiment
found a most congenial hero in Andrew Jackson.
He was a rough backwoodsman; a fighter by nature
and a passable soldier; a staunch friend and a patriot at
heart; ignorant, wholly unversed in statesmanship, arbi
trary in temper, and inclined to judge all subjects from a
personal standpoint. He easily defeated Adams for the
Presidency in 1828. His election marked the ascendancy,
long to continue, of a more ignoble element in the nation's
political life. His administration began the employment of
the spoils system ; and it " handled intricate financial prob
lems as a monkey might handle the works of a watch."
Jackson had small regard for the rights of those who got in
the way of himself, his party, or his country ; he had tram
pled recklessly on the Indian; and his triumph fell as a

30 (The Negro and the Nation
heavy discouifagement on the quiet but widespread move
ment to elevate the negro. He treated all questions in a per
sonal way; and the first great battle of his administration
was to compel social recognition in Washington for the wife
of one of his cabinet members whose reputation scandal had
breathed upon, unjustly as Jackson believed. In the revolt
against her recognition a leader was the Vice-President, John
C. Calhoun, himself a man of blameless morals and an
advocate of the highest social standards. He thereby lost at
once the favor of Jackson, which was transferred to Martin
Van Buren, a wily New York politician, quite ready to call
on any lady or support any policy that his chief might
approve. The breach between Jackson and Calhoun was
widened by the disclosure of an old political secret, probably
by Crawford of Georgia, a disappointed Presidential aspi
rant. Jackson's administration naturally fell more and more
into the hands of mediocre men.
Calhoun had already had a long term of distinguished
public service ; he had been one of the group of young men
who came to the front in urging on the war of 1812; he
had served with success in the cabinet and twice been
chosen to the Vice-Presidency. He was of ihigh personal
character; a keen logician and debater; a le?^der who im
pressed himself by the strength of his character and depth
of his convictions. Adams wrote of him in 1821 : " He
is above all sectional and factious prejudices, more than
any other statesman of tMs Union with whom I have ever
acted." He was ambitious of the Presidency, an ambition
which saw itself defeated when Van Buren became the
heir-apparent of the Jackson dynasty. A true lover of
his country, his predominant devotion came to be given
to his own section, and that temper fell in with events to
make him the foremost champion of the South.
The prominence of the personal element in public affairs

The Widening Rift 31
was connected with the absence of any clear and deep
division upon large questions of policy. There emerged
a group of ideas constituting what was called the " Ameri
can system," of which Clay was the foremost advocate,
and which became the basis of the Whig party, as it was
organized in the early '30's. It's general principle was
the free use of the Federal government's resources for the
industrial and commercial betterment of the people; and
its prominent applications were a national bank, a system
of national highroads and waterways, and a liberal use
of the protective principle in tariff laws. " Protection to
American industry " was the great cry by which Clay now
rallied his followers. The special direction of this protec
tion was in favor of American manufacturers. By very
high taxes levied on imported goods, the price of those
was necessarily raised to the consumer, and the American
maker of clothes, cutlery, and so on, was enabled to raise
his own prices correspondingly. Naturally, this result was
most gratifying to the manufacturer and his dependents
and allies. No less naturally, it was highly objectionable
to the consumer. But to the consumer it was pointed out
that by thus fostering the " infant industries " of his
country they would be strengthened to the point where
they could and would supply him with his goods far more
cheaply than would otherwise be possible. But this pleas
ing promise, held out now for some seventy-five years, some
how failed to quite satisfy the consumer; and where whole
classes and sections were consumers only, from the tariff
standpoint, and saw themselves mulcted for the benefit
of classes and sections already richer than they, they
grumbled loudly, and did not always stop with grumbling.
So when in 1828 a tariff was enacted imposing very high
duties on most manufactured articles, and which delighted
the hearts of New England and Middle States manufac-

32 The Negro and the Nation
turers, it was so obnoxious to others that the name was
fastened to it of " the tariff of abominations," and history
has never changed that name.
There were hopes of relief under Jackson, but in the
confusion of party issues, and with the tariff supported
by the consolidated strength of the manufacturers— a con
solidation powerful enough to make Webster its spokes
man in Congress; a consolidation as definite and resolute
as that of the slave-holders, and destined to be far longer-
lived, — no change in legislation came till 1832, and then
the change was immaterial; the "tariff of abominations"
was substantially re-enacted. The South had been chafing
bitterly, and now South Carolina broke into open revolt.
The whole South felt itself aggrieved by the tariff. Its
industrial system was not suited to develop manufactures;
it lacked the material for skilled labor ; it lacked the artisan
class who create a demand. Its staple industry was agri
culture, the growth of tobacco, rice, sugar, and above
all, cotton, and it went to the North and to Europe for
its manufactured goods. A system, of taxation which
doubled the price of its imports without helping its ex
ports, was resented as unjust, and as hostile to the spirit
if not the letter of the Constitution.
South Carolina took the lead, and indeed stood alone,
in applying a remedy more drastic than the disease — ^nulli
fication. Calhoun's logic welded and sharpened the weapon
which had behind it almost the entire weight of the
State. The precise relation of the States to the Union,
left indeterminate in the Constitution, and debated in every
crisis which had strained the bonds, was now asserted
by Calhoun to involve the right of any State to declare
null and void any action of the Federal Congress whicK
impaired its rights. South Carolina now put the theory
into action. She held near the close of 1832 a convention,

The Widening Rift 33
which declared the tariff law unconstitutional and void;
asserted that the State would no longer pay duties under
it, and if coercion was attempted would secede outright.
Congress discussed the matter; and in the most mem
orable and classic of Senate debates, Hayne of South
Carolina vindicated the State's position with logic, passion,
and eloquence; while Webster replied with an equal logic,
a broader and higher ideal of nationality, a vindication
of New England which thrilled all hearts, and a patriotism
which gave the keynote to the ultimate triumph of the
Union. Hitherto, Massachusetts and South Carolina
had each stood stiffly at times for her own way, even at
peril of the national bond; but in that hour the individu
ality of South Carolina was merged in the slave-holding
States, and that of Massachusetts in a Union, one and in
divisible. The challenge of South Carolina was promptly answered
by Jackson, just re-elected President. He issued a procla
mation, proclaiming nullification as political heresy, and
threatening to treat its practical exercise as treason. But
the situation was not destined to settlement by the high
hand. Webster favored such a settlement; he was for no
concession. As well make the issue now as ever, he said.
The President's friends introduced a bill giving him author
ity, if nullification were insisted on, to close ports of entry,
collect duties by military force, and the like; "the force
bill," it was called. But the "tariff of abominations"
was not the most satisfactory or promising ground on
which to assert the national sovereignty. And Jackson
was hardly a desirable man to intrust with indefinite mili
tary power. So urged the timid or the moderate, and
Clay was again the spokesman of compromise. He brought
in a tariff bill, by which all duties above 20 per cent, were
to be gradually reduced until in 10 years they reached that

34 The Negro and the Nation
figure, at which they were to remain. This bill and the
force bill were passed together, and signed the same day.
Confronted by the government with the sword in one hand
and the olive branch in the other. South Carolina re
tracted — it was not a capitulation — and repealed the ordi
nance. Nullification as a theory passed out of sight. But
the willingness of the extreme South to push to all lengths
its resistance to a hostile policy remained, and was felt
in all that followed.
It was a distinct tradition among Calhoun's followers
after his death — and they followed him till Appomattox —
that he privately gave as a reason for making the first
battle on the tariff question rather than on slavery, that
on the first the world's sympathies would be with them,
and on slavery against them. The same tradition ascribed
to Calhoun the prediction that the Northern influence would
become predominant in the Union about i860. Whether
or not Calhoun said these things, the tariff issue certainly
was brought on by the North ; and the " compromise "
on it was a substantial victory gained by South Carolina
for the South. The final verdict of history may be
that it was a just victory, won by unjust means. Calhoun
now stood forth the recognized leader of his section, while
it soon became apparent that of that section slavery was
the special bond, and was to be its avowed creed.
Almost unobserved for a time amid these exciting events,
the debate over slavery had been going on, transferred
mainly from the political field to the minds and con
sciences of individuals. Once in State politics it came to an
issue. Illinois, a free State without question at its ad
mission in 1818, had a majority of its early immigrants
from the South, and a determined effort was made to
introduce slavery by law. It met a still more vigorous re
sistance, in which the Methodist and Baptist clergy, mainly

The Widening Rift 35
Southern men, took a leading part. The opposition was
led by a Southerner, Gov. Edward Coles, one of the for
gotten heroes. Inheriting in Virginia some hundreds of
slaves, and hindered by the State laws from emancipating
them, he took them all to Illinois, gave them their free
dom, supplied them with land, cabins, stock, and tools,
and watched and befriended them till they became self-
supporting. In each deed of emancipation he gave his
testimony: "Whereas, I do not believe a man can have
a right of property in his fellow men ... I do there
fore . . . restore to the said  that inalienable liberty
of which they have been deprived." He led the fight
against the introduction of slavery into Illinois to a de
cisive victory in 1824. A few more such rpen throughout
the South, and history would have been different.
A quiet advocacy of anti-slavery went on throughout
the country, except the extreme South. It was in sympathy
with the general revival of religious activity which began
about 1815 — a form of the new national Hfe, disentangled
from European complications, and free for home conquests
and widening achievements. Three great evils aroused
the spirit of reform — intemperance, slavery, and war. The
general assembly of the Presbyterian church, representing
the whole country, in 1818, by a unanimous vote, con
demned slavery as " a gross violation of the most sacred
and precious rights of human nature, and utterly incon
sistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our
neighbor as ourselves." In 1824-7 the Legislatures of
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey passed resolutions
calling on Congress to provide for compensated emanci
pation, and expressing willingness that their States should
pay their share of the burden. This last sentiment was a
rare one; the self-sacrifice it demanded from the non-
slave-holding States was very little in evidence during

36 The Negro and the Nation
the long contest that followed; men would speak and vote
for freedom; when angry enough they would fight — ^to
defeat the master and incidentally to free the slave— but
to pay, in cold blood, and in heavy measure, for the ran
som of the slaves, was a different matter; and few were
they who, like Lincoln, favored that way out. The action of
those three Legislatures marked the height of the early anti-
slavery tide, and prompted a hope which was never fulfilled.
In the decade 1820-30, more than 100 anti-slavery
societies were established in slave States (see James G.
Birney and His Times, an admirable exposition of the
conservative anti-slavery movement). The Manumission
Society of North Carolina in 1825 took a kind of census
of the State, and concluded that of its people 60 in 100
favored emancipation in some form. In the same year a
pamphlet published in Charleston, S. C, on " The Critical
Situation and Future Prospects of the Slave-Holding
States," bitterly declared that the whole book and newspaper
press of the North and East teemed with articles on slavery.
In Maryland, an anti-slavery party in 1826 elected two
members to the House of Delegates; but this movement
disappeared on the election of Jackson two years later. In
Alabama, Birney, a man of a fine type, and growing
toward leadership, secured in 1827 the passage of a law
forbidding the importation of slaves as merchandise; but
this was repealed two years later. So the wave flowed
and ebbed, but on the whole it seemed to advance.
Among local societies in the Northern States, one may
be instanced in New Haven, Ct., in which, in 1825, five
young men associated themselves; among them were Ed
ward Beecher, Leonard Bacon, and Theodore D. Woolsey.
They were highly practical; their immediate aims were:
First to elevate the black population of New Haven; sec
ondly, to influence public sentiment in the city and State;

The Widening Rift 37
and thirdly, to influence the theological students in Yale
college. So faithful were their labors in their own city
for its black population — described as in most wretched
condition, which seems to have been the case with most of
the blacks at the North in this period — that six years later
Garrison pronounced them more comfortable and less
injured by prejudice than in any other place in the Union.
The young men of the New Haven and Andover semi
naries united in a project of a college for the blacks;
strong support was obtained; but the fierce wave of re
action following Nat Turner's revolt swept it away. Lane
seminary at Cincinnati, a Presbyterian stronghold, became
a center of enthusiastic anti-slavery effort, with the bril
liant young Theodore D. Weld as its foremost apostle;
he was welcomed and heard in the border slave States.
The authorities of the college, alarmed by the audacity
of their pupils, tried to restrain the movement, and the
result was a great secession of students.
The seceders proposed to form a theological department
at Oberlin College (established two years before) if they
could have Charles G. Finney, the famous revivalist, as
their teacher. But Finney declined to take the place until
the conservative trustees consented to admit colored youths
to the College; and thus Oberlin became an anti-slavery
stronghold. As the anti-slavery movement developed, the call for
immediate liberation became more insistent and imperative.
The colonization method lost credit. Slavery was coming to
be regarded by its opponents not merely as a social evil to
be eradicated, but as a personal sin of the slave-holder, to
be renounced as promptly as any other sin. John Wes-
leys words were a keynote : " Instantly, at any price, were
it the half of your goods, deliver thyself from blood-guilti
ness ! " A Virginia minister. Rev. George Bourne, pub-

38 The Negro and the Nation
lished in 1816 Slavery and the Book Irreconcilable, in
v^^hich he said : " The system is so entirely corrupt that it
admits of no cure but by a total and immediate abolition."
Two other Southern ministers, James Duncan and John
Rankin, wrote to the same effect. In England, the aboli
tion of slavery in the West India colonies was being per
sistently urged ; the impulse was a part of the philanthropic
movement that went along with the evangelical revival,
and Wilberforce was its leader. These English abolitionists
were coming to " immediatism " from 1824, and their
influence told in America.
Among the most unselfish and devoted laborers for the
slave was Benjamin Lundy. He was a Quaker by birth
and training; he overtaxed his strength and permanently
impaired his hearing by prematurely trying to do a man's
work on his father's farm in New Jersey, and settled at
the saddler's trade in Wheeling, Va., in 1808. With the
outlawing of the African slave trade, there was beginning
the sale of slaves from Virginia to the Southern cotton-
fields, and the sight of the sorrowful exiles moved Lundy's
heart to a lifelong devotion of himself to pleading the cause
of the slave. Infirm, deaf, unimpressive in speech and
bearing, trudging on long journeys, and accepting a
decent poverty, he gave all the resources of a strong and
sweet nature to the service of the friendless and unhappy.
He supported himself by his trade, while he lectured and
wrote. He established in 1821 a weekly Genius of Uni
versal Emancipation, at Mt. Pleasant, O., starting with
out a dollar of capital and only six subscribers ; and at first
walking twenty miles every week to the printing press, and
returning with his edition on his back. Four years later
he moved his paper to Baltimore. Anti-slavery agitation
was still tolerated in the border States, though once Lundy
was attacked by a bully who almost murdered him. When

The Widening Rift 39
the impending election of Jackson in 1828 came as a chill
to the anti-slavery cause, the waning fortunes of his paper
sent Lundy to Boston to seek aid. There he found sympa
thy in a number of the clergy, though fear of arousing the
hostility of the South kept them cautious. Dr. Channing
wrote to Daniel Webster, expressing the fullest sympathy
with Lundy's devotion to freedom, but also the gravest
apprehension that unless the slaveholders were approached
in a spirit of friendliness rather than denunciation, there
would result a sectional strife fraught with the greatest
danger. We should say to the South, wrote Channing,
" Slavery is your calamity and not your crime " ; and the
whole nation should assume the burden of emancipation,
meeting the expense by the revenue from the sale of public
lands. In this brief letter of Channing's there is more of
true statesmanship than in all the utterances of the poli
ticians of his day.
But Lundy (himself not given to denunciation) made one
convert of a very different temper from Channing's or his
own — William Lloyd Garrison, a young man educated in a
printing-office, fearless, enthusiastic, and energetic in the
highest degree. Quickly won to the emancipation idea, and
passing soon to full belief in immediate and uncom
pensated liberation, he allied himself with Lundy as the
active editor of the Genius, while the older man devoted
himself to traveling and lecturing. The Genius at once
became militant and aggressive. The incidents which con
stantly fell under Garrison's eye — slave auctions and whip
pings — fanned the fire within him. One day, for example,
a slave came into the office, told his story, and showed
the proofs. His master had lately died, leaving him his
freedom, which was to be legally effected in a few weeks;
but in the meantime the overseer under whom he worked,
displeased at his way of loading a wagon, flogged him with

40 The Negro and the Nation
a cowhide so severely that his back showed twenty-seven
terrible gashes. Garrison appealed to the master's heirs for
redress, but was repelled with contumely. Presently he
assailed an old fellow-townsman in Newburyport, Mass., be
cause a ship he owned had been employed to transport a
cargo of slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans. The de
nunciation was unmeasured; the ship-owner brought suit,
and as some points in the article were not sustained by the
evidence. Garrison was fined $ioo. Unable to pay he went
to jail, bearing his captivity with courage and high cheer, till
Arthur Tappan, a New York merchant and a leader in the
anti-slavery cause, paid his fine and released him. The
Genius being ruined, Garrison transferred his field of labor
to Boston, where, at the beginning of 1 831, he started the
weekly Liberator. He and his partner, Isaac Knapp, did all
the work of every kind, living principally on bread and
water, and with only six hours a week, and those at mid
night, for Garrison to write his articles. The paper's motto
was : " Our country is the world, our countrymen are all
mankind." In his salutatory Garrison wrote : " I will be
as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On
this subject I do not wish to think or speak or write with
moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on
fire to give a moderate alarm ; tell him to moderately rescue
his wife from the hands of the ravisher ; tell the mother to
gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it
has fallen, — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause
like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate—
I will not excuse — I will not retract a single inch — and I
will be heard ! "
While Garrison's language was constantly such as to
arouse passion to the boiling point, he was always in theory
a supporter of peace, opposed to war under any conditions,
and even to resistance of force by force. But in 1829 there

The Widening Rift 41
appeared a pamphlet of a diflferent tenor; an Appeal, by
Walker, a Boston negro, addressed directly to the slaves.
It was a fiery recital of their wrongs and an incitement to
forcible redress. Its appearance in the South caused great
excitement. The Governors of Virginia and Georgia sent
special messages to their Legislatures about it. Garrison
wrote of it, in the Genius : " It breathes the most impas
sioned and determined spirit. We deprecate its publication,
though we cannot but wonder at the bravery and intelligence
of its author." Garrison's biographers — his sons — speak
of Walker as " a sort of John the Baptist to the new anti-
slavery dispensation." It was well for the Baptist that his
head was out of Herod's reach. The Georgia Legislature
passed in a single day a bill forbidding the entry of free
negroes into the State, and making " the circulation of
pamphlets of evil tendency among our domestics " a capital
offense. Large as these events loom in the retrospect, they were
comparatively little noticed in their time. Virginia held in
1830 a convention for the revision of her constitution;
among its members were Madison, Monroe, and Randolph ;
and emancipation was not even mentioned. Jefferson was
dead, and the spirit of Jefferson seemed dead. Then the un
expected happened. There was a negro preacher, a slave
named Nat Turner. He was a man of slight figure, reputed
among his people a sort of prophet, addicted to visions and
rhapsodies. He planned in 1831 an uprising of the slaves.
He circulated among them a document written in blood,
with cabalistic figures, and pictures of the sun and a
crucifix. One night he and a group of companions
set out on their revolt. Others joined them voluntarily or
by impressment till they numbered forty. They began by
killing Turner's master and his family; then they killed a
lady and her ten children; they attacked a girls' boarding-

42 The Negro and the Nation
school and killed all the inmates. Houses stood open and
unguarded, and most of the white men were away at a
camp-meeting. From Sunday night till Monday noon the
band went on its way unchecked, and killed sixty persons.
Then the neighborhood rallied and overcame them; slew
several on the spot; but held the rest for trial, which was
held regularly and fairly, and thirteen were executed. The
origin of the outbreak remained mysterious. Turner said
on his trial that he had not been unkindly treated, and there
was no evidence of provocation by special abuse. There
was no trace of any instigation from the North in any form.
It seemed not a stroke for freedom by men worthy to be
free ; not even a desperate revolt against intolerable wrong ;
but more like an outbreak of savagery, the uprising of the
brute in man, thirsty for blood. The fear at first prevailed
that there existed a widespread conspiracy, and various
legislation for protection and repression was enacted or
discussed. But the larger mind of Virginia was moved toward a
radical treatment of the disease itself, instead of its symp
toms. In the next session of the Legislature, 1831-2, pro
posals for a general emancipation were brought forward,
and the whole subject was canvassed in a long and earnest
debate. For slavery on its merits hardly a word of defense
was spoken. The moral condemnation was not frequent or
strong, but the economic mischief was conceded by almost
all. It was recognized that labor was debased; manu
factures and immigration were discouraged; the yeomanry
were leaving the State. One bold speaker declared that the
masters were not entitled to compensation, since property
condemned by the State as a nuisance brings no award of
damages to the owner. But the general agreement was that
emancipation should be compensated and gradual, and that
the blacks must be removed from the State. One plan was

The Widening Rift 43
that they should be deported in a body to Africa; another,
that the increase — about 6000 a year — should be so de
ported; while Thomas Jeflferson Randolph urged a plan
which recalled that framed by his uncle, Thomas Jefferson,
half a century before. He proposed that the owner should
maintain the slave-child till the age of eighteen or twenty-
one, his labor for the last six or eight years being regarded
as compensation for the expense of infancy; and that the
slave should then be hired out till he had earned his passage
to Africa. But, whatever the method, let decisive action
be taken, and taken now ! The Legislature, it is said, was
largely made up of young and inexperienced men. Would
not the courage and hopefulness of Virginia youth essay this
great deliverance ? Older voices bade them to the task. Said
the Richmond Enquirer (edited by the elder Ritchie),
January 7, 1832 : " Means, sure but gradual, systematic
but discreet, ought to be adopted for reducing the mass of
evil which is pressing upon the South, and will still more
press upon her the longer it is put off. We say, now, in
the utmost sincerity of our hearts, that our wisest men can
not give too much of their attention to this subject, nor can
they give it too soon." It was one of the decisive hours of
history :
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.
But the task was too great, or the life-long habit of the
slave-owner had been too enervating. The apparent
expense, the collision of different plans, the difficulty in
revolutionizing the whole industrial system, the hold of an
aristocracy affording to its upper class a fascinating leisure
and luxury — these, and 'the absence of any high moral
inspiration in the movement, brought it to naught. Instead
of decreeing emancipation, the Legislature fell back on

44 The Negro and the Nation
the policy of stricter repression. It enacted that the advo
cacy of rebellion by writing or printing should be a pen
itentiary offense, and to express the opinion that masters
had no rights to their slaves was made punishable by a fine
of $500 and one year in jail. To advise conspiracy was
treason and its punishment death. It had been enacted a
year before that no white man be allowed to assemble slaves
to instruct them in reading and writing ; and to this it was
now added that neither slaves nor free negroes be allowed
to preach.
And so Virginia abdicated her old-time leadership in the
cause of human rights, and the primacy of the South passed
to South Carolina and to Calhoun, the champion of
slavery. In the meantime the organization of the radical anti-
slavery force went on at the North. In 1832 Garrison,
Oliver Johnson and ten others constituted themselves the
New England Anti-slavery Society. Almost its first attack
was directed against the Colonization Society, Garrison
being always as fierce against half-way friends as against
pronounced foes. In 1833 a little group of more moderate
but resolute men organized a local association in New York
city, and under their call the American Anti-slavery Society
held its first meeting in Philadelphia, in December. Among
the New York leaders were Arthur and Lewis Tappan,
merchants of high standing and men of well-balanced and
admirable character; with them were associated Joshua
Leavitt and Elizur Wright. Among the Massachusetts
recruits was Whittier. The sixty-four members were largely
made up of merchants, preachers, and theological students.
Almost all were church members ; twenty-one Presbyterians
or Congregationalists, nineteen Quakers, and one Unitarian,
— Samuel J. May. There was a noticeable absence of men
versed in public affairs. The constitution was carefully

The Widening Rift 45
drawn to safeguard the society against the imputation of
unconstitutional or anarchic tendencies. It declared that
the right to legislate for the abolition of slavery existed only
in the Legislature of each State; that the society would
appeal to Congress to prohibit the interstate slave trade, to
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and the terri
tories, and to admit no more slave States; and that the
society would not countenance the insurrection of slaves.
Garrison, who had been visiting the Abolitionists in Eng
land, was not among the signers of the call to the convention,
and the constitution was hardly in the line of his views;
but he wrote a declaration of principles which after some
debate was adopted. It was impassioned and unsparing;
pictured the woes of the slaves and the essential wickedness
of the system; denounced compensation and colonization;
declared that " all laws admitting the right of slavery are
before God utterly null and void " and " ought instantly to
be abrogated"; and called for a universal and unresting
agitation.

CHAPTER V
CALHOUN AND GARRISON
Thus, with the beginning of the second third of the
nineteenth century, the issue as to American slavery was
distinctly drawn, and the leading parties to it had taken
their positions. Let us try to understand the motive and
spirit of each.
In the new phase of affairs, the chief feature was the
changed attitude of the South. In the sentiment of its
leading and representative men, there had been three stages :
first, " slavery is an evil, and we will soon get rid of it " ;
next, " slavery is an evil, but we do not know how to get
rid of it " ; now it became " slavery is good and right, and
we will maintain it." To this ground the South came with
surprising suddenness in the years immediately following
1833. What caused the change? The favorite Southern
explanation has been that the violence of the Abolitionists
exasperated the South, checked its drift toward emanci
pation, and provoked it in self-defense to justify and extend
its system. This may be effective as a criticism of the
extreme Abolitionists, but as regards the South it is rather
a confession than a defense. On a subject involving its
whole prosperity, its essential character, its relation to tlie
world's civilization, did it reverse its course at the bitter
words of a few critics ? If that were true, it would bespeak
passionate irritability, an incapacity for the healthy give-
and-take of practical life, in keeping with the worst that
could be said of the eflfect of slavery on the master. In
truth the violence of Garrison and his few followers was
46

Calhoun and Garrison 47
but a minor element in the case. Slavery had become
immensely profitable; it was the corner-stone of a social
fabric in which the upper class had an extremely comfort
able place ; it was involved with the whole social and polit
ical life of the section. It was too important to be dealt
with half-heartedly: it must be accepted, justified, believed
in, — or it must be abandoned. John Randolph of Roanoke
had said of slavery : " We- are holding a wolf by the ears ;
it is perilous alike to hold on or to let go." But one or the
other must be done, and the South elected to keep on holding
the wolf.
The better to understand the developments of the fol
lowing years, it will be well to consider a group of repre
sentative men, — Calhoun, Garrison, Birney, Channing, and
Webster. Calhoun had many of the elements of high statesman
ship — clear views, strong convictions, forcible speech. He
was ambitious, but in no ignoble fashion; he often served
his country well, as in his efficient administration of the
war department under Munroe, his protest against the
spoils system and the personal government of Jackson, and
his influence in averting war with England over the Oregon
boundary in 1845-46. After the Presidency was clearly out
of his reach — from 1832 — ^he was growingly identified with
and devoted to the interests of his own section, yet always
with a patriotic regard for the Union as a whole. He had
that fondness for theories and abstractions which was char
acteristic of the Southern statesmen, fostered perhaps by the
isolated life of the plantation. With this went a kind of
provincialism of thought, bred from the wide difference
which slavery made from the life of the world at large.
When Calhoun, in one of his Senate orations, was magni
fying the advantage of slave over free labor. Wade of
Ohio, who sat listening intently, turned to a neighbor and

48 The Negro and the Nation
exclaimed : " That man lives off of all traveled roads ! "
He had neither the arts nor the magnetism of the popular
politician ; he won no such personal following as Clay and
Jackson; but the South more and more accepted him as
the most logical and far-seeing champion of its peculiar
interests. His personality had much in common with Jonathan
Edwards. There was in both the same inflexible logic and
devotion to ideas, the same personal purity and austerity.
The place of the mystic's fire which burned in Edwards
was taken in Calhoun by a passionate devotion to the com
monwealth. In both there was a certain moral callousness
which made the one view with complacence a universe includ
ing a perpetual hell of unspeakable torments ; while the other
accepted as the ideal society a system in which the lowest
class was permanently debased. Each was the champion
of a cause destined to defeat because condemned by the
moral sentiment of the world, — Edwards the advocate of
Calvinism, and Calhoun of slavery.
Calhoun is to be regarded as a typical slave-holder of
the better class. He owned and cultivated a plantation with
several hundred slaves ; spent much time upon it ; made it
profitable, and dispensed a generous hospitality. Such a
plantation was a little community, organized and admin
istered with no small labor and skill; with house servants,
often holding a friendly and intimate relation with the
family ; with a few trained mechanics and a multitude of
field hands. As to physical comfort the slaves were prob
ably as well or better provided than the bulk of European
peasantry, — ^this on the testimony of witnesses as unfriendly
to slavery as Fanny Kemble and Dr. Channing. Order and
some degree of morality were enforced, and religion,
largely of the emotional type, prevailed widely. So much
may be said, perhaps, for the average plantation, certainly

Calhoun and Garrison 49
for the better class, and a very large class. Joseph Le
Conte, the eminent scientist, a writer of the highest credit,
in his pleasing autobiography describes his boyhood on a
Georgia plantation, and characterizes his father as a man
of rare excellence to whom he owed the best of his mental
inheritance. He writes of him : " The best qualities of
character were constantly exercised in the just, wise, and
kindly management of his 200 slaves. The negroes were
strongly attached to him, and proud of calling him master.
. . . There never was a more orderly, nor apparently a
happier working class than the negroes of Liberty county
as I knew them in my boyhood."
Against this description are to be set such statements
as this made by Frederick Law Olmsted, after many
months of travel in the South : " The field hand negro is
on an average a very poor and a very bad creature, much
worse than I had supposed before I had seen him and grown
familiar with his stupidity, indolence, duplicity, and sen
suality. He seems to be but an imperfect man, incapable of
taking care of himself in a civilized manner, and his presence
in large numbers must be considered a dangerous circum
stance to a civilized people." Olmsted saw no resource
but gradual emancipation with suitable training. A resident
of this same Liberty county. Rev. C. C. Jones, himself a
staunch supporter of slavery, but urgent for giving better
religious instruction to the slaves, wrote in 1842 ; " That the
negroes are in a degraded state is a fact, so far as my
knowledge extends, universally conceded. . . . Negro
marriages are neither recognized nor protected by law.
Uncleanness — this sin may be considered as universal.
. . They are proverbial thieves." But how could
" religious instruction " produce chastity in those for whom
the law did not recognize marriage, or honesty in those who
themselves were stolen?

50 The Negro and the Nation
But the bright side of the medal, which had so dark an
obverse, was the interpretation on which Calhoun and the
slave-holding class took their stand. They resolutely
ignored the frequent abuses and the essential degradation of
manhood. They fashioned the theory — it was the old
familiar theory of past ages, but had fallen out of sight in
the enthusiasm of the revolutionary period — that society
rightly and properly is constituted with a servile class as
its base. Calhoun declared : " I hold that there never has
yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one
portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on
the labor of the other." And generally, he adds, the con
dition of the laborer has been worse than it now is in the
South. In advance of civilization, he declares, there
always comes a conflict between capital and labor; and
this conflict the South avoids by unflinchingly holding the
laborer in his subject condition.
Calhoun is dead, and slavery is dead, but the ideas he
then avowed are still powerfully, if more latently, asserting
themselves in our social order.
For these theories the slave-holders now found justifi
cation from the ministers of religion. The South held more
tenaciously than any other section to the old-fashioned type
of Christianity. In earlier days, religious teachers — as in
the unanimous vote of the Presbyterian General Assembly
in 1818 — had held slavery to be " utterly inconsistent with
the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as
ourselves." But now the Southern ministers of all denom
inations appealed for ample justification to slavery as it was
permitted under the Jewish law, and as it existed in the
time of Christ and the Apostles, and was unrebuked by
them. They went further back, and in the curse pronounced
by Noah upon the unfilial Ham and his posterity, they found
warrant for holding the African in perpetual bondage. So

Calhoun and Garrison 51
the South closed up its ranks, in Church and State, and
answered its critics with self-justification, and with counter
attack on what it declared to be their unconstitutional,
anarchic, and infidel teachings.
The agitation against slavery took on a new phase with
the appearance of Garrison and his founding of the Liberator
and the New England Anti-slavery Society in 1831. Gar
rison was filled and possessed with one idea — the wrongs
of the slave, and the instant, pressing, universal duty of
giving him freedom. It was in him an unselfish and heroic
passion. For it he cheerfully accepted hardship, obloquy,
peril. He saw no difficulties except in the sin of wrong
doers and their allies; the only course he admitted was
immediate emancipation by the master of his human prop
erty, and the instant cooperation and urgency of all others
to this end. His words were charged with passion; they
kindled sympathetic souls with their own flame ; they roused
to a like heat those whom they assailed; and they sent
thrills of alarm, wonder, and wrath, through the community.
Wherever the Liberator went, or the lecturers of the new
anti-slavery societies were heard, there could be no indif
ference or forgetfulness as to slavery. Hitherto, to the
immense mass of people throughout the North, it had been
a far-away and unimportant matter. Now it was sent
home to the business and bosoms of all men.
The anti-slavery movement changed its character. Gar
rison entered on a very active campaign, lecturing and
establishing local societies. Prominent among his assist
ants was George Thompson, one of the English Abolition
ists, who, after the emancipation of the West India slaves
by the British government at a cost of £20,000,000, came
to this country and acted as Garrison's ally, winning some
converts by his eloquence, but heightening the unpopularity
¦of the movement through the general liostility to foreign

52 The Negro and the Nation
interference. The early societies had been largely in the
border States, and their efforts had an immediate object
in the political action of their own communities. Now, the
resentment and fear of the slave-holding interest soon
drove them out of those communities. They spread faster
than ever, — in a few years it was said that they were 1300,
— but were confined to the free States. What immediate
and practical aim could they pursue? It was the question
of practical action that brought Garrison's views to a sharp
test, and soon divided him from the great body of anti-
slavery people.
In Garrison's mind there was room for only one idea
at a time. Slavery was a crime, a sin, an abomination, — ^that
to him was the first, the last, the whole truth of the matter.
He had little education, and he had not in the least a
judicial or an open mind. It was to him clear and certain
that the blacks were in every way the equal of the whites.
Of the complexity of human society; of the vital necessity
of a political bond uniting communities, and of the inevitable
imperfections and compromises which are the price of an
established social order; of the process of evolution by
which humanity slowly grows from one stage into another;
of the fact that the negro was in some ways better as a
slave in America than as a savage in Africa, and that there
must be other intermediate stages in his development ; of the
consideration due to honest differences of opinion and to
deeply-rooted habits — of all this Garrison was as ignorant
as a six-years-old child. When facts came in his way, he
denied them; when institutions stood across his path, he
denounced them; when men diflfered from him, he assailed
them. As to a practical course of action by Northern people, he
was absolutely without resource. How were they to free
the slaves ? Not by force — force was to Garrison as wicked

Calhoun and Garrison 53
as slavery itself. By their votes? That was only possible
under the government as ordained by the Constitution ; and
the Constitution allowed no action against slavery except
by each State for itself. The worse then for the Con
stitution! Ere many years Garrison declared, and put as
a standing heading to the Liberator : " The United States
Constitution Is a Covenant with Death and an Agreement
with Hell." He went further ; for a time at least he held that
all human governments, as resting on force, were sinful,
and to be ignored, or passively submitted to, without taking
active part. He declared the Union, as a compact with
slave-holders, was worthy only to be dissolved. But how
even dissolve it, since he counselled his followers not to
vote? And if it were dissolved, how would the slaves be
any nearer freedom? Was there any possible good out
come to non-voting and dissolution of the Union, except
that there would then be no complicity with slave-holders?
And would such escape from complicity be any help to the
slave, any service to humanity, anything more than an ego
tistic separation from political society, a mere refined
selfishness ?
Such questions never troubled Garrison. Instead of
answering them, he found something else to denounce.
The churches he thought were derelict, in that they did not
bear testimony against slavery. True, most of the great
religious bodies of the country were soon rent asunder on
the question: Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, were
divided between North and South, because neither side
could tolerate the other's position on slavery. But nothing
satisfied Mr. Garrison. To him the churches were " cages
of unclean birds and synagogues of Satan."
But if the gun was ill-aimed, at least the recoil was pro
digious. It is unreasonable to attribute principally to the
violence of the Liberator the new and determined rally of

54 The Negro and the Nation
the South in defense of slavery, — Calhoun and his followers
had far wider grounds for their action than that, — ^but
undoubtedly that violence helped to consolidate and inten
sify the Southern resistance. The Abolitionist papers were
at first sent all over the South. The Southerners saw little
difference between such papers as the Liberator and such
direct incitements to insurrection as Walker's Appeal; and
the horrors of Nat Turner's rising were fresh in mind.
They put all Abolitionist teaching under a common ban.
At the North, the anti-slavery cause became associated in
the popular mind with hostility to the government, to the
churches, to the established usages of society. It was
Charles Sumner who said : " An omnibus load of Boston
Abolitionists had done more harm to the anti-slavery cause
than all its enemies."
Garrison's own following was soon divided, and a large
part drew away from him. The most important division
came on the question of political action, when, in the Pres
idential election of 1840, the practical wing entered into
the political field, as the inevitable and only arena for effec
tive action; nominated a candidate, and laid the foundation
for the election of Lincoln twenty years later. In the
American Anti-slavery Society there came a contest; Gar
rison triumphed by a narrow vote, but a secession followed.
Of his immediate and permanent allies the most important
was Wendell Phillips. He threw himself heart and soul
into the cause ; he gave to it an educated and brilliant mind,
and a fascinating oratory ; he was as uncompromising and
censorious as Garrison.
Garrison always held a place of honor and friendship
among the Abolitionists, even those who refused to follow
his leadership. In private life his genial and winning traits
were as marked as was his fierceness on the platform. The
term " Abolitionist " is somewhat indefinite, but it may best

Calhoun and Garrison 55
be defined as denoting a person to whom the supreme
interest in public aflfairs was the extinction of slavery. It
included not only those who shared Garrison's ideas of non
voting and peaceable disunion, but those, too, like Birney
and Whittier, who respected the Constitution and worked
for their cause through a political party. The term also
applied to the few who, like John Brown, would attack
slavery by force of arms. On the other hand, the name
Abolitionist did not properly belong to those who were
opposed to slavery, but held that opposition along with
other political tenets and not as a supreme article of faith.
These were best included under the general term of " anti-
slavery men," a designation accepted by many of the Free
Soil, Whig and Democratic parties, and later by the Repub
lican party. The classification cannot be made exact, but
the word " Abolitionists " generally designated the men and
women to whom the extinction of slavery was a primary
interest, and who gave to it their habitual and earnest atten
tion, through the anti-slavery societies and otherwise. In
this broader sense, the Abolitionists were a notable company.
They were bound together by a disinterested and noble
sentiment, and by sacrifices to the cause. The hostility
aroused by Garrison, Phillips, Pilsbury, and a few like-
minded associates, extended to many who went to no such
extremes. The anti-slavery speakers were sometimes mobbed :
once in Boston a rope was round Garrison's neck and
his life was in peril; meetings were broken up; and the
respectable part of the community sometimes encouraged or
tolerated these assaults. Actual physical injury was very
rare, but a hostile social atmosphere was the frequent price
of fidelity to conscience.
Among the most notable of the leaders was Gerritt Smith.
He took active part in politics, and was for a time in Con
gress. He is finely characterized by Andrew D, White:

56 The Negro and the Nation
" Of all tribunes of the people I have ever known he dwells
in my memory as possessing the greatest variety of gifts.
He had the prestige given by great wealth, by lavish gener
osity, by transparent honesty, by earnestness of purpose,
by advocacy of every good cause, by a superb presence, and
by natural eloquence of a very high order. He was very
tall and large, with a noble head, an earnest yet kindly
face, and of all human voices I have ever heard his was the
most remarkable for its richness, depth, and strength."
Women took a prominent and honorable part; the
venerable and beautiful Lucretia Mott gave her benign
presence to the gatherings ; Lydia Maria Child made heavy
sacrifices in the good cause. In the common ardor, and
with a Quaker precedent, women took part as speakers.
Womeii's rights was closely united with anti-slavery; and
hence came a fresh odium from conservative quarters, while
the admirable bearing of the leading women won growing
favor for both lines of emancipation. The makers of the
new American literature were friends of the anti-slavery
cause. Emerson gave to it his words of serene inspiration.
Whittier was among its ardent apostles, shared in its polit
ical activity, and sang lyrics of freedom. Bryant was its
strong advocate in journalism. Lowell, drawn by his noble
wife, came as a strong ally, and the Biglow Papers gave
what had been greatly lacking, — ^the salt of humor.
The Abolitionists might be compared to a comet, — a body
with a bright head and a nebulous tail. Like all radicals
and reformers they had a fringe of unbalanced and crotchety
folk. It must be said, too, that absorption in a topic remote
from the concerns of one's daily life is apt to be somewhat
distracting and demoralizing. Dr. Joseph Henry Allen — an
admirable and too little known writer — ^has in an eloquent
and beautiful passage described the Abolitionists (though
he was not one of them) as the devotees of a genuine and

Calhoun and Garrison 57
heroic religion. But any adequate religion must find its
main application in the duties and services of the immediate
present; and the men and women who were possessed day
and night by the wrongs of those to whom they could render
little service, were apt to be thrown out of touch with near
and homely relations, and become what are now called
" cranks." But to appreciate the service of the Abolitionists we must
remember that up to the birth of the Republican party in
1854 almost all of the political leaders and men of public
affairs, as well as most of the churches, colleges, and pro
fessional educators, held aloof from the anti-slavery cause.
With a few exceptions, they left the work of educating
public sentiment, and shaping some policy on the supreme
question, to be done by this little company, — of lecturers,
ministers, literary men and women. These did loyally and
bravely according to their lights ; and they had their reward,
outwardly in unpopularity and sometimes persecution, but
inwardly in a social atmosphere within their own body,
warm, joyful, and religious; and the sense of alliance with
the Divine Force in the universe. Said Wendell Phillips:
" One man with God is a majority."

CHAPTER VI
BIRNEY, CHANNING, AND WEBSTER
Of the moderate wing of the anti-slavery men, a good repre
sentative was James G. Birney. With the fine physical
presence and genial manhood of the typical Kentuckian, he
had a well-balanced mind and a thorough loyalty to the
sense of duty, which broadened as he grew. Removing to
Alabama, he became anti-slavery in his sentiments, and he
was a friend not only of the negro, but of all who were
oppressed. As the legal representative of the Cherokee
nation he stood for years between the Indians and those
who would wrong them. Pie identified himself for a time
with the colonization cause; and, finding himself growing
powerless in Southern communities, he removed to Ohio,
where there was a strong and vigorous anti-slavery propa
ganda. One incident of his life in Cincinnati illustrates the
concrete form which slavery sometimes took. A Missou-
rian owned a slave girl who was his own daughter, a culti
vated and refined woman. He took her to the East for a
visit, treated her habitually as one of his own family, but
refused her prayers for freedom. Dreading the possibilities
of her lot, she made her escape in Cincinnati; and, con
cealing her identity and history, she got a situation as a
servant in Mr. Birney's family. One day when he was
absent from the city she came home in terror ; she had been
recognized on the street by two professional slave-catchers;
now she told her story and implored protection. In vain,—
the officers of the law dragged her from the house; a judge
gave speedy sentence that she was a slave ; she was
58

Birney, Channing, and Webster 59
taken sobbing to jail; and the next day she was carried
down the river to New Orleans, where she was sold on the
auction block, — and never heard of again.
Birney took part in the work of the new anti-slavery soci
eties, but he did not follow Garrison's no-government theo
ries. He favored for a while the policy of throwing the
anti-slavery strength for such congressional nominees of
the regular parties as favored their views, and several can
didates were chosen in this way. But when Clay became
pronounced against the Abolitionists, and even John Quincy
Adams, after championing the right of petition, voted
against the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,
Birney and his sympathizers gave up hope of help from
existing partie's, and organized their own party for the elec
tion of 1840. Its principles were resistance to slavery ex
tension, and opposition to slavery so far as was practicable
under the Constitution, — ^the principles later of the Republi
can party. Birney was nominated for President, and this
handful of voters was the seed of the harvest twenty years
later. He was again the candidate in 1844, with an in
creased support, and the party now was named " The
Liberty Party."
A leader and type of the moderate anti-slavery sentiment
was William EUery Channing. In Channing was a blend
ing of high moral ideals, intelligent views of human nature
and society, an apostle's earnestness wedded with " sweet
reasonableness," and a personal character of rare sym
metry and beauty. He was an evolutionist and not a revo
lutionist. Foremost among the group of New England
ministers who broadened and ripened out of the orthodoxy
of their day, and were ostracized by their former brethren,
he was forced into the position of leader of a new sect, but
his utterances and spirit were always those of a minister of
the church universal. He was the early advocate of most

6o The Negro and the Nation
of the religious and social reforms which have since come
to the front. By preference, he always used the methods
of peace and persuasion. He had made early acquaintance
with slavery in a two-years' residence in Richmond while
a young man. He was always opposed to it, but his atten
tion was long absorbed by the immediate needs of his own
people. He spent half a year in Santa Cruz, for his health,
in 1 830- 1, — just when Garrison was starting the Liberator, —
and slavery came home to him with new force. The plan
tation on which he lived was one of the best in the West
Indies. The proprietor had taken a pride in the character
and condition of his slaves. But he had fallen into bank
ruptcy, his estate had been sold, and the new proprietor
left it in charge of an overseer who was a passionate and
licentious man, under whom the slaves suffered a very dif
ferent treatment. Most pathetic incidents came under Dr.
Channing's notice. But from all he saw about him he con
cluded that the physical sufferings of the slaves had been
exaggerated by report; that, with occasional cruelties, they
were better off as to physical comfort than most of the
European peasantry. He writes to an English correspond
ent, " I suspect that a gang of negroes receive fewer stripes
than a company of soldiers of the same number in your
army " ; that they are under a less iron discipline and suffer
incomparably less than soldiers in a campaign. But he
adds, and always insists, that their condition degrades them
intellectually and morally, lowers them toward the brutes,
and in this respect the misery of slavery cannot be ex
pressed too strongly. Marriage is almost unknown; family
life, with its mutual dependence and the resulting tender
ness, scarcely exists ; and thus " the poor negro is excluded
from Nature's primary school for the aflfections and the
whole character." " The like causes are fatal to energy,
foresight, self-control."

Birney, Channing, and Webster 6i
The inspiration of Channing's creed, the soul of the new
movement in religion, was the potential nobility of human
nature — a nobiUty to be made real by utmost effort of the
individual, and by all wisest appliances of society. It was
from this standpoint that he judged slavery, and in this
spirit that while still in Santa Cruz he began to write his
treatise upon it.
Returning to Boston, he spoke with clearness and weight
to his congregation : " I think no power of conception can
do justice to the evils of slavery. They are chiefly moral,
they act on the mind, and through the mind bring intense
suffering to the body. As far as the human soul can be
destroyed, slavery is that destroyer." Having borne his
testimony, he devoted himself to the general work of his
ministry. The violence of the men who had come to the
front in Abolitionism was not only against his taste and
feeling, but against his deep convictions ; as he had written
years before to Webster, he saw in these denunciations of
the slave-holder seeds of a harvest of sectional hate and
national disaster.
A characteristic conversation with him is recorded by
Rev. Samuel J. May, himself in full alliance with the Aboli
tionists, but a man of great sweetness and sanity, never
diverted from his religious ministry or losing his mental
balance. Dr. Channing dwelt on the excesses of the Aboli
tionists until Mr. May was aroused, and broke out : " Dr.
Channing, I am tired of these complaints! The cause of
suffering humanity, the cause of our oppressed, crushed,
colored countrymen, has called as loudly upon others as
upon us, who are known as the Abolitionists. But the others
have done nothing. The wise and prudent saw the wrong,
but did nothing to remove it. The priest and Levite passed
by on the other side; the children of Abraham held their
peace, until ' the very stones have cried out ' against this

62 The Negro and the Nation
tremendous wickedness. The people who have taken up
the cause may lack the calmness and discretion of scholars,
clergy, and statesmen, — ^but the scholars, clergy, and states
men, have done nothing. We Abolitionists are just what
we are, — babes and sucklings, obscure men, silly women,
publicans, sinners; and we shall manage the matter we
have taken in hand just as might be expected of such per
sons as we are. It is unbecoming in able men, who stood
by and would do nothing, to complain of us because we
manage this matter no better."
And so the torrent of words dashed upon the silent lis
tener, until the speaker suddenly bethought himself and
stopped in abashment, — this man he was rebuking had been
to him as a father in God, his kind friend from childhood,
and first among the great and good. Almost overwhelmed
by his own temerity, he watched the agitated face of his
hearer and waited in painful suspense for the reply. At
last, in a very subdued manner and in his kindest tones of
voice, he said, " Brother May, I acknowledge the justice of
your reproof; I have been silent too long."
May's appeal had only quickened a little the sure work of
Channing's conscience. A few months later, in December,
1835, he published his short treatise on Slavery. No
weightier word on the subject was ever spoken. If man
kind were moved by their higher reason the North would
not have waited twenty years to be converted to anti-slavery
by Uncle Tom's Cabin. And if the South had been wise
in her day, she would have listened to this noble and per-.
suasive utterance. No passion sullied its temper; slave and
slave-holder were held in equal regard ; the case was pleaded
on irresistible grounds — of facts beyond question and rooted
in the very constitution of human nature. The needed,
the righteous, the inevitable reform, was shown as part of
the upward movement of humanity, and as appealing to

Birney, Channing, and Webster 63
every consideration of practical wisdom and of justice.
The little book of 150 pages deserves to be held as a classic
in American history.
Channing never lost the sense of proportion in his own
work. He went on giving inspiration and leadership to
religious thought and to social .advance. It was neither
necessary nor possible for him to be in close sym
pathy or habitual alliance with the extreme Abolitionists.
But he vindicated the right of free speech when it was
denied them, and he was recognized by the best of their
number as a friend of the cause. Mrs. Lydia Maria Child,
— like Mr. May, one of the finest spirits among the Aboli
tionists — wrote : " He constantly grew upon my respect,
until I came to regard him as the wisest as well as the
gentlest apostle of humanity. I owe him thanks for pre
serving me from the one-sidedness to which zealous re
formers are so apt to run. He never sought to undervalue
the importance of anti-slavery, but he said many things to
prevent me from looking upon it as the only question inter
esting to humanity."
Side by side with the anti-slavery sentiment was growing
another sentiment — distinct from it, at first often in practi
cal hostility to it, but at last blending with it for a common
triumph. It was the sentiment of American nationality —
the love of the Union. The separate colonies were brought
together in the Revolution by a common peril and a com
mon struggle. Then their tendency to fall apart was coun
teracted by the strong bond of the Constitution and the Fed
eral government. Diverse interests and mutual distrust
still tended to draw them asunder. With the continuance
of the Union, the strengthening of the tie by use, the hal
lowing of old associations under the glamour of memory,
and the growth of the new bonds of commerce and travel,
the sense of a common country and destiny began to take

64 The Negro and the Nation
root in the hearts of men, and on occasion disclosed itself
with the strength and nobility of a heroic passion. True,
a new rift was appearing, in the doctrine of nullification
and the question of slavery, but this evoked at times a more
militant and again a more appealing aspect in the sentiment
of union. Jackson seemed to rise from the rough frontiers
man to the guardian of the nation when he gave the word,
" The Federal Union — it must be preserved ! " Clay found
the noblest exercise of his eloquence and his diplomacy in
evoking the national spirit and in harmonizing the differ
ences which threatened it. But the most stirring voice and
effective leadership was that of Daniel Webster.
As Webster is judged in the retrospect, we see that he
was not so much a statesman, still less a moral idealist,
as an advocate. His lucidity of statement and emotional
power were not matched by constructive ability. His name
is associated with no great measure of administration, no
large and definite policy. He was luminous in statement
rather than sagacious in judgment, an advocate rather than
a judge. On the platform or in the Senate he was still pre
eminently the lawyer, in that, like a lawyer, he was the rep
resentative and exponent of established interests, — ^not the
projector of new social adjustments. Civil law represents
a vast accumulated experience and tradition of mankind;
it has been slowly wrought out, as a regulation and adjust
ment of existing interests; with an effort toward equity,
as understood by the best intelligence of each period, but
always with immense regard for precedent and previous
usage. It was in this spirit, highly conservative of what
has already been secured, and extremely cautious toward
radical change, that Webster habitually dealt with political
institutions. It was characteristic of him that in the Mas
sachusetts constitutional convention in 1820 he pleaded
strongly for the retention of the property qualification of

Birney, Channing, and Webster 65
voters for State senators. But when the tide moved irre
sistibly toward manhood suffrage, he acquiesced.
But conservative as he was by nature, he was in profound
sympathy with a sentiment which while rooted in the past
was yet in the '20s and '30s a young, plastic, growing idea,
— ^the idea of American Union, indissoluble, perpetual. No
voice was so powerful as Webster's to fill the minds and
hearts of man with this lofty passion. His orations at
Plymouth Rock, at Bunker Hill, and upon the simultaneous
deaths of Adams and Jefferson, his vindication of the na
tional idea against the localism of Hayne and Calhoun, —
were organ-voices of patriotism. They thrilled the souls
of those who listened; they went over the country and
printed themselves on the minds of men; school-boys de
claimed passages from them ; they became part of the gospel
of the American people.
We may quote a single passage from the address inspired
by that dramatic circumstance, the death at once of John
Adams and Thomas Jefferson, on the fiftieth anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence : " It cannot be denied,
but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with
America and in America a new era commences in human
affairs. This era is distinguished by free representative
governments, by entire religious liberty, by improved sys
tems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and an
unconquerable spirit of free inquiry, and by a diffusion of
knowledge through the community, such as has been before
altogether unknown and unheard of. America, America,
our country, fellow-countrymen, our own dear and native
land, is inseparably connected, fast bound up, in fortune and
by fate, with these great interests. If they fall, we fall with
them; if they stand, it will be because we have maintained
them. . . . If we cherish the virtues and the principles of
Qwr fathers, heaven will assist us to carr^ on the work pf

66 .. The Negro and the Nation
human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens
cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firma
ment now shines brightly upon our paths. Washington is
in the upper sky. These other stars have now joined the
American constellation; they circle round their center, and
the heavens beam with new light. Beneath this illumina
tion let us walk the course of life, and at its close devoutly
commend our beloved country, the common parent of us all,
to the Divine Benignity."

CHAPTER VII
THE UNDERLYING FORCES
Two master passions strove for leadership in the mind and
heart of America. One was love of the united nation and
ardor to maintain its union. The other was the aspiration
to purify the nation, by removing the wrong of slavery.
Unionist and Abolitionist stood face to face. After many
years they were to stand shoulder to shoulder, in a common
cause. In a larger sense than he gave the words, Webster's
utterance became the final watchword : " Liberty and
Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."
In the retrospect of history, our attention naturally fas
tens on the conspicuous and heroic figures. But we must
not forget the underlying and often determining forces, —
the interests, beliefs, and passions, of the mass of the com
munity. And, while listening intently to the articulate
voices, the impressive utterances, we are to remember that
the life of the community as of the individual is shaped
oftenest by the inarticulate, unavowed, half-unconscious
sentiments :
Below the surface stream, shallow and light.
Of what we say we feel, — below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel, there flows
With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep.
The central stream of what we feel indeed.
The underlying human force in the slavery question was
the primitive instinct in man to keep all he has got ; the in
stinct of the man who lives at another's expense to keep
67

68 The Negro and the Nation
on doing so. That underlay all the fine theories about dif
ferences of race, all the theological deductions from Noah's
curse upon Canaan. Another great and constant factor was
the absorption of men and communities, not personally
concerned in a social wrong, in pursuits and interests of
their own which shut out all outlook beyond. In our day
we hear much about the crowding rush of material inter
ests, but that crowd and rush was felt almost as much in
the earlier generations, when hardly less than the most
strident tones of the agitator could pierce the absorption
of the street and market-place. There was the inertia of
custom; there were the commercial interests closely inter
woven of the Southern planter and the Northern manufac
turer; there was the prejudice of color and race; and all
these influences, open or latent, told powerfully for keeping
slavery as it was.
The great default, the fatal failure, was the omission of
the Southern whites, especially their leaders by education
and by popular recognition, to take deliberate and syste
matic measures for the removal of slavery. Difficult? Yes,
very. Impossible? Why, almost every other country of
North and South America, — including the Spanish-Ameri
cans on whom the English-Americans look down with such
superiority, — these all got rid of slavery without violence or
revolution. Whatever the case required, — of preparation,
compensation, new industrial arrangement, — the Southern
whites had the whole business in their hands, to deal with
as they pleased. Whatever cries might be raised by a few
for instant and unconditional emancipation, there never was
a day when the vast mass of the American people, of all
sections, were not avowedly and unmistakably committed
to letting the Southern States treat slavery as their own
matter, and deal with it as they pleased, provided only they
kept it at home. Excuses for non-action there were, of

The Underlying Forces 69
course, — the perplexities of the situation, the irritation of
criticism from without, — but Nature has no use for excuses.
If there is a cancer in the system it is useless to plead the
expense of the surgery or the pain of the knife. The alter
native is simple — removal or death.
It is always impossible to distinguish closely in the causes
of events between the action of human will and the wider
forces which we call Nature or Providence. But in some
eras we distinguish more clearly than in others the effect
of human personalities. For example, in the making of the
Constitution we see a difficult situation taken wisely and
resolutely in hand by a group of strong men; they made
themselves a part of Fate. But in the fluctuating history
of slavery, with its final catastrophe, we seem to be looking
at elemental movements; masses of men drifting under im
pulses, with no leadership adequate to the occasion. The
men who seemingly might have mastered the situation, and
brought it to a peaceful and right solution, either could not
or would not do it.
What happened was, that two opposite social systems,
existing within the same political body, came into rivalry,
into hostility, and at last into direct conflict. In the early
stages, slavery had on its side the advantage of an estab
lished place under the law, the support of its local commu
nities becoming more and more determined, the long-time
indiflference and inertia of the free States, custom, conser
vatism, timidity, race prejudice. But against all this were
operating steadily two tremendous forces. In the race for
industrial advantage which is at last the decisive test, free
society was superior to slave society by as much as the free
man is superior to the slave. The advantage of the North
ern farmer or mechanic over the negro slave was the meas
ure of the advantage of the North over the South. In in
crease of wealth; in variety, intensity, and productiveness

7o The Negro and the Nation
of social life; in immigration; in intellectual progress, the
free States outstripped the slave States by leaps and bounds.
And, again, in the conscience of humanity, — in mankind's
sense of right and wrong, which grows ever a more potent
factor in the world's affairs, — the tide was setting steadily
and swiftly against slavery. To impatient reformers who,
as Horace Mann said, were always in a hurry, while God
never is, — ^the tide might seem motionless or refluent, as to
him who looks hastily from the ocean shore ; but as the sea
follows the moon, the hearts of men were following the
new risen luminary of humanity's God-given rights.
And so, under each special phase of the conflict, slavery
had against it that dominant force which acts on one side in
the material progress of society, and on the other side in
the human conscience ; that force — " some call it Evolution,
and others call it God."

CHAPTER VIII
THE MEXICAN WAR
We have seen that about 1832-3 a new distinctness and
prominence was given to the slavery question by various
events, — the substantial victory of the South Carolina nul-
lifiers, and the leadership thenceforth of the South by Cal
houn; Nat Turner's rising, and the rejection by Virginia
of the emancipation policy; the compensated liberation of
the West India slaves by the British Government; and the
birth of aggressive Abolitionism under the lead of Garrison.
We have now to glance at the main course of history for
the next twenty years. Party politics had for a time no
direct relation to slavery. The new organizations of Whigs
and Democrats disputed on questions of a national bank, in
ternal improvements, and the tariff. The Presidency was
easily won in 1836 by Jackson's lieutenant. Van Buren ; but
the commercial crash of 1837 produced a revulsion of feel
ing which enabled the Whigs to elect Benjamin Harrison in
1840. His early death gave the Presidency to John Tyler
of Virginia, who soon alienated his party, and who was thor
oughly Southern in his sympathies and policy.
The newly aroused anti-slavery enthusiasm in the North
found expression in petitions for the aboHtion of slavery in
the District of Columbia. It was not intrinsically a great
matter, but it was the one point where the national author
ity seemed clearly to have a chance to act — questions of
new territory being for the time in abeyance. Petitions
poured in on Congress with thousands of signatures — then
with tens, then hundreds of thousands. There was a hot
71

72 The Negro and the Nation
struggle as to whether the petitions should be received at
all by the Senate and House. John Quincy Adams, willing
after his Presidency to serve in the humbler capacity of
congressman, was the champion of the right of petition.
Calhoun had entered the Senate in 1832 and remained there
with a brief intermission until his death in 1850. He stood
independent of the two great parties, with his own State
always solidly behind him, and with growing influence over
the whole South. He was the leader in opposing the ad
mission of the petitions. He maintained that any discussion
in Congress of such a topic was injurious and incendiary;
he voiced the new sentiment of the South that all agitation
of slavery was an invasion of its rights. " Hands off ! "
was the cry. The question was settled in 1836, after long
debates, by another compromise, proposed by James Bu
chanan of Pennsylvania; the petitions were given a formal
reception, but instantly rejected without debate.
Another burning question was the circulation of anti-
slavery documents through the Southern mails. In 1835 a
mob in Charleston broke open the post-office, and made a
bonfire of all such matter they could find. The social lead
ers and the clergy of the city applauded. The postmaster-
general under Jackson, Amos Kendall, wrote to the local
postmaster who had connived at the act : " I cannot sanc
tion and will not condemn the step you have taken." Jack
son asked Congress to pass a law excluding anti-slavery
literature from the mails. Even this was not enough for
Calhoun ; he claimed that every State had a right to pass
such legislation for itself, with paramount authority over
any act of Congress. But the South would not support him
in this claim; and indeed he was habitually in advance of
his section, which followed him generally at an interval
of a few years. Congress refused to pass any law on the
subject. But the end was reached without law; Southern

The Mexican War 73
postmasters systematically refused to transmit anti-slavery
documents — even of so moderate character as the New York
Tribune — and this was their practice until the Civil War.
" A gross infraction of law and right ! " said the North.
" But," said the South, " would you allow papers to circu
late in your postoffices tending directly to breed revolt and
civil war? If the mails cannot be used in the service of
gambling and lotteries, with far more reason may we shut
out incitements to insurrection like Nat Turner's."
On a similar plea all freedom of speech in Southern com
munities on the question of slavery was practically denied.
Anti-slavery men were driven from their homes. In Ken
tucky, one man stood out defiantly and successfully. Cas-
sius M. Clay opposed slavery, advocated its compensated
abolition, and was as ready to defend himself with pistols as
with arguments. He stood his ground to the end, and in
1853 he settled Rev. John G. Fee at Berea, who established
a group of anti-slavery churches and schools, which was
broken up after John Brown's raid, but after the war was
revived as Berea College. But as a rule free speech in the
South was at an end before 1840. No man dared use lan
guage like that of Patrick Henry and Madison; and Jef
ferson's Notes on Virginia, if newly published, would
have been excluded from the mails and its author exiled.
South Carolina passed a law under which negro seamen
on ships entering her ports were put in jail while their
vessel remained, and if the jail fees were not paid, they
were sold into slavery. When Massachusetts seamen suf
fered under this law, the State government in 1844 dis
patched an eminent citizen, Samuel Hoar, to try to secure
a modification of the enactment. Arriving in Charleston,
accompanied by his daughter, Mr. Hoar was promptly vis
ited in his hotel by a committee of prominent men and
obliged to leave the city and State at once.

74 The Negro and the Nation
The North had its share of violence. In Connecticut a
school for negro children, kept by two white women, was
forcibly broken up. In Illinois in 1837 ^^ anti-slavery
newspaper office was destroyed by a mob, and its proprietor,
Elijah P. Lovejoy, was murdered.
In the Presidential election of 1840 slavery was almost
forgotten. The Whigs were bent on overthrowing the Dem
ocratic administration, to which they attributed the hard
times following 1837; and they raised a popular hurrah for
the candidate of the " plain people," William Henry Har
rison of Indiana, who had won a victory over the Indians
at Tippecanoe. In a canvass where " log-cabins " and
" hard cider " gave the watchwords and emblems, national
politics played little part. But now first those resolute anti-
slavery men who were determined to bring their cause be
fore the people as a political issue, and fight it out in that
arena, with solid ranks be their forces ever so small, — came
together and nominated for the Presidency James G. Bir
ney. They could give him but a handful of votes, but it
was the raising of a flag which twenty years was to carry to
victory. Birney, never an extremist, had grown to a full
recognition of all that was at stake. He wrote in 1835:
" The contest is becoming — has become — not one alone of
freedom for the blacks, but of freedom for the whites.
. . . There will be no cessation of the strife until slavery
shall be exterminated or liberty destroyed."
For a dozen years there had been only skirmishing. Now
came on a battle royal, or rather a campaign, from 1844 to
1850, — ^the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, and
the last great compromise. Texas, a province of Mexico
after Mexico became free from Spain, received a steady im
migration from the American Southwestern States. These
immigrants became restive under Mexican control, declared
their independence in 1835, and practically secured it after

The Mexican War 75
sharp fighting. Slavery, abolished under Mexico, was re
established by the republic of Texas. From the character
of its population, it seemed to gravitate toward the United
States. The keen eyes of the Southern leaders were early
fixed upon it. Annex Texas, and a great field of expan
sion for slavery was open. Its votes in the Senate and
House would be added to the Southern column, and from
its immense domain future States might be carved. As
early as 1829 Lundy's and Garrison's Genius had pro
tested against this scheme. The time was now ripe for car
rying it out. Calhoun was again the leader. He claimed
to be " the author of annexation," and with good reason.
He exchanged the Senate for Tyler's cabinet as Secretary
of War in 1844, the change being engineered by Henry A.
Wise, one of the rising men in Virginia, — for the express
purpose of bringing in Texas. A treaty of annexation was
negotiated with Texas, and sent to the Senate. There were
difficulties; the Texans had cooled in their zeal for annex
ation; and the American Senate was not over-favorable.
To give the necessary impetus, Calhoun, — so says Van Hoist,
in his excellent and not unfriendly biography, — fell below
his habitual sincerity, and misrepresented a dispatch of the
English Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, as showing a
disposition on England's part to get hold of Texas for her
self. It was a Presidential year; the Democratic conven
tion nominated James K. Polk of Tennessee, and passed a
resolution favoring annexation. But Calhoun had now
shown his motive so plainly that the country took alarm,
and the Senate rejected the treaty. The Whigs nominated
Clay. He was believed to be opposed to the annexation
scheme, but his hunger for the great prize betrayed him
into an equivocal expression, which lost him the confidence
of the strong anti-slavery men. Again they nominated Bir
ney, — ^taking now the name of the Liberty party — and gave

76 The Negro and the Nation
him so many votes that the result was to lose New York
and Michigan for Clay, and Polk was elected. The admin
istration now claimed — though in truth the combined Whig
and Liberty vote put it in a minority — ^that it had received
a plebiscite of popular support on its annexation policy.
Thus emboldened, its friends, — knowing that they could not
yet count on the two-thirds vote necessary for a senatorial
confirmation, — dropped the treaty altogether, and brought
into Congress a joint resolution affirming the annexation
of Texas to the Union. This won the necessary majority
in both houses, and as the last act of Tyler's administration
Texas was declared a State.
Calhoun now returned to the Senate, — his temporary
substitute promptly vacating at his word. Thus far he had
triumphed. But his associates in. their elation were eager
for another conquest. Texas is ours, now let us have Cali
fornia and the Pacific ! But to that end, Mexico, reluctant
to yield Texas, and wholly unwilHng to cede more terri
tory, must be attacked and despoiled. At that proposal
Calhoun drew back. It does not appear that he had any
scruples about Mexico. But, keener-sighted than his fol
lowers, he knew that any further acquisitions to the West
would be stoutly and hopefully claimed by the North. His
warning was in vain; he had lighted a fire and now could
not check it. The next step was to force Mexico into a war.
She claimed the river Nueces as her boundary with Texas,
while Texas claimed the Rio Grande. Instructions were
quietly given to General Taylor, in January, 1846, to throw
his small force into the disputed territory, so near the Rio
Grande as to invite a Mexican attack. The Mexican force
did attack him, and President Polk instantly declared that
" war existed by the act of Mexico " — ^thus allowing Con
gress no chance to pass on it. As is the way of nations,
fighting once begun, every consideration of justice was ig-

The Mexican War 77
nored and the only word was " our country, right or
wrong." Congressmen of both parties voted whatever sup
plies were needed for the war; and the Whigs, trying to
throw the blame on the President, put no obstacles in the
way of his conquest of Mexico. Only one man in Congress
spoke out for justice as higher than party or country.
Thomas Corwin of Ohio, in a powerful speech, denounced
the whole iniquitous business, and declared that were he a
Mexican facing the American invaders of his home, " I
would welcome them with hospitable hands to bloody
graves ! "
The war called out another voice that went home to the
heart of the people, — the voice of James Russell Lowell in
the " Biglow Papers." In the homely Yankee vernacular
he spoke for the highest conscience of New England. The
righteous wrath was winged with stinging wit and light
ened with broad humor. He spoke for that sentiment of
the new and nobler America which abhorred slavery and
detested war, and saw in a war for the extension of slavery
a crime against God and man. The politician's sophistries,
the respectable conventionalities current in church and state,
found no mercy at his hands :
Ez fer war, I call it murder, —
There you hev it plain and flat:
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that:
God hez sed so plump an' fairly,
It's ez long ez it is broad.
An' you've got to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God.
'Tain't your eppyletts an' feathers
Make the thing a grain more right;
'Tain't a foUerin' your bell-wethers
Will excuse ye in his sight;

78 The Negro and the Nation
Ef you take a sword and draw it.
An' go stick a feller thru,
Guv'ment ain't to answer for it,
God'U send the bill to you.
Massachusetts, God forgive her.
She's a kneelin' with the rest.
She, that ought to hav' clung forever
In her grand old eagle-nest.
Let our dear old Bay State proudly
Put the trumpet to her mouth.
Let her ring this messidge loudly
In the ears of all the South:
" I'll return ye good fer evil
Much ez we frail mortals can.
But I won't go help the Devil
Makin' man the cus o' man;
Call me coward, call me traitor.
Jest ez suits your mean idees.
Here I stand a tyrant-hater,
An' the friend o' God and Peace."

CHAPTER IX
HOW DEAL WITH THE TERRITORIES?
Meanwhile, the American army, — accepting as its sole
part to obey orders, not questioning why, — though such
officers as Grant and Lee had no liking for the task set
them, — and reinforced by volunteer regiments from the
Southwest, — was steadily fighting its way to the Mexican
capital; Taylor's force advancing from Texas, while Scott
moved from Vera Cruz. The Mexicans resisted bravely,
but were beaten again and again, and upon the capture of
the city of Mexico they gave up the contest.
Spite of the eclat of victories, the war had been so little
popular in the North that the congressional election of 1846
displaced the administration majority in the House and
gave the Whigs a preponderance. But, with the excite
ment of the complete victory over Mexico in the next year,
came a fresh wave of the aggressive temper. It was freely
advocated that Mexico should be annexed bodily. Against
this madness Henry Clay spoke out with his old-time power.
Clearly the country would tolerate no such extreme, and the
annexationists contented themselves with mulcting Mexico,
upon the payment of $6,000,000, of the vast territory known
as California.
Then set in with full vigor the controversy over the new
territory which Calhoun had foreseen. Calhoun had been
left in a sort of isolation by his defection from the admin
istration upon the war, but he did not break with President
Polk; for the reason, says Von Hoist, that he wanted to
save his influence to oppose the tendency to a war with
79

8o The Negro and the Nation
England. Oregon had been held in joint occupancy by the
two nations for many years; now a line of demarcation
was to be drawn, and there was a loud popular demand for
maintaining at any cost the extreme northern line of lati
tude — it was " Fifty-four-forty or fight." But the sense
of the country was against coming to extremities, and Cal
houn — a statesman when slavery was not concerned — ^threw
his influence with the moderate sentiment which secured
the acceptance of the line of 49 degrees. But he looked
with foreboding eyes on the deepening conflict of the sec
tions and the advantage which gravitated toward the North ;
— from political causes, he declared, unwilling or unable to
recognize that the industrial superiority lay inevitably with
free labor. He met the danger with a bolder and more ad
vanced claim. The South, he declared, had had enough of
compromise over territory; it must now fall back on its
ultimate right under the Constitution; and that right was
that slaves, being lawful property, might be taken into any
territory of the United States, and Congress had no right
to forbid their introduction; neither had Congress a right
to refuse admission of any State whose people desired to
retain slavery. This was a claim for the nationalization of
slavery ; and it was not until after Calhoun's death that the
South came to this position, staked its cause upon it, and
when it was rejected by the popular vote broke with the
Union. But Calhoun's logic and passion had not yet brought his
section up to his own position, and over the division of the
newly acquired territory North and South disputed as be
fore. While the war was still waging. President Polk asked
for an appropriation to be expended as compensation for
new territory; and David Wilmot, a Democratic member
from Pennsylvania, moved that a proviso be added, stipu
lating that from any new territory acquired by purchase

How Deal with the Territories? 8i
slavery should be excluded. This was passed by the House,
but rejected by the Senate. The Senate was long the strong
hold of the South, the States having an equal representa
tion, while in the House the greater increase of free State
population gave them a fresh advantage at each new census
and apportionment. The " Wilmot proviso " was for some
years the watchword of the anti-extensionists. To the typ
ical Northerner, it seemed monstrous that slavery should be
introduced by law in territory where it had no previous ex
istence. To the typical Southerner it seemed no less unjust
that his peculiar institutions and usages should be excluded
from the common domain, for which his section had paid
its share of money and more than its share of blood.
While the question of the new territory had scarcely
taken definite form, there came the Presidential election of
1848. In the Whig convention Clay's ambition received its
final disappointment; Webster had hardly a chance; all the
statesmen of the party were set aside in favor of General
Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, an upright, soldierly man, a
slaveholder, entirely unversed in civil affairs, and his claim
resting solely on successful generalship in the war. The
Democrats nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan, a mediocre
politician, regarded by the South as a trustworthy servant.
The third party displayed new strength, and exchanged the
name of " Liberty " for " Free Soil." Under the stimulus
of recent events recruits of power and promise came to its
standard. In Massachusetts it gained such men as Samuel
Hoar, Charles Sumner, Charles Francis Adams, and Henry
Wilson from the Whigs; and from the Democrats, Robert
Rantoul and N. P. Banks. Wilson and Charles Allen, dele
gates to the Whig convention, declared, — when that body
in its resolutions absolutely ignored the question of slavery
extension, and sank all principles in a hurrah for " Old
Rough and Ready," — ^that they would no longer support

82 The Negro and the Nation
the party. They went home to work with their old friends,
the " Conscience Whigs," for the success of the Free Soil
party, whose convention was to meet at Buffalo. To that
convention came strong allies from Ohio. There were
Joshua Giddings, for years one of the few congressmen
classed distinctly as anti-slavery, and Salmon P. Chase.
New York State offered a reinforcement strong in numbers,
but in some respects questionable. The anti-slavery Demo
crats in the State, nicknamed " Barnburners " — ^because
" they would burn the barn to get rid of the rats " — ^were
ready to break with their party, but their quarrel was partly
a personal one. They were welcomed, however, and from
their ranks was selected the Presidential candidate — of all
men, ex- President Martin Van Buren, known of old as " the
Northern man with Southern principles," but willing now
to Northernize his principles with the Presidency in view.
Such a nomination went far to take the heart out of the
genuine anti-slavery men; and the strong name of Charles
Francis Adams for vice-president could not make good the
weakness of the head of the ticket. Should a real Free
Soiler vote for Van Buren, — ^the probable effect being to
improve Cass's chances over Taylor, just as the Birney
vote four years earlier had beaten Clay and brought in Polk
and all his consequences — or vote for Taylor, trusting to
his personal character and the influences surrounding him
for a practical advantage to the side of freedom? The lat
ter alternative was the choice of many, including Horace
Greeley and his associates, Thurlow Weed and William
H. Seward. With such help, and mainly on his strength as
a military hero, Taylor was elected. In the result there
was considerable hope for the anti-slavery cause. For Sew
ard, who had been chosen to the Senate from New York,
was very influential with the new President, and Seward
was one of the coming men, clearly destined to be a leader

How Deal with the Territories? 83
among those who were to succeed the great triumvirate of
Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. He was high-minded, culti
vated, and united lofty ideals with practical wisdom. A
thorough constitutionalist, he believed there were legitimate
ways of advancing freedom under the Constitution ; and in a
speech at Cleveland he had declared : " Slavery can be lim
ited to its present bounds ; it can be ameliorated ; it can be
abolished; and you and I must do it." Ohio sent to the
Senate another of the coming men, Salmon P. Chase, re
sembling Seward in his broad and philosophical views and
his firm but constitutional opposition to slavery.

CHAPTER X
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850
To win California as slave territory the Southern leaders
had forced the war on Mexico. The territory was won, and
no political force had developed strong enough to halt their
progress. But now came a check from the realm which
could not be cajoled or brow-beaten, — the world of natural
and industrial forces. Gold was discovered in California.
There was a rush of immigrants, and a swift opening and
settlement of the country. The pioneers — hardy, enterpris
ing and democratic — had no use nor room for slaves. They
held a convention, with the encouragement of President
Taylor; framed a Constitution in which slavery was ex
cluded from the future State — this by unanimous vote, in
cluding the 15 delegates who had come from slave States;
and the popular vote ratified the proposed Constitution by
10 to I. Then they asked for admission to the Union.
The Southern faction was wrathful. The extremists were
for excluding the new State unless slavery was permitted.
But it was clear that slavery could not be forced on a
State against the wish of its entire people. Then compen
sation was sought in concessions to be made by the North.
The remainder of the new domain, Utah and New Mexico,
was not ripe for Statehood ; but let slavery, it was urged, be
established as a territorial condition. Then came up another
grievance of the South. Its fugitive slaves, escaping over
the border line, were systematically helped, either to make
their way to Canada and the protection of the British flag,
pr to safe homes in the Northern States. Naturally the slaves
84

The Compromise of 1850 85
who dared the perils of escape were either the most ener
getic or the most wronged, and sympathy for them at the
North was active and resourceful. Along their most fre
quented routes of flight were systematic provisions of shel
ter and help, known as " the underground railroad." The
Federal Constitution required their return, but this task had
been left to State laws and courts, and was performed
slackly, if at all. The total number of fugitives was not
large nor the pecuniary loss heavy, but the South was exas
perated by what it considered a petty and contemptible dep
redation. So there was a demand that the Federal govern
ment should undertake and enforce the return of fugitive
slaves. Congress opened the session of 1849-50 amid great ex
citement and confusion. Once more Clay came forward to
reconcile the disputants. Clay in these last days was at his
best. He was no longer swayed by Presidential aspirations.
When in 1849 the Kentucky Constitution was to be revised,
he wrote a letter strongly favoring a gradual emancipation
and colonization. This had no effect, but Clay's unshaken
hold on his State was shown by his unanimous re-election
to the Senate. There he at once entered upon his last great
effort at national reconciliation. He introduced a bill provid
ing for a series of concessions on both sides. California
was to be admitted as a free State; and New Mexico and
Utah were to be organized as territories, leaving the ques
tion of slavery for future settlement. Slavery was to con
tinue in the District of Columbia, but the slave trade was to
be forbidden there. Texas was to cede to New Mexico a
disputed strip of territory, which presumably would ulti
mately become free; and was to be compensated by a large
grant from the Federal territory. A law was to be passed
for the return of fugitive slaves by Federal authority.
Over these measures the debate was long and hot. Clay

86 The Negro and the Nation
/pleaded that by his scheme the advantages were fairly bal
anced between North and South. He urged that the rising
spirit of disunion at the South should be disarmed by rea
sonable concessions. He appealed to the North for con
cessions and to the South for peace. / When Jefferson Davis,
Senator from Mississippi, declared that the plan conceded
nothing to the South, and demanded that the Missouri com
promise line be extended to the Pacific (bisecting Califor
nia) , with the express establishment of slavery south of that
line. Clay declared that no earthly power should make him
vote for the establishment of slavery anywhere where it had
had no previous existence. To do so, he said, would be to
incur from future inhabitants of New Mexico the reproach
which Americans justly applied to their British ancestors
for fastening the institution on them. Bui/he would spare
Southern sensibilities by withholding an explicit exclusion
of slavery from New Mexico;' Nature and the future would
attend to that. Against any right of secession, against
any possibility of peaceful secession, he declared with
strongest emphasis : " War and dissolution of the Union
are identical; they are convertible terms; and such a
war ! " Fighting for the extension of slavery, the sympa
thies of all mankind would be against the South.
The venerable old man, speaking with all the sincerity
and warmth of his heart and with all the powers of his mind,
was heard, says Schurz, by a great and brilliant audience.
His first faltering words were followed by regained power;
the old elevation of sentiment, the sonorous flow of words,
the lofty energy of action, were enhanced by the pathetic
sense that this was the final effort.
More pathetic, tragic even, was the last speech of Cal
houn, read for him while he sat in his senatorial chair ; the
tall form bowed by age and weakness, the gaunt, impressive
face furrowed by the long strife for a doomed cause, but

The Compromise of 1850 87
the old fire still alight in the dark eyes and in the resolute
spirit. He recognized that the strife of the sections was
radical, and that the proposed compromises and palliatives
were weak and temporary. He declared that the South had
been thwarted in its rights from the ordinance of 1787 until
now; that the equilibrium would be destroyed past hope if
California and New Mexico were to become free States ; and
that the only effective resource lay in some constitutional
amendment to safeguard the rights of the South. What
amendment could effect this, he did not say. But it trans
pired later that he had in mind the election of two Presi
dents, one from each section, — a fantastic and impossible
scheme. In truth, Calhoun in this last utterance was less a
statesman aiming to guide events than a prophet predicting
an inevitable woe. He was too wise to share the elation
with which hot-heads talked of an independent South, and
it was with sad forebodings that he sank to his grave.
When on the 7th of March Webster rose to speak,
the Senate and the country hung on his words. He too was
drawing toward the end, but his powers were unabated.
Hope was strong that in him would be found the champion
of freedom. But the key of his speech was a view of the
situation, not as a contest between freedom and slavery,
but as an opposition of geographical sections, inflamed by
extremists on both sides./The mischief, he declared, was due
to Southern disunionists and Northern Abolitionists. The
remedy was a calm, patriotic temper; the rebuke of fanati
cism of both kinds, and the acceptance of reasonable accom
modations and adjustments. / He approved substantially the
scheme proposed by Clay. The formal exclusion of slavery
from New Mexico was an unnecessary affront to the South ;
natural conditions would prevent slavery there. A fugi
tive slave law was fairly required by the Constitution and
the South had a right to claim it. He, like Clay, declared

88 The Negro and the Nation
peaceable secession an impossibility, and his speech, im
pressive throughout by the power of a lucid and massive
intellect, rose at its close to lofty eloquence in a plea for
the maintenance of the Union and a warning of the catas
trophe which secession would precipitate.
The defect of the speech was its complete failure to rec
ognize the wrong and mischief of slavery. Webster had
rarely shown himself a moral idealist, except as to the sen
timent of patriotism. He was identified with the prosperous
and " respectable " classes, and the sufferings of the poor
and oppressed woke little sympathy in him. These limita
tions had always been apparent, and while Clay seemed to
grow finer and gentler with advance of years, Webster's
course was the other way. That imperial and commanding
presence, with its imposing stature and Jove-like visage,
was the tenement of a richly dowered nature. He had not
only great powers of intellect, but warm affections, gener
ous sentiments, and wholesome tastes for humanity and
the outdoor world, but his moral fiber, never of the stanch-
est grain, had been sapped by prosperity. He was self-
indulgent in his personal habits and heedless of homely
obligations. His ambition was strong, and as the favor
of the South had come to be the almost necessary condition
of the Presidency, he could not escape the suspicion of
courting that favor. He was in substantial agreement with
Clay as to the compromise measures, but the Kentuckian
rose higher than his section and his look was forward;
while Webster was distinctly below the characteristic tem
per of New England, and his movement was retrograde.
The anti-slavery men mourned his 7th of March speech as
a great apostasy, and Whittier branded it in his poem of
" Ichabod," which fell with Judgment-day weight. Yet it
was not an apostasy, but the natural culmination of his
course ; and in spite of its error, he still was true to the char-

The Compromise of 1850 89
acteristic sentiment of his best period, the love of the Union.
His voice like Clay's gave inspiration — it may well have
been a decisive inspiration — ^to the cause which triumphed
at Gettysburg and Appomattox. Whittier himself, in a
later poem, recognized the patriotic service of the man
whom, in the heat of conflict, he had so scathingly
denounced. Congress, and especially the Senate, was at this time full
of brilliant men. /Among the leaders of the extreme South
were Mason of Virginia, Butler of South Carolina, Davis
of Mississippi, and Soule of Louisiana. From this element
came plentiful threats of disunion. / But these threats were
met with stern answers. When President Taylor heard of
them the stout old soldier answered that such language was
treasonable, and if necessary he would himself take com
mand of the army that should put down rebellion. Dis
union, he said, is treason; and to one questioning him, he
answered with a soldier's oath that if anyone really at
tempted to carry it out, they should be dealt with by law as
they deserved, and executed. Clay's language was no less
explicit. When Senator Rhett in Charleston proposed to
raise the flag of secession, and his colleague, Barnwell in
the Senate, half indorsed his words. Clay said, with a light
ning flash that thrilled the audience, that if Senator Rhett
followed up that declaration by overt acts "he will be a
traitor, and I hope he will meet the fate of a traitor ! "
Clay went on to say that if Kentucky should ever unfurl the
banner of resistance unjustly against the Union, " never,
never will I engage with her in such a cause ! "
There was in Congress a new element, of the smallest in
numbers, but with the promise and potency of a great future.
Four days after Webster, Seward spoke in the Senate. He
advocated the admission of California as a free State, with
no additions or compromises. No equilibrium between free-

90 The Negro and the Nation
dom and slavery was possible ; if established to-day it would
be destroyed to-morrow. The moral sentiment of the age
would never permit the enforcement of a law requiring
Northern freemen to return slaves to bondage. The entire
public domain was by the Constitution devoted to union,
justice, defense, welfare, and liberty; and it was devoted
to the same noble ends by " a higher law than the Constitu
tion." The extension of slavery ought to be barred by all
legal means. Threats of disunion had no terrors for him.
The question was " whether the Union shall stand, and
slavery, under the steady, peaceful action of moral, social,
and political causes, be removed by gradual voluntary effort
and with compensation ; or whether the Union shall be dis
solved and civil war ensue, bringing on violent but com
plete and immediate emancipation."
Salmon P. Chase of Ohio spoke to similar effect. If, he
said, the claims of freedom are sacrificed here by forms of
legislation, " the people will unsettle your settlement." " It
may be that you will succeed in burying the ordinance of
freedom. But the people will write upon its tomb, ' I shall
rise again.' "
/The disunionists found that they had little popular sup
port behind them. A convention at Nashville, held to pro
mote the interests of the South, refused to countenance any
extreme measures, j General Taylor steadily favored the
admission of California as a free State, with no qualifica
tions or accompaniments. Then, while the result in Con
gress hung doubtful, in the summer of 1850, President Tay
lor died. His successor, Vice-President Millard Fillmore
of New York, was a man of fair ability and cautious or
timid disposition ; an opponent of Seward in the politics of
their State. He favored the compromise, and called Web
ster to his cabinet. The administration's influence seemed
to turn the scale, and Clay's series of measures were adopted

The Compromise of 1850 91
one by one. There was dissatisfaction at the South and in
dignation at the North. The territorial settlement was sub
stantially in the North's favor. But the exasperating fact,
and pregnant with consequences, was the Fugitive Slave law.
Its provisions were intolerable to the popular conscience. All
citizens were liable to be called to aid in the pursuit and
arrest of a fugitive. He was to be tried before a United
States commissioner, whose decision was final. A man ac
cused of a crime punishable by a small fine or a brief im
prisonment was entitled to a verdict from an impartial jury
of twelve; but a man whose freedom for life was at stake
was at the mercy of a single official.
Most of the Northern States sooner or later passed " Per
sonal Liberty laws," which, without directly assuming to
nullify the Federal statute, aimed to defeat its enforce
ment. They contained such provisions as the exemption
of State officials and State buildings from service in the
rendition of fugitives, and the right of alleged fugitives
to be taken by habeas corpus before a State tribunal. So
against the charge of inhumanity in the Fugitive Slave law,
the South brought the counter-charge of evasion bordering
on defiance of a Federal statute. Few renditions were
attempted. Sometimes they were met by forcible resistance.
An alleged fugitive, Jerry, was rescued by the populace in
Syracuse. A negro, Shadrach, arrested as a fugitive in
Boston in 1851, was set free and carried off by a mob.
There was a spasm of excitement in Congress, but it was
brief and resultless. Later, in 1854, when the anti-slavery
tide was swiftly rising, came the rendition of Anthony
Burns, who was taken through the streets of Boston
under a strong guard of Federal troops and State militia,
while the popular wrath and grief at the sight swelled the
wave which the repeal of the Missouri compromise had
started on its inevitable way.

CHAPTER XI
A LULL AND A RETROSPECT
After the half-year's debate over the compromise of 1850
came a time of political quiet. " The tumult and the shout
ing died." It seemed more than a temporary lull. In a
great tide of material prosperity, the country easily forgot
the slaves ; if out of sight, they were, to most, out of mind.
Webster's speech had a deep significance. He was identified
in Massachusetts with the classes representing commercial
prosperity, social prominence, and academic culture. In
these classes, throughout the North, there was a general
apathy as to slavery. The temper of the time was material
istic. There was indeed enough anti-slavery sentiment,
stirred by the 7th of March speech and the Fugitive Slave
law, to change the balance of power in Massachusetts
politics. The Democrats and the Free Soilers made a
coalition, and it triumphed over the Whigs. The Democrats
took the State offices, with George S. Boutwell as Governor ;
and Charles Sumner — a scholar, an idealist, an impressive
orator, and a pronounced anti-slavery man, though never
an Abolitionist, — was sent to the Senate to reinforce Seward
and Chase.
The Presidential election of 1852 came on. In the Whig
convention Fillmore had some support, especially from the
South; Webster had most of the Massachusetts votes and
scarce any others; and choice was made of General Win-
field Scott, in the hope of repeating the victory of 1848 with
another hero of the Mexican war. It was to Webster a
blow past retrieval; in bitterness of spirit he turned his
9a

A Lull and a Retrospect 93
face to the wall, in his old home at Marshfield, and died.
The Democratic convention hesitated between several North
ern politicians of trustworthy subserviency to the South, —
Cass, Douglas, and Buchanan — and its choice fell upon
Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, an amiable man, of
fair ability, but easy to manage; he, too, the winner of a
trifle of military glory in the Mexican conquest. Both con
ventions professed entire content with the settlements of the
compromise. The Free Soilers nominated John P. Hale
of New Hampshire, and made their familiar declaration
of principles. But they had lost their Democratic allies of
four years earlier, and threw only 150,000 votes — less by
100,000 than at the previous election. The Whig party
proved to be on the verge of dissolution. It had lost its
hold on the " conscience vote " of the North, and was less
trusted than its rival by the South. Pierce was chosen by a
great majority; he carried every State except Vermont,
Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Party politics were dull; commercial and material
interests seemed wholly in the ascendant, and the anti-
slavery cause was at a low ebb. But many things had hap
pened in two decades, below the surface current of public
events, and, just on the threshold of a new era, we may
glance back over these twenty years. All the European
world had been full of movement. France had passed
through three revolutions. Germany, Austria, and Italy had
undergone a political upheaval and subsidence; and the
liberal reverses of 1848 were the precursors of national
unity and constitutional freedom in the near future.
England had gone steadily on in the path of conservative
progress; had widened its suffrage by the Reform Act of
1832; had relieved distress and disarmed discontent by the
free trade policy of Sir Robert Peel ; her factory legislation
had met a crying need of the new industrial epoch, and

94 The Negro and the Nation
she had pacified and energized Canada by giving her self-
government. Meanwhile American progress had been along
lines 'of its own. The country had grown at a tremedous
rate, and mainly at the North and West. Immigration had
poured in from Europe, and the stream of native stock from
the seaboard States to the West had hardly slackened. It
was the epoch of the railroad and the telegraph. Manu
factures had increased and multiplied ; acres fell under culti
vation by the million. In this industrial growth the North
had far outstripped the South. Calhoun had urged the con
struction of railroads to link the eastern and western parts
of the South, but the political motive could not supply the
want of industrial force. The figures of the census of 1850
were more eloquent than any orator as to the relative effects
of free and slave labor. Intellectually the period had
been prolific. Emerson had risen, the bright morning star
of American literature. Bryant, Hawthorne, Longfellow,
Lowell, Whittier, were telling their stories or singing their
songs. Theology was fruitful of debate and change. The
Unitarian movement had defined itself. Presbyterians and
Congregationalists were discussing the tenets of old school
and new. For " women's rights " a strong and promising
advance had been made, in the face of unpopularity and
derision. Religious revivals, foreign missions, social re
forms, were making active way. From all this intellectual
and social movement, unless we except the emotional revivals
of religion, the South stood apart. Literature it had virtu
ally none ; its theology was only conservative and defensive ;
at most so-called reforms it looked askance.
In two respects the South had an advantage. Its social
system was aristocratic; above the slaves came the non-
slave-holding whites, including a great mass of the ignorant
and degraded ; but at the summit the slave-holding class
had a social life in many ways attractive and delightful.

A Lull and a Retrospect 95
The slave-holders, all told, numbered some 350,000. The
controlling element consisted of the large planters, with the
affiliated members of the liberal professions. Plantation
life at its best had a great deal of beauty and charm. A
degree of improvidence and " shiftlessness," by Northern
standards, was not inconsistent with free hospitality, a gen
erous outdoor life, an old-time culture with an atmosphere
of leisure and courtesy, superior in its way to what the busy
and bustling North could show. The charming and chival
rous " Colonel Carter of Cartersville " had many a proto
type in real life. A higher type was sometimes bred in
Southern society; it was not without some reason that Vir
ginians claimed that the mold which produced Washington
was not broken when it could yield a Robert Lee. There
was a somber side; plantation life was often a rank soil
for passions of tyranny and license. But its better fruitage
added an element to the composite American type which
could not and cannot be spared.
The other advantage the South possessed was the devo
tion of its strongest men to political life. The loss of com
merce and literature was the gain of politics. The typical
Southern leader was apt to be both a planter and a lawyer,
with a strong and active interest in public affairs. Political
oratory was a favorite resource in the sparsely-settled
districts. The personal force which in the North was scat
tered among twenty fields was here centered mainly in one.
This fea'ture of Southern society worked together with the
fact that the section had in slavery a common interest and
bond. - That interest of the entire section, led by its ablest
men, came naturally to be the dominant factor in American
public life. When it could not rule through its own men, it
found agents in subservient Northern politicians. And so
it came about that in the early '50s the South, while
outstripped altogether in population, wealth, industrial and

96 The Negro and the Nation
intellectual achievement, was yet in substantial control of
the governmental power. In the North, by the very mag
nitude of the commercial and industrial development the
moral sentiment in public affairs seemed submerged or at
least eclipsed.
It was during such a period of apathy that there was held
an anti-slavery meeting at which two negroes were present,
Sojourner Truth, an old woman whose shrewdness matched
her fervor, and Frederick Douglas. Douglas was the
son of a white father and a slave mother ; he taught himself
to read and write, made his escape into freedom, gained an
education, and became an effective speaker for the anti-
slavery cause. On this occasion he spoke with power and
passion of the gloomy prospects of their people; govern
ment, wealth, social advantage, all were on the side of their
oppressors ; good people seemed indifferent to their wrongs ;
was there indeed any help or hope? Then rose Sojourner
Truth, and looking at him said only, " Frederick ! Is God
dead?"

CHAPTER XII
SLAVERY AS IT WAS
And now, in the year 1852, there befell an event perhaps
as momentous in American history as any between the
establishment of the Constitution and the Civil War. A
frail little woman, the wife of an obscure theological pro
fessor in a Maine village, wrote a story, and that story
captured the heart of the world. It is scarcely an exaggera
tion to say that Uncle Tom's Cabin converted the North
to the cause of the slave. The typical Union volunteer of
1861 carried the book in his memory. It brought home to
the heart of the North, and of the world, that the slave was
a man, — one with mankind by that deepest tie, of human
love and aspiration and anguish, — but denied the rights of
a man. The book was a birth of genius and love. It is
absolutely sweet-spirited. Its intense and irresistible plea
is not against a class or a section, but against a system. It
portrays among the Southern slave-holders characters noble
and attractive, — Mrs Shelby, the faithful mistress, and the
fascinating St. Clare. The worst villain in the story is a
renegade Northerner. Its typical Yankee, Miss Ophelia,
provokes kindly laughter. The book mixes humor with its
tragedy; the sorrows of Uncle Tom and the dark story of
Cassy are relieved by the pranks of Black Sam and the antics
of Topsy. With all its woes, the story somehow does not
leave a depressing effect ; it abounds in courage and action ;
the fugitives win their way to freedom; the final impulse
?7

98 The Negro and the Nation
is to hopeful effort against the wrong. Its basal motive was
the same as that of the Abolitionists, but its spirit and method
were so different from Garrison's that it won response and
sympathy where he had roused antagonism. Against Phari
saical religion it uses effective satire, — which was intensified
in its successor, Dred, — ^but the Christianity of faith and
life is its animating spirit. No book is richer in the gospel of
love to man and trust in God. Its rank is high in the new
literature which has stimulated and led the great modern
movement for the uplifting of the poor and oppressed. Its
place is with Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and Tolstoi's
War and Peace.
The motive of Uncle Tom's Cabin was an appeal to
the heart of the American people. There was no reference
to political action, far less any suggestion of servile insur
rection, and there was no discussion of methods of emanci
pation. The book set forth an organized, monstrous wrong,
which it was in the power of the American nation, and
above all, of the Southern people, to remove. The effect
at the North was immeasurably to widen and deepen the
conviction of the wrong of slavery, and the desire to remove
it. But the way to practical action did not open; and
strangely enough there was at first no visible effect on
politics. The political logic of the situation led straight,
as a first step, to the support of the Free Soil party. But
though Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared (as a book) in
April, 1852, and its popularity was instant, the Presidential
election seven months later showed a Free Soil vote less
by 100,000 than four years before. The political effect of
the book was to appear only when public events two years
later gave a sudden spur to the hesitating North.
The South turned a deaf ear to the appeal. It shut the
book out from its borders as far as it could, and one who
inquired for it in a Southern bookstore would probably be

Slavery as it Was 99
oflfered Aunt Phillis's Cabin or some other mild literary
anti-toxin. The South protested that the book's picture
of slavery was untrue and unjust. It was monstrous, so
they said, that their labor system should be shown as
having its natural result in the whipping to death of a saintly
negro for his virtuous conduct. Another reply was : " If
the book is true, it is really a eulogy of slavery, for it
depicts slavery as producing in Uncle Tom a perfect
character." To the objections to the fidelity of her portraiture Mrs.
Stowe replied with A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, — a
formidable array of proved facts, as to the laws of the slave
States, and specific incidents which paralleled or exceeded
all she had told. As now judged, the novel has some serious
imperfections as a picture of slavery. Probably the most
important of these was expressed by Judge Tourgee, para
phrasing the proverb about the Russian and the Tartar:
" Scratch one of Mrs. Stowe's negroes, and you will find
a white man." She failed adequately to differentiate the
two races, and described the negro too much from such
specimens as Uncle Tom and George and Eliza Harris. She
had never lived in the South, and her knowledge was
obtained from observation in the border town of Cincinnati,
from acquaintance with fugitives, and from the reports of
Northern travelers — all interpreted with the insight of
genius and the impulse of philanthropy. Her avowed pur
pose was not to make a literal or merely artistic picture,
but to show the actual wrongs and legalized possibilities of
wrong which called for redress. It did not lessen the justice
of her plea, that the mass of negroes were more degraded
than she knew, or that their average treatment was kinder
than her protrayal showed.
But a true historical judgment of slavery must rest on a
comparison of documents. The story told from the master's

100 The Negro and the Nation
standpoint should be heard. Among the faithful and
graphic narrations of this sort may be named Mrs. Burton
Harrison's Flower de Hundred, — a volume of personal
reminiscences of Virginia before the war. It is a charm
ing story, without motive other than the pleasure of recall
ing happy memories, and it describes a society of various
and vivid charm. The mention of the slaves is occasional
and incidental; but the description of the plantation hands,
and especially the household servants, trusted and beloved,
gives a sunny and doubtless a real side of slavery. Another
book is fuller and more impressive in its treatment. It
might be said that every American ought to read Uncle
Tom's Cabin as a part of his education, and to follow it
with two other books of real life. One of these is A
Southern Planter, — a biography of Thomas Dabney, of
Virginia and later of Mississippi, written by his daughter.
It is a story amply worth reading for its human interest,
and for its presentation of a man of noble and beauti
ful character. One is enriched by the acquaintance, even
through a book, of a man like Thomas Dabney. And it
is most desirable for the Northerner to vivify his impression
of the South by the knowledge of men like him. We are
misled by general and geographical terms : " an English
man " is a vague and perhaps unattractive term to an
American until he knows, in books or in flesh and blood, a
few Britons of the right stamp. And so South and North
need mutual interpretation not alone through their historic
heroes, but through the best of their everyday people. And
of those best, surely Thomas Dabney was one, — a strong,
tender, noble man, fulfilling each relation in family and
society with loyal conscience and sympathetic heart.
From the book we can give but a few instances of plan
tation life as such a man made it. When he was to move
from Virginia to Mississippi he called together all bis glaves,

Slavery as It Was loi
— some hundreds — and told them he wanted to take none
of them against their will, and especially he would not
break up any families. If any of them had wives or hus
bands on other plantations, he would sell or b.uy, just as
they wished, so that every family should stay or go together.
Every one of them elected to go with their old master.
Settled in Mississippi, his cotton plantation became the
admiration and envy of the neighbors, for the size of the
crops as well as the condition of the workers. Their com
fort was amply secured. The general rule was three hours'
rest at midday and a Saturday half-holiday. At the height
of the season hours were longer, but there was a system of
prizes, for four or five months in the year, from $i a week
to a picayune; with an extra prize of a $5 gold piece for
anyone picking 600 pounds a day; and these prizes roused
such interest and excitement that some of the ambitious
ones had to be compelled to leave the field at night, wishing
to sleep at the end of their row. The inefficient were gently
tolerated; severe punishment was held to be alike cruel and
useless; an incompetent servant was carried as a burden
from which there was no escape. Such endurance was the
way of all good masters and mistresses at the South, — " and
I have known very few who were not good," adds the
writer. The plantation trained and kept its own mechanics ;
two each of carpenters, blacksmiths, millers, with five
seamstresses in the house. In the house, under the mistress's
eye, were cut and made the clothes of all the negroes, two
woolen and two cotton suits a year, with a gay calico Sun
day dress for each woman. The women were taught sew
ing in the house. When their babies were born a nurse
was provided, and all the mother's work done for her for
a month, and for a year she was allowed ample leisure for
the care of the baby. The sons of the family taught reading
to those y/hQ wished to learn, Some of the bouse servants

I02 The Negro and the Nation
were very fine characters ; the sketch of " Mammy Maria "
one would gladly reproduce. When secession came on,
Thomas Dabney altogether disapproved, and foresaw the
ruin of the South. He proposed to his wife that they close
up their affairs, and go to live in England. Her reply was :
" What will you do with Abby ? and with Maria and Harriet,
and their husbands and children, and the rest of our
people ? " That was unanswerable. So he stayed, and with
his family shared the fighting, — for, the war begun, Dabney
gave his hearty support to the Southern cause, and his sons
went to the field, — shared the hardships of a devastated
country, the social chaos that followed, and the slow recon
struction, — a more intrepid and lovable figure in adversity
than before..
His daughter writes : " In the family of Thomas Dab
ney the first feeling when the war ended was of joy that
one dreadful responsibility at least was removed. Gradual
emancipation had been a hope and a dream not to be
realized." " A hope and a dream," — it does not appear that
it had ever been seriously considered as a purpose or a
duty. " Not an intelligent white man or woman in the
South," says the writer, " would now wish slavery restored."
But why, — it is impossible not to return to the question,—
why had the South done nothing to rid itself of the evil?
Why had it centered its political energies in maintaining
and extending it? Why had it revolted from the Union
and invited war and ruin, for a system which when once
removed it recognized as a burden and a curse? No right
minded man can ponder that question without taking a
step further, and asking whether the evils in our present
industrial system shall be allowed to go on till they bring
down the temple on our heads, or be met with deliberate
and resolute cure. And the good and conscientious man
who does his best under the existing system — as Thomas

Slavery as it Was 103
Dabney did under slavery — is yet derelict unless he gives
his thought and effort to such radical amendment as the
system may need.
There is yet another book in illustration of slavery which
ought to be read by every American. It is Fanny Kemble
Butler's A Residence on a Georgia Plantation. She was
a woman of unusual genius, character, and sensibility; the
inheritor of a great dramatic talent, and a brilliant actress
until she married Mr. Butler of Georgia, and left the stage
to live with him on the plantation owned by himself and his
brother. After no long period she left her husband, not
taking the world into her confidence as to her domestic
affairs, but returning to the stage as a dramatic reader,
and passing into honored private life. After the outbreak
of the Civil War she published, with some reserves and
some additions, the journal she had kept during her life
on the plantation. As to her personal relations, except as
touching the slaves, the book is entirely reticent, but it
is plain that slavery as she saw it made life under those con
ditions literally intolerable. Below all special cruelties, she
writes, she felt the ever-present, vivid wrong of living on
the unpaid labor of servants. The special wrongs were
constant. Thus she describes the parting of a family of
slaves, and the husband's awful distress. She tells of the
head-driver, Frank, an every way superior man, left at some
seasons in sole charge of the plantation; but his wife was
taken from him and made the mistress of the overseer.
There was Engineer Ned, intelligent and capable, and him
self not badly treated, but with a wife broken down by being
driven to field work too soon after the birth of a child. Half
the women on the plantation were diseased from the same
cause. One woman brought to her mistress a pitiful tale
of such suffering. A little later the mistress learned that
the woman, on the ground that this visit had caused her

104 The Negro and the Nation
day's labor to come short, had received a flogging. She
appealed to her husband, but he refused to interfere. " To
Mr.  's assertion of the justice of poor Theresa's pun
ishment, I retorted the manifest injustice of unpaid and
enforced labor; the brutal inhumanity of allowing a man
to strip and lash a woman, the mother of ten children; to
exact from her toil which was to maintain in luxury two
idle young men, the owners of the plantation. I said I
thought female labor of the sort exacted from these slaves,
and corporal chastizement such as they endure, must be
abhorrent to any manly or humane man. Mr.  said he
thought it was disagreeable, and left me to my reflections
with that concession." Presently he refused to listen to any
more such petitions from her. She writes: "A wild wish
rose in my heart that the river and the sea would swallow
up and melt in their salt waves the whole of this accursed
property of ours."
The principal physical hardships, she writes, fell to the
women. The children and the old people are idle and
neglected; the middle-aged men do not seem over-worked,
and lead a mere animal existence, in itself not peculiarly
cruel or distressing, but with a constant element of fear
and uncertainty, " and the trifling evils of unrequited labor,
ignorance the most profound (to which they are condemned
by law), and the unutterable injustice which precludes
them from all the merits and all the benefits of voluntary
exertion, and the progress that results from it."
Her eye notes closely the faces about her. When she
gathers the slaves to read prayers to them, she observes
" their sable faces, so many of them so uncouth in their
outlines and proportions, and yet all of them so pathetic,
and some so sublime in their expression of patient suffering
and religious fervor." She says : " Just in proportion
as I have found the slaves on this plantation intelligent and

Slavery as It Was 105
advanced, I have observed this pathetic expression of coun
tenance in them, a mixture of sadness and fear." The
plantation, she writes, was well reputed, and its manage
ment was considered above the average.
Her analysis of the master class in the South is keen and
striking. " The shop is not their element, and the eager
spirit of speculation and the sordid spirit of gain do not
infect their whole existence, even to their very demeanor
and appearance, as they too manifestly do those of a large
proportion of the inhabitants of the Northern States. The
Southerners are infinitely better bred men, according to
English notions, than the men of the Northern States. The
habit of command gives them a certain self-possession, the
enjoyment of leisure a certain ease. Their temperament is
impulsive and enthusiastic, and their manners have the grace
and spirit which seldom belong to the development of a
Northern people; but upon more familiar acquaintance the
vices of the social system to which they belong will be found
to have infected them with their own peculiar taint; and
haughty, over-bearing irritability, eflfeminate indolence, reck
less extravagance, and a union of profligacy and cruelty
which is the immediate result of their irresponsible power
over their dependents, are some of the less pleasing
traits." She gives another and darker picture of the planter class.
It goes without saying that it is only a part of the class to
which it fairly applies : " A nation, for as such they should
be spoken of, of men whose organization and temperament
is that of the southern European, living under the influence
of a climate at once enervating and exciting, scattered over
trackless wildernesses of arid sand and pestilential swamp,
intrenched within their own boundaries, surrounded by
creatures absolutely subject to their despotic will ; delivered
over by hard necessity to the lowest excitements of drink-

io6 The Negro and the Nation
ing, gambling, and debauchery for sole recreation; inde
pendent of all opinion; ignorant of all progress; isolated
from all society — it is impossible to conceive a more savage
existence within the border of any modern civilization."
The picture of the poor whites is graphic and somber, but
space must limit these quotations.
She gives credit for the habits of courage and command,
which are bred in the upper class, as when she tells of a
heroic rescue from a shipwreck : " The devil must have
his due, and men brought up in habits of peremptory com
mand over their fellowmen, and under the constant appre
hension of danger and awful necessity of immediate readi
ness to meet it, acquire qualities precious to themselves and
others in hours of supreme peril."
She touches repeatedly on the social restrictions on free
speech ; thus, speaking of two gentlemen, one a clergyman :
" They seem good and kind and amiable men, and I have
no doubt are conscientious in their capacity of slave holders ;
but to one who has lived outside this dreadful atmosphere,
the whole tone of their discourse has a morally muffled sound
which one must hear to be able to conceive." She observes
that whenever she discusses slavery with people she meets,
they waive the abstract right or wrong of the system. Now
and then she gets a bit of entire frankness, as when a very
distinguished South Carolinian says to her, " I'll tell
you why abolition is impossible; because every healthy
negro can fetch $1000 in Charleston market at this
moment." She generalizes as to the effects of emancipation in a way
which later events completely justified. Unlike the West
Indies, she says, the South is not tropical, and will not yield
food without labor, and necessity would compel the lib
erated blacks to work. That they would not work, and the
ground would lie idle, was, as we know, the bogy which was

Slavery as It Was 107
held up to scare away from emancipation — just as in our
own day the danger of race mixture is made a bogy to scare
away from social justice. But the event proved that Fanny
Kemble was right in her predictions, in which indeed she
was at one with other candid observers at the time. As to
gradual emancipation, she believed it unwise — the system,
she writes, is too absolutely bad for slow measures. Had
she owned her husband's plantation, she would at once
have freed the slaves, and hired them, if only as a means
of financial salvation.
She pronounces Uncle Tom's Cabin to be no exagger
ation. Her own story of facts gives a darker impression
than Mrs. Stowe's novel. It may be asked, why, at this
distance, revive the tragic tale? The answer is, that the
truth of history is precious, and our present problems can
not be understood if we shut our eyes to their antecedents.
Just now there is a fashion, among many Southern writers
on the negro question, of beginning their story with the
wrongs and sufferings of the reconstruction period. Now,
it was indeed deplorable, and a thing not to be forgotten,
that ignorant negroes sat in the Senate chambers of South
Carolina and Mississippi, that taxes were excessive, and the
public business mismanaged. But, in the broad view, it
is well to remember that a few years earlier very much
worse things than these were happening, and that a system
which made cattle of men and women might be expected
to avenge itself.
Another work may be merely mentioned as illuminating
the facts of slavery. It is Frederic Law Olmsted's three
volumes of travels in the slave States. He studied them
with the eyes of a farmer and a practical man; a well-
equipped, fair, and keen observer. His testimony, already
touched on in these chapters, is very strong as to the eco
nomic mischief of the system, its frequent cruelties, its

io8 The Negro and the Nation
demoralization of both master and slave, and the absolute
need of its ultimate extinction. From his pages we can
borrow but one or two passages. The contrasts of slavery
are epitomized in two plantations he found side by side in
Mississippi. On one the slaves had good food and clothes,
were not driven hard, were given three stops in the day for
meals, and had the time from Friday night till Monday
morning for themselves. In this time the men cultivated
gardens and the women washed and sewed. They were
smartly dressed, and seemed very contented; many could
read and write ; on Sundays there was a church service and
a Sabbath school taught by their mistress, both of which
they could attend or not as they pleased. On the other plan
tation, owned by a religious woman, the working hours
were from 3.30 a. m. to 9 p. m. The slaves had only Sun
day free from labor, and on that day there were three
services which they had to attend under penalty of a whip
ping. They were never allowed off the "plantation, and were
whipped if they talked with slaves from other plantations.
Said a neighbor, " They can all repeat the catechism, but
they are the dullest, laziest, and most sorrowful negroes I
ever saw."
As to the possibilities of gradual emancipation, which
he favored, Olmsted wrote that in Cuba every slave has
the right of buying his own freedom, at a price which does
not depend on the selfish exaction of his master, but is
either a fixed price or is determined in each case by dis
interested appraisers. " The consequence is that emanci
pations are continually going on, and the free people of
color are becoming enlightened, cultivated, and wealthy.
In no part of the United States do they occupy the high
position which they enjoy in Cuba." So much for the
despised Spanish-American.
From a still different standpoint — that of the non-slave-

Slavery as it Was 109
holding Southern white — the system was reviewed and
scathingly judged in Helper's The Impending Crisis. But
that, like Uncle Tom's Cabin, was not merely a book, but
an event, and as such is to be mentioned in its place among
events. The general survey of the slave system in itself
need not here be carried further. As to its essential charac
ter and basal principle, no truer word was ever spoken than
that which Mrs. Stowe puts in the mouth of the slave
holder St. Clare:
" The short of the matter is, cousin, on this abstract
question of slavery there can, as I think, be but one opinion.
Planters, who have money to make by it, — clergymen, who
have planters to please, — politicians, who want to rule by
it, — may warp and bend language and ethics to a degree
that shall astonish the world at their ingenuity; they can
press Nature and the Bible, and nobody knows what else,
into the service; but, after all, neither they nor the world
believe in it one particle the more. It comes from the
devil, that's the short of it, — and to my mind, it's a pretty
respectable specimen of what he can do in his own line.
You seem to wonder; but if you will get me fairly at it,
I'll make a clean breast of it. This cursed business,
accursed of God and man, what is it? Strip it of all its
ornament, run it down to the root and nucleus of the whole,
and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is
ignorant and weak, and I am intelligent and strong, —
because I know how, and can do it, — therefore I may steal
all he has, keep it, and give him only such and so much as
suits my fancy. Whatever is too hard, too dirty, too dis
agreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because
I don't like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun
burns me, Quashy shall stay in the sun. Quashy shall earn
the money, and I will spend it. Quashy shall lie down in
every puddle, that I may walk over dry-shod. Quashy shall

no The Negro and the Nation
do my will, and not his, all the days of his mortal life, and
have such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I find con
venient. This I take to be about what slavery is."
St. Clare goes on to say that " for pity's sake, for shame's
sake, because we are men born of women and not savage
beasts, many of us do not and dare not — we would scorn
to — use the full power which our savage laws put into our
hands." In truth, a compilation of the slave laws was one
of the most convincing arguments against the whole system.
This book is characterized by Charles G. Ames, — whose
long life of noble service to humanity included earnest
work among the anti-slavery pioneers : " To my mind, the
heaviest blow, though probably not the most telling one, ever
struck against our slave system as a system was the compila
tion and publication of Stroud's Slave Laws — a codification
from the statute-books of the Southern States of their own
barbarous methods of legislation, made necessary for the
protection of the peculiar institution. All the recent senti
mental defenses of it, as gentle, humane, and patriarchal,
seem utterly to ignore the rugged facts, which Lawyer
Stroud's book made as plain as the stratification of the rocks
to the eye of the geologist."
In its actual administration, the system was in a measure
softened and humanized. It was more humane in the border
than in the cotton and sugar States, and it was generally
better when a plantation was managed by its owner than
when left to an overseer, — as the plantation of Fanny
Kemble's husband had been left. But in one respect its dis
astrous effect was everywhere felt. By associating manual
labor with the stigma of servitude, it bred, in free men, a
strong disrelish for work, — a most demoralizing and ruinous
influence. Inefficiency and degradation were the marks
of the non-slaveholding whites. The master class missed
the wholesome regimen of toil. Nature is never more

Slavery as it Was in
beneficent than when she lays on man the imperative com
mand " Thou shalt work." Of all ways of evading it the
worst is to shift the burden to another man. In being
driven to do other men's work as well as his own the negro
found some compensation, but his enslaver paid a constant
and heavy penalty.

CHAPTER XIII
THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS
The foremost politician of the Northwest, in the early
'50s, was Stephen A. Douglas, United States senator from
Illinois. He was a native of Vermont, and had early gone
West and pushed his fortunes with energy, audacity, and
shrewdness. He was an effective, popular speaker; and his
short and stout frame and large head had won for him
the nickname of " The Little Giant." He was a leader in
the Democratic party, and a prominent Presidential candi
date, but never identified with any great political principle
or broad policy. He was chairman of the Senate committee
on Territories, and early in the session of 1853-4 he intro
duced a bill for the organization of a vast section hitherto
known as " the Platte country," a part of the Louisiana
purchase, lying next to the western tier of States, and
stretching from Indian Territory to Canada; all of which
was now to constitute the Territory of Nebraska, or, as it
was soon divided, the two Territories of Nebraska and
Kansas. This region had as yet been scarcely touched by
permanent settlers, but it was the next step in the great
onward march toward the Pacific. It lay north of the line
of 36 degrees 30 minutes, above which it had been declared
by the compromise act of 1820 slavery should never be
extended. Douglas incorporated in his " Kansas-Nebraska "
bill, a clause declaring that the prohibition of slavery north
of 36 degrees 30 minutes, by the act of 1820, had been
" superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850,"
and was "inoperative and void." Later he added the
112

The Struggle for Kansas 113
explanatory clause : " It being the true intent and meaning
of this act, not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State,
nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof
perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institu
tions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of
the United States." On its face, this was a proposal to
withdraw the congressional prohibition of slavery in the
Northwestern territory, and remand the question to the
territorial population. But the latent purpose to distinctly
favor slavery was proved when Senator Chase moved an
additional clause: "Under which (the Constitution) the
people of the Territory, through their appropriate repre
sentatives, may, if they see fit, prohibit the existence of
slavery therein " ; and Douglas and his followers, in defiance
of consistency, instantly threw this out. The meaning of
the whole business was unmistakable; under the pretext
of " popular sovereignty," — Douglas's favorite watchword
— ^the bars were thrown down and slavery was invited to
enter. The proposal took the country completely by surprise.
The South was not asking for any such advantage as was
offered, but was prompt to accept it. This of course
Douglas had expected, and in this lay his personal gain as
a Presidential candidate. But he had utterly misjudged
the temper of the North. The general acquiescence in the
compromise of 1850 might seem to indicate a weariness or
indifference as to the slavery question. But just as in 1820
and in 1850, again there sprung up a wide and deep hostility
to any extension of slavery, and now the old restraints on that
hostility were gone, and its sources were newly filled. For
now Clay and Webster were dead, and the case itself offered
no room for compromise; no offset was possible. And the
anti-slavery feeling had strengthened immensely throughout
the North. Under the stimulus of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the

114 The Negro and the Nation
inhumanity of the system had made the deepest impression
on the popular imagination and conscience. To this system
it was now proposed to throw open all the fair and fertile
Northwest, in effect from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
The North awoke like a giant from sleep. The old party
organizations went down in the shock; a new party came
instantly to birth; and the last triumph of slavery in Con
gress gave the signal for a six-years' campaign, ending in
the triumph of the Republicans and the appeal of the South
to revolution.
The debate in Congress was hot through the winter and
spring of 1854. In the Senate, Seward and Sumner and
Chase had been reinforced by such allies as Benjamin Wade
of Ohio, Hamilton Fish of New York, Solomon Foot of
Vermont, and William P. Fessenden of Maine. The sup
porters of the bill, with such leaders as Douglas and Cass
from the North and Mason and Benjamin from the South,
proved finally to number three-fourths of the Senate. In
the House, party lines were completely broken, and the
division was almost equal, — the bill passed by 113 to no.
Its supporters included all the Southern and just half of the
Northern Democrats, and two-thirds of the few Southern
Whigs. Its opponents were all the Northern and a third of
the Southern Whigs, with half of the Northern Democrats
and the four Free-Soilers in the House.
The bill finally passed on the 2Sth of May, 1854, and
there instantly began a hot battle for the congressional
election. On the very next morning, — so Henry Wilson re
lates, — a meeting of about twenty members of the House was
held; among their leaders were Israel Washburn, Jr., of
Maine, and Edward Dickinson and Thomas D. Eliot of
Massachusetts; and it was agreed that the best hope lay
not in the Whig organization, but in a new party, for which
the name " Republican " was chosen ; and of which this

The Struggle for Kansas 115
occasion might now be considered the birth and christening.
It came to its earliest maturity in Michigan, where the
Whigs and Free Soilers united in the new party and carried
the autumn election. But in most Northern States there was
political confusion, heightened by the sudden appearance
of the " American " party. This was the political develop
ment of the " Know-nothing " secret society, which came
into existence the year before, on the basis of the exclusion
of recent immigrants from political power. Its special
animus was hostility to the Irish Catholics, and in various
parts of the country it had for a year or two a mushroom
growth. In Massachusetts, where the Whigs clung obsti
nately to their tradition and their social prestige, and the
Republican party was at first only a continuance of the Free
Soil, the Know-nothings won in 1854 a sweeping victory,
carrying the State by almost two to one and electing all the
members of Congress. That shrewd politician, Henry
Wilson, contributed to the result ; was elected to the United
States Senate; and led the anti-slavery element which con
trolled the American party in Massachusetts and a year or
two later divided its national organization. In other States,
the term " anti-Nebraska " was the basis of a temporary
union, such as in Ohio had a majority of 70,000. In New
York the influence of Greeley, Seward, and Weed prolonged
the Whig organization as an anti-Nebraska party. The
roster of the new Congress was a jumble of Democrats,
Whigs, Republicans, Americans, and anti-Nebraskans. But
the general result was clear; Douglas's bill had turned an
overwhelming administration majority into a minority of
the popular vote; and the political revolution had carried
the House in the first engagement. The result crystallized
a year later, when an obstinate battle of many weeks for the
House speakership ended in the election of Nathaniel P.
Banks of Massachusetts.

Ii6 The Negro and the Nation
The immediate practical effect of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act was to throw the political destiny of those Territories
into the hands of the future settlers. There were men at
the North who were prompt to see and seize the opportunity.
In February, 1854, three months before the bill became law,
the New England Emigrant Aid Society was incorporated
in Massachusetts. Its originator was Eli Thayer of Worces
ter, and among its active promoters was Edward Everett
Hale. In the following July it sent to Kansas a colony of
twenty-four, speedily followed by another of seventy, which
founded the town of Lawrence. Other colonies followed
from various Northern States, and other settlements were
made. The natural westward movement of an active pop
ulation seeking new homes and personal betterment was
augmented and stimulated by a propaganda of freedom.
Whittier gave the colonists a marching song:
We cross the prairies as of old
Our fathers crossed the sea,
To make the West as they the East
The home of liberty.
A counter movement was started from the South.
Missouri was its natural base. But Missouri furnished the
material and leadership for another kind of crusade. The
rough and lawless element of a border community was
brought out in its worst character by the appeal to champion
the cause of slavery. Men high in political life were ready
to utilize such forces. The first settlers of Lawrence, before
they had time to raise their houses, were visited by a
ruffianly mob from Missouri, who tried by threats and show
of force to drive them from the Territory, but failed. When
in November the first election was held for Territorial dele
gate to Congress, there was a systematic invasion by bands
of Missourians, who captured the polling-places and elected

The Struggle for Kansas 117
their candidate by 3000 votes; though it was afterward
proved that there were only half that number of voters
resident in Kansas.
In 1855 the first Territorial Legislature was elected by a
similar invasion of armed men, which chose the entire body.
A foremost leader in these operations was United States
Senator Atchison of Missouri. President Pierce's admin
istration recognized the usurping faction. It sent a suc
cession of governors — Reeder, Shannon, Geary, Walker
(the last was sent by President Buchanan) — who, with the
exception of the incompetent and worthless Shannon, were
by the inexorable facts of the situation won to the side of
the Free-State men, and accordingly lost favor and their
office. Meantime the usurping Legislature had enacted an
extraordinary code of laws. By these statutes, decoying a
slave from his master was punishable by death or hard
labor for ten years; the circulation of writings inciting to
revolt was made a capital offense; and the assertion by
speech, writing, or the circulation of any book or paper,
that slavery was not lawful in the Territory, was punishable
by two years' hard labor.
It was not in the blood of free men to submit to such
usurpation and tyranny. In the autumn of 1855 the Free
State party held a convention, adopted a State constitution,
and petitioned for admission to the Union. They elected
State officers with Charles S. Robinson as Governor. This
organization had really no legal standing; in form it was
revolutionary. But the Free State party were not only
resolute, but adroit. They had no mind to actively rebel
against the United States Government, or come into col
lision with its forces. Governor Robinson, their foremost
leader, was a man of New England birth, who had served
a profitable apprenticeship in the settlement of California,
and learned a lesson amid the complications of Federal

II 8 The Negro and the Nation
authority and pioneer exigencies. Counseled by him and
men of like mind, the Free State party, while maintaining
the form of a State government, and disavowing the Terri
torial Legislature as fraudulent, always deferred to any
express mandate of Federal authority. The Federal troops
in the Territory were commanded by Colonel Sumner, after
ward a distinguished commander in the Union army, and
Governor Robinson {The Kansas Conflict), credits him
with a loyal and generally successful purpose to preserve
order and peace. In the mixed population there was much
bad blood, many threats, and occasional violence, but no
general conflict. The " border ruffians " were often insult
ing, and some murders were committed, but the Free State
men kept steadily on the defensive, though there was among
them a faction which favored more aggressive measures.
At last, a Free-State man was wantonly murdered; then
An eye-witness of the murder was got away on an appar
ently trumped-up charge; this was followed by a bloodless
rescue and the witness was carried off to Lawrence. Then
a sheriff with his posse went to Lawrence to arrest one of
the rescuers. In the night the sheriff was fired at and
wounded. He retreated; and immediately afterward a
formidable demonstration was made against the town of
Lawrence. The situation was peculiar. Many of the Free-
State men were armed ; contributions had been openly taken
in the North for this purpose, and " Sharpe's rifles " was
one of the familiar words of the day. But this policy was
fixed — to disown and disobey the authority of the Territorial
Legislature, but never to oppose or resist a United States
official. In this way, says Robinson, the entire odium of
all oppressive proceedings was fixed on the Federal admin
istration ; " the more outrages the people could get the
government to perpetrate upon them the more victories they
would gain, and this simply because the field of battle em-

The Struggle for Kansas 119
braced the entire country, and the chief victories at this
stage were to be moral, political, and national."
The Territorial authorities were bent on breaking down,
if possible, the passive resistance of the Free-State men.
Indictments were found, by a Federal grand jury, against a
number of members of the Free-State government for
" constructive treason," and they were put under arrest.
Indictments were also found against two printing offices in
Lawrence, and the principal hotel in the town. A large
force of Missourians, led by a United States marshal, ad
vanced on the town. The inhabitants protested, but agreed
to respect the United States authority. The hotel and the
two printing offices were accordingly destroyed. A con
siderable amount of lawless pillaging was done, and Gov
ernor Robinson's house was burned. Then the force was
withdrawn. The Free-State leaders, as Robinson states, were in no
wise cast down by the course of events. Their actual losses
had not been great; the temporary confinement of a few
of their men did not seriously disturb them ; and they con
sidered that by their self-restraint and non-resistance they
had put their enemies thoroughly in the wrong, and gained
a most valuable vantage-ground for the ensuing Presiden
tial and congressional elections — an estimate which the
result fully justified.
But in their party were some spirits to whom these peace
ful tactics were distasteful. Chief in this number was John
Brown — little known to the world at large till a later time.
He and his family of sons had made their homes in Kansas,'
impelled partly by the hostility to slavery which in him was
a master passion. He was a man personally upright and
kindly, of only moderate interest and capacity for the ordi
nary practical affairs of life, given to brooding on public
events and ideal causes, and viewing them with a fanatic's

120 The Negro and the Nation
narrowness and a fanatic's absorption. He was a belated
Puiitan, and his natural place would have been with Crom
well's Ironsides. His ideas were largely influenced by his
reading of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament. Of
the modern State and the duties of the modern citizen he
had no rational idea. Following the Old Testament analogy,
he conceived of the slaveholders as the enemies of God —
like the Canaanites; and he came to imagine for himself a
mission like one of the Hebrew leaders. His favorite hero
seems to have been Gideon, and to assail and overcome the
Midianites, a handful against a host, became his dream.
How the peaceful tactics of the Free- State party suited
his temper may be easily guessed, and four days after the
attack on Lawrence (which was May 20, 1856), he acted
on a plan of his own. At the head of a small group of men,
including two of his sons and a son-in-law, he went at night
down Pottawatomie creek, stopping at three houses. The
men who lived in them were well-known pro-slavery men;
they seem to have been rough characters ; their most specific
offense (according to Mr. Sanborn, Brown's biographer
and eulogist), was the driving from his home by violent
threats an inoffensive old man. John Brown and his party
went down the creek, called at one after the other of three
houses ; took five men away from their wives and children ;
and deliberately shot one and hacked the others to death
with swords.
Mr. Sanborn's defense of this act is : " Brown long fore
saw the deadly conflict with the slave power which culmi
nated in the Civil War, and was eager to begin it, that it
might be the sooner over." He begins his chapter on " The
Pottawatomie Executions " : " The story of John Brown
will mean little to those who do not believe that
God governs the world, and that he makes his will
known in advance to certain chosen men and women,

The Struggle for Kansas 121
who perform it consciously or unconsciously. Of such
prophetic heaven-appointed men, John Brown was the
most conspicuous in our time, and his life must be con
strued in the light of that fact." He also declares that the
" execution " of these five men was an offset to the killing
of flve Free-State men by various persons during the pre
ceding twelve-month, and that it was calculated to strike
wholesome terror into evil-doers. The ethics, theology, and
statesmanship of this defense are possible only to one bent
on making Brown a hero at any cost.
The natural result of the Pottawatomie " executions," —
in which John Brown's complicity was for a time concealed
— was a series of retaliations on both sides, and a state of
affairs far more anarchic than Kansas had known before.
This lasted through the summer of 1856. The general im
pression on the country was to strengthen the opposition
to the usurpation of the Territorial Legislature, and to the
administration which sustained it. In September there
came a crisis. Another and graver attack on Lawrence
was threatened, and this time a vigorous resistance was
probable. But a new and able governor, John W. Geary
of Pennsylvania, had been dispatched by President Pierce,
with imperative instructions to pacify the Territory, as a
pressing political necessity. Geary met Robinson — the
treason prisoners had already been released — and as the
two men had been near each other in the California troubles
and thus had the advantage of a mutual acquaintance, an
understanding was soon reached ; Geary called off the dogs
of war, and a time of quiet followed.

CHAPTER XIV
" FREMONT AND FREEDOM "
The Congress of 1855-6, divided between an administra
tion Senate and an opposition House, accomplished little
but talk. One chapter of this talk had a notable sequel.
Charles Sumner, in an elaborate and powerful oration in
the Senate, denounced slavery, " the sum of all villainies,"
and bitterly satirized one of its prominent defenders. Sen
ator Butler of South Carolina. He compared Butler to
Don Quixote, enamored of slavery as was the knight of
his Dulcinea, and unconscious that instead of a peerless
lady she was but a wanton. The response to the speech
was made by a nephew of Senator Butler and member of
the House, Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina. He
entered the Senate chamber during a recess, accompanied
and guarded by a friend and fellow member, Lawrence
Keitt; approached Sumner as he sat writing at his desk,
and without words felled him to the ground with a heavy
cane, and beat him about the head till he was insensible.
Sumner, a man of fine physique, was for a long time an
invalid from the assault, and was unable for years to resume
his place in the Senate.
It was not so much the individual act of Brooks as its
treatment by his party and section that gave the deepest
significance to the deed and produced the most lasting
effect. A friendly magistrate sentenced Brooks to a nom
inal fine and so forestalled further prosecution. His party
friends in Congress left all public rebuke of the deed to
Republicans. A motion to expel Brooks and Keitt from
122

"Fremont $nd Freedom" 123
the House failed of the necessary two-thirds vote. They
resigned, and were promptly and triumphantly re-elected.
Noisy applause of the attack came from all parts of the
South, with a stack of canes marked " Hit him again."
That better class of Southerners by whom the assault was
felt, as one of them expressed it long afterward, " like a
blow in the face," made no demonstration. So far from
losing caste, as a gentleman or a public man. Brooks not
only kept his place in society, but was honored a few
months later with a public banquet, at which such men as
Butler and Toombs and Mason joined in the laudations, and
gave a background to the scene by free threats of disunion
if the Republicans elected their President.
This treatment of Brooks made an impression at the
North far beyond the first hot indignation at his brutal out
rage. The condonation and applause of that outrage was
taken as sure evidence of a barbaric state of opinion, the
natural accompaniment of slavery. What made the matter
worse was that the assault had a technical justification
under the code of honor which it was Brooks's pride as a
Southern gentleman to observe. The code called on a man
who had given offense by his words to meet the offended
man in a duel, and if he refused, he was fairly subject to
public disgrace or even physical chastisement. Such a
theory and practice, and the sentiments associated with it,
stamped slavery with a heavier condemnation than orator
or novelist could frame.
This one week in May, 1856, was dark with omens of
impending catastrophe. On May 20 Lawrence was de
vastated; on the 22d, Sumner was assaulted; and on the
24th took place the Pottawatomie massacre. A shadow as
of impending doom was reflected in Mrs. Stowe's second
anti-slavery novel, Dred, which appeared about this time.
While lacking the inspiration and power of Uncle Tom's

124 The Negro and the Nation
Cabin, it had in the main a similar tone of humanity, sym
pathy and fairness. Again the better element of the
Southern whites was portrayed, in the benevolent slave
holder Clayton; the brave Methodist preacher. Father
Dickson; and the book's heroine, Nina Gordon. There
were realistic and graphic pictures of the negro at his best,
in Old Tiff and Milly. The sophistries and time-serving of
ecclesiastics were fairly pictured. The fundamental atti
tude of the law in regarding the slave as the creature of his
master's convenience was shown with historic fidelity. But
the book took its name from a negro, half-prophetic, half-
crazed, who maintained in the Dismal Swamp a refuge for
slaves, and purposed an uprising to conquer their freedom.
To Southern imaginations it might well recall Nat Turner
and the horrors of his revolt. Mrs. Stowe inevitably ideal
ized everything she touched ; and to idealize the leader of a
servile insurrection might well be regarded as carrying fire
into a powder magazine. The moving expostulation of the
Christian slave Milly with Dred, the death of Dred, the
frustration of his plans, and the pitiful wrongs he sought
to redress, veiled from the Northern reader the suggestion of
other dangers and tragedies to which the Southern reader
was keenly alive. As we read the book now, the glimpses
of coming terror and disaster in Dred's visions seem like a
presage of the war which in truth was only four years
away. But the prevailing temper of the time was as yet little
clouded by any such forebodings. It was a great wave of
popular enthusiasm, sane, resolute, and hopeful, which
moved forward in the first Presidential campaign of the
Republican party in 1856. The convention met at Phila
delphia in June. Its temper was well described in a letter
from Samuel Bowles to his paper, the Springfield Repub
lican, — which from moderate anti-slavery Whig had become

"Fremont and Freedom" 125
ardently Republican when the Missouri compromise was
repealed.^ " Certainly we never saw a political convention in which
there was so much soul as in that at Philadelphia. It was
politics with a heart and a conscience in it. Cincinnati (the
Democratic convention) gathered the remains of a once
powerful national party and contributed to its further sec-
tionalization and destruction. Philadelphia called together
the heart, the independence, and the brains of all parties,
to establish a broader and juster nationality. Such a fusion
of contradictory elements was never witnessed in this coun
try before since the times of the Revolution. Nor could it
happen now save under a great emergency, and from a
controlling necessity. Such a combination of the material
and mental forces of the republic as was represented in the
Philadelphia convention, and united in its enthusiastic and
harmonious results, has more power than any political com
bination ever formed before in this country, and cannot in
the nature of things be long kept in the background. There
is no law more certain than that which will throw such a
union of the moral strength, intellectual activity, and youth-
1 A word should be said as to the frequency with which the
Springfield Republican is quoted in this work. The author wrote
an earlier book. The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, (Cen
tury Co.) — the founder of the Republican. As the background of
his life, a careful study was made of the political events during his
years of editorial activity, 1844-77. The original matter for this
was largely drawn from the files of the Republican. In studying
the whole ground afresh for the present history, advantage was
taken of this material, and further citations were drawn from the
same paper. The interpretation of current events by an independent
and sagacious newspaper yields invaluable material for the historian ;
and my study of the Republican, from the repeal of the Missouri
compromise in 1854 to the present, has heightened my respect for
the breadth, sobriety, and moral insight with which it judged the
questions of the day.

126 The Negro and the Nation
ful energy of the nation into supremacy, and that right
speedily. It may be delayed for a season, but its- course is
onward and its victory is certain."
The declaration of principles dealt wholly with the
slavery issue. It asserted that under the Constitution, as
interpreted by the Declaration and the ordinance of 1787,
slavery had no right to exist in any of the national Terri
tories. It called on Congress to prohibit in the Territories
" the twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy." It
dwelt with great emphasis on the wrongs of the Kansas
settlers ; the establishment of a Territorial Legislature by a
fraudulent vote ; its outrageous statute-book ; the sustaining
of the usurpation by the Federal government; the resulting
disorder and violence. Congress was asked to admit Kan
sas to the Union under its Free State organization. Noth
ing was said as to the fugitive slave law. There was an
express disclaimer of any interference with slavery in the
States. The doctrine of the party was embodied in a phrase
which became one of its mottoes : " Freedom national,
slavery sectional."
For its Presidential candidate the convention passed by
all the well-known political leaders, and chose Col. John
C. Fremont of California. Fremont, after a scientific and
military education, had distinguished himself by a series
of brilliant exploring expeditions in the farthest North
west, marked by scientific achievement and stirring adven
ture. Arriving in California at the outbreak of hostilities
with Mexico, he rallied and led the American settlers and
drove the Mexicans from the territory. He took a leading
part in organizing the State, and establishing freedom in its
Constitution ; and was elected to the United States Senate
as a Free-Soil Democrat. His term as Senator was too
brief to win eminence, but his career as a, whole had been
singularly various and distinguished. He was young; he

"Fremont and Freedom" 127
had manly beauty, and a rare personal fascination. His
brilliant and charming wife won favor for him. Even his
name gave aid to the cause, and " Fremont and freedom "
became the rallying cry of the campaign.
But Fremont's personality was an altogether minor ele
ment in the strength with which the Republican party first
took the field, and won, not yet the country, but the strong
holds of the North. The new party gave expression and
effect to the anti-slavery sentiment which had become so
deep and wide. It was wholly dissociated from the extrem
ists who had shocked and alarmed the conservatism of the
country; and Garrison and Phillips had only impatience
and scorn for its principles and measures. Its leadership
included many men experienced in congressional and ad
ministrative life, men like Seward and Sumner and Chase
and Wade and Fessenden and Banks, who had matched
themselves against the best leaders of the South and the
South's Northern allies. It brought together the best of the
old Whig, Democratic, and Free Soil parties. In its rank
and file it gathered on the whole the best conscience and
intelligence of the North. After the election the Spring
field Republican pointed out that the party's success had
been exactly along the geographical lines of an efficient
free-school system, and it had been defeated where public
schools were deficient, as in Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
Indiana, and the solid South.
The immediate and burning issue of the campaign was
Kansas. Whatever the exact right and wrong of its local
broils, there was no question of the broad facts — the fraud
ulent election of the Legislature, the character of its
statute-book, and its support by President Pierce's adminis
tration. It was the wrongs of the Kansas settlers far more
than the wrongs of the Southern slaves on which the Repub
lican speakers and newspapers dwelt. In truth the animus

128 The Negro and the Nation
of the party was quite as much the resentment by the North
of Southern political aggression as it was regard for the
slaves or thought of their future condition. The policy of
excluding slavery from the Territories, and thus naturally
from the new States, tended ultimately to its discourage
ment and probable extinction where it already existed. But
any such result appeared very remote.
The opposition to the Republican party was weighty in
numbers, but inharmonious and with no definite creed.
The Democratic platform was an equivocation. It declared
for " non-interference by Congress with slavery in State
or Territory." But this left it an open question whether
any one could " interfere." Could the people of a Territory
exclude slavery if they wished? Or did the Constitution
protect it there, as Calhoun and his followers claimed? An
ambiguity was left which permitted Calhoun men and
Douglas men to act together against the common foe.
The Democratic candidate was James Buchanan of Penn
sylvania. He was one of those men, decent and respecta
ble, who go through a life of office-seeking and office-
holding without a particle of real leadership, and are for
gotten the moment they leave the stage unless circumstance
throws them into a place so responsible as to reveal their
glaring incompetence. He had escaped the odium which
Pierce and Douglas had incurred, through his absence as
Minister to England. There he had distinguished himself
chiefly by his part in a conference at Ostend, in 1854, —
incited by President Pierce and his Secretary of State,
William L. Marcy of New York, — where he had met Mason
of Virginia and Soule of Louisiana, ministers respectively
to France and Spain; and they had issued a joint manifesto,
declaring that the possession of Cuba was necessary to the
peace and security of the United States, and the island
should be obtained from Spain, with her consent if possible

"Fremont and Freedom" 129
but without it if necessary. This became a recognized
article in the Democratic and Southern policy. The
Republican platform of 1856 denounced the Ostend mani
festo, as the doctrine that " might makes right," " the high
wayman's plea." It was left for a latter-day Republican
to give to the same doctrine the politer name of " interna
tional eminent domain."
The American or Know-nothing party nominated ex-
President Fillmore and adopted a platform inclining toward
the Southern position. There was a secession of a Northern
element, which nominated Banks, but he declined and sup
ported Fremont. All the opponents of the Republican
party laid stress on its sectional character. Both its candi
dates (for vice-president, William L. Dayton of New
Jersey), were from the North; its creed aimed solely at the
restriction of the South's peculiar institution; south of
Mason and Dixon's line, it had an electoral ticket in four
States only — Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky
— and cast hardly 1000 votes. But the South itself had so
completely ostracized even the most moderate anti-slavery
sentiment that free political action was impossible. Thus,
Professor Hedrick of the University of North Carolina
said in reply to a question that he favored Fremont for
President; and being denounced for this by a newspaper,
he wrote to it a letter, saying in a modest and straightfor
ward way that he had made no attempt to propagate his
views, but he did desire to see the slaves free. The students
burned him in effigy; the college authorities forced him to
resign; a mob attacked him and he was driven from the
State. It was in the same State that a college professor's
right to free speech on a burning social question was vindi
cated by his students, his colleagues, and the community,
in 1903, and that Trinity College became a leader in
courageous and progressive sentiment on the questions pf

130 The Negro and the Nation
the hour. Few were the men bold enough even to try the
question of personal independence in 1856. The suppres
sion of free speech was in itself one of the strongest possi
ble arguments for the Republican cause. The liberty of
white men was at stake.
Conservatism, apprehension, timidity, in various phases,
told against the new party and its candidate. Northern
commerce was largely bound up with Southern interests.
The threat of disunion weighed with some; Grant, in his
memoirs, says it was this that led him to vote for Buchanan.
Others shrank from trusting the helm in a tempest to hands
as untried as Fremont's. The mob who hated "niggers"
swelled the opposition vote. Taking advantage of the
Know-nothing feeling, the fiction was persistently circu
lated that Fremont was a Catholic. The disorder in Kansas
was pacified by the dispatch of a new Governor, Geary, to
reassure the North. Finally, money was spent on a scale
unknown before to defeat the Republican party, — itself in
the stage of poverty and virtue, — and spent probably with
decisive effect in the critical October election in Pennsyl
vania. Against these disadvantages the young party made head
gallantly. It fired the youth of the North with an ardor
unknown since the early days of the republic. It inspired
the poets of the people. Great crowds sang the strains of
the Marseillaise, with the refrain:
Free speech, free press, free soil, free men, Fremont and victory!
The older heads were satisfied by the moderation and wis
dom of the party's principles. The reasonable element
among the Abolitionists hailed this first great popular ad
vance, and allied themselves with it. Whittier was the
chief minstrel of the campaign. Of those to whom "the

"Fremont and Freedom" 131
Union " had been the talismanic word, that part which
cared for nothing better than the Union as it was, with
slavery and freedom mixed, supported Buchanan or Fill
more. The part that loved the Union as a means to justice
and freedom were for Fremont.
The October elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana
showed that the first Presidential battle was lost. Novem
ber confirmed that verdict. New England, New York,
Ohio, Illinois, and the Northwest, had been outweighed by
the South and its allies, and Buchanan was the next Presi
dent. But never was defeat met with better courage or
higher hopes for the next encounter. Some unknown poet
gave the battle-song; Beneath thy skies, November,
Thy skies of cloud and rain.
Around our blazing camp-fires
We close our ranks again.
Then sound again the bugle!
Call the battle roll anew !
If months have well nigh won the field
What may not four years do?

CHAPTER XV
THREE TYPICAL SOUTHERNERS
In the group of leaders of public sentiment in the '30s and
'40s, as sketched in Chapter V, some of the foremost —
Clay, Webster, and Birney — were influential in both sections
of the country. But in the next decade the division is clear
between the leaders of the South and of the North. Let
us glance at two separate groups.
Jefferson Davis was in many ways a typical Southerner.
He was a sincere, able, and high-minded man. The guiding
aim of his public life was to serve the community as he
understood its interests. Personal ambition seemingly in
fluenced him no more than is to be expected in any strong
man; and, whatever his faults of judgment or temper, it
does not appear that he ever knowingly sacrificed the public
good to his own profit or aggrandizement. But he was
devoted to a social system and a political theory which
bound his final allegiance to his State and his section. After
a cadetship at West Point and a brief term of military serv
ice, he lived for eight years, 1837-45, on a Mississippi
plantation, in joint ownership and control with an older
brother. In these early years, and in the seclusion of a
plantation, his theories crystallized and his mental habits
grew. The circumstances of such life fostered in Southern
politicians the tendency to logical and symmetrical theories,
to which they tenaciously held, unmodified by the regard
for experience which is bred from free and various contact
with the large world of affairs. Davis fully accepted the
theory of State sovereignty which won general favor in the
i3«

Three Typical Southerners 133
South. In this view the States were independent powers,
which had formed with each other by the Constitution a
compact, a business arrangement, a kind of limited partner
ship. If the compact was broken in any of its articles, or if
its working proved at any time to be unsatisfactory and
injurious, the partners could withdraw at will. This theory
found more or less support among the various utterances
and practices of the framers of the Constitution and founders
of the government. In truth, they had as a body no con
sistent and exact theory of the Federal bond. Later cir
cumstances led their descendants to incline to a stronger
or a looser tie, according to their different interests and
sentiments. The institution of slavery so strongly differ
entiated the Southern communities from their Northern
neighbors, that they naturally magnified their local rights
and favored the view which justified them in the last
resort in renouncing the authority of the Union if it should
come to be exercised against their industrial system. State
sovereignty was the creed, and the slavery interest was the
motive. To a man living like Davis on his own plantation, the
relation of master and slave seemed a fundamental condi
tion of the social order. Not only his livelihood rested on
it, but through this relation his practical faculties found
their field; his conscience was exercised in the right man
agement and care of his slaves ; there was a true sentiment
of protection on his side and loyalty on theirs. His neigh
bors and friends were situated like himself. The inci
dental michiefs of the system, the abuses by bad masters,
the ignorance and low morality of the slaves, — these things
they regarded, let us say, as an upright and benevolent
manufacturer to-day regards the miseries of sweatshops
and the sufferings of unemployed labor. Such things were
bad, very bad, but they were the accjdentg and not the esseo'

134 The Negro and the Nation
tials of the industrial system. They resented the strictures
of their critics; they were apprehensive of the growing
hostility in the North to their institutions; if the national
partnership was to last they must have their rights under
it ; and one of those rights was an equal share in the national
domain. Davis entered into active politics when he was elected to
Congress in 1844. Repudiation was then in favor in Mis
sissippi, and he opposed and denounced it. He supported
the Mexican War in the most practical way, by taking com
mand of a volunteer regiment from Mississippi. He served
with distinguished gallantry, and was severely wounded at
Buena Vista. After the war he entered the United States
Senate. He supported the compromise of 1850, regarding
it as substantially a continuance of the truce between the
sections, and not now sympathizing with those who threat
ened disunion. Later, President Pierce made him Secre
tary of War ; in the Cabinet he was the leading spirit ; and
this, with a weak President, meant large power and respon
sibility. He showed the extent of his partisanship by sup
porting with the full power of the administration the Terri
torial government imposed on Kansas by a palpably fraud
ulent vote.
In 1856 he returned to the Senate, and came to be recog
nized as the foremost champion of the Southern interest.
He was not a leader in any such sense as Jefferson or
Clay or Calhoun; but he was a representative man,
thoroughly trusted by his associates, their most effective
spokesman, and going by conviction in the midstream of
the dominant tendency. He had that degree of ambition
which is natural and normal in a strong man. He was an
effective and elegant orator. When secession came he was
not its originator, but one of a set of men — on the whole
the most considerate and influential men of the Gulf and

Three Typical Southerners 135
cotton States — who took the responsibility of leading their
section into revolution, in the interest of slavery.
In this typical Southern leader, as in his class, were
blended the elements of a disposition and will that would
halt before no barrier to its claim of mastery. A slave
holder, accustomed to supremacy over his fellowmen as
their natural superior ; a planter, habituated to the practical
exercise of such supremacy over hundreds of dependents;
a member of an aristocracy, the political masters of their
section, and long the dominant force in the nation ; a theorist,
wedded to the dogma of State sovereignty, and convinced
of the superiority of Southern civilization ; the self-confident
and self-asserting temper bred by such conditions — here
was a union of forces that would push its cause against
all opposition, at the cost if need be of disunion, of war, of
all obstacles and all perils.
By a natural exaggeration, at a later time the President
of the Confederacy was regarded at the North as the very
embodiment of its cause. To the unmeasured hostility on
this account was added the opprobrium of deeds in which
he had no part. He was charged for a time with com
plicity in the murder of Lincoln. He was branded with re
sponsibility for the miseries in Andersonville and the other
prison-pens in the war, — ^but without a particle of evidence.
Admiration was yielded by the North to Stonewall Jack
son even in his life-time; there was early recognition of
Lee's magnanimous acceptance of defeat; but the bitterest
odium was long visited upon Davis. It was heightened by
the tenacity with which his intense nature clung to " the
lost cause " as a sentiment, after the reality was hopelessly
buried. The South itself gave its highest favor to Lee,
its most effective defender, and a man of singularly impres
sive character; while Davis's mistakes of administration,
and his reserved and over-sensitive temper chilled a little

136 The Negro and the Nation
the recognition of his disinterested and loyal service. But
in the retrospect of history he stands out as an honorable
and pathetic figure. The single warping influence of his
whole career was the mistake he shared with millions of
his countrymen, — the acceptance and exaltation of slavery.
He was faithful to his convictions ; he was free from covet-
ousness and meanness ; and in his personality there were
high and fine elements of manhood. " A very intense man
and a very lovable man " was the judgment of one who was
his intimate associate through the war.
" Love of power was so much weaker in him than love
of his theories that when Congress passed laws enlarging
his prerogatives he wrote long messages declining them on
constitutional grounds." A friend described him as " a
game-cock — with just a little strut." Said one who stood
in close relations with him : " He was so sensitive to criti
cism and even to questioning that I have passed months
of intimate official association with him without venturing
to ask him a question." Pure in his personal morals, but
never having made a religious profession, under the respon
sibilities of the Presidency he turned for support to reli
gion, and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church. Under
imprisonment, indignities, obloquy, long seclusion with the
memories of a ruined cause, he bore himself with manly
fortitude and dignity. Schooled by inexorable reality, he
finally acquiesced in the established order, and his last
public words were of fidelity and faith for the new America.
Before the war, Robert Toombs of Georgia played some
such part to the Northern imagination as Phillips or Sumner
to the Southern. He was regarded as the typical fire-eater
and braggart. He was currently reported to have boasted
that he would yet call the roll of his slaves at the foot of
Bunker Hill monument. But in truth this ogre was made
of much the same human clay as the Ma^sachugettg Aboli-

Three Typical Southerners 137
tionists. He is well pictured, together with Alexander H.
Stephens of Georgia, in Trent's Southern Statesmen of
the Old Regime, — a book admirable in its spirit and its
historic fidelity. Both Toombs and Stephens represented,
as compared with Davis, the more moderate sentiment of
the South, until they parted company with each other on
the question of secession. Trent prefaces the companion
portraits with a sketch of the typical Georgian; his State,
like the other Gulf States, less civilized and orderly than
Virginia and South Carolina, less critical and more enthu
siastic ; the Georgian, " the southern Yankee," " loving suc
cess, strength, straightforwardness, and the solid virtues
generally, neither is he averse to the showy ones ; but above
all he loves virtue in action." Among Southerners, says
Trent, the Georgian is nearest to a normal American.
Toombs inherited property; grew up like other Southern
boys of the prosperous class; rode and hunted and studied
a little in the interims. As a lawyer, he would not take a
case unless satisfied of its justice. He was of robust
physique, vigorous intellect, and high spirits; and he was
happy in his family life.
Stephens worked his way up from poverty, and never lost
an active sympathy with the struggling. He helped more
than fifty young men to get an education. He was of a
slight and fragile frame, and had much physical suffering,
which he bore with indomitable courage. His conscien
tiousness was almost morbid. His temperament was melan
choly, and his life was lonely. In early life he was twice in
love, but poverty forbade his marriage. He was a clear
and logical thinker, much given to refined exposition of
constitutional theories, but deficient in large culture and
philosophy. He held the doctrine of State sovereignty, but
from first to last he opposed secession as against the true
interest of the States. At the beginning of his career he

138 The Negro and the Nation
was active in opposing the vigilance committees organized
to harry anti-slavery men. He supported the annexation
of Texas, though objecting to doing it in the interest of
slavery, — slavery, he said, was a domestic matter, which
the Federal government had no call to take care of. He
and Toombs generally stood together, as Whigs and Union
ists. They opposed the Mexican War, on the ground that
the Union was not to be extended by force; neither, they
both said later, was it to be maintained by force. But they
opposed the exclusion of slavery from the Territories by
the Wilmot proviso; and in the debate Stephens declared
that the morality of slavery stood " upon a basis as firm as
the Bible," and as long as Christianity lasted it could never
be considered an offense against the divine laws. The two
men did yeoman's service in carrying through the 1850 com
promise, and afterward in persuading Georgia not to. take
part in the Nashville convention — a disunionist scheme
which proved abortive. They, with Howell Cobb, held
Georgia for the compromise and for the Union, and thus
fixed the pivotal point of Southern politics for the next
decade. They became leaders in the Constitutional Union
party, which, in Georgia, succeeded the Whig. They made
vigorous and successful fights against the Know-nothing
folly. They accepted the gains which came to the South
through Douglas's breaking down of the Missouri compro
mise, and, a little later, the Dred Scott decision of the
Supreme Court; but they diverged from Davis, by not
favoring the active intervention of Congress to protect
slavery in the Territories. Toombs was accused of abetting
Brooks's attack on Sumner, which he disclaimed; but he
found nothing to hinder his taking part in a banquet in
Brooks's honor a few months later, and on this most ill-
omened occasion he joined in the threats of disunion if Fre
mont should be elected. But still the catastrophe lingered,

Three Typical Southerners 139
and seemed improbable. Stephens left Congress in 1858.
Two years more, and secession became a burning question ;
Stephens and Toombs took opposite sides, but, the issue de
cided, they both made common cause with their State.
Toombs served in the Confederate Cabinet and Army.
Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy, seven years
after the close of the war again became a member of the
House; an attenuated figure, confined to a wheel-chair, but
still vital and vigorous; respected by all; his presence a
visible symbol of the spanning of " the bloody chasm."

CHAPTER XVI
SOME NORTHERN LEADERS
Turning now to the North, the principal leaders in its
political life have already been mentioned, except Lincoln,
whose star had not yet risen ; but it is worth while to glance
at some of those who, apart from Congress and public office,
were molding public sentiment. Perhaps the man of the
widest influence on public opinion was Horace Greeley.
Through his New York Tribune he reached an immense
audience, to a great part of whom the paper was a kind of
political Bible. His words struck home by their common
sense, passion, and close sympathy with the common people.
A graduate of the farm and printing office, he was in close
touch with the free, plain, toiling, American people, and
in no man had they a better representative or a more effec
tive advocate. There was in him something of John Bright 's
sturdy manhood, direct speech and devotion to human rights ;
something, too, of Franklin's homely shrewdness, — though
little of Franklin's large philosophy or serenity. He was at
first a Henry Clay Whig, and always a zealous protectionist ;
then in alliance with the anti-slavery element in the party,
and soon the leading Republican editor. He was a lover of
peace, in active sympathy with social reforms, sometimes
betrayed into extravagances, but generally guarded by his
common sense against extremists and impracticables. His
limitations were a want of large culture, a very uncertain
judgment in estimating men, and a temperament liable to
such sudden ebb and flow that he fell sometimes into rash
ness and sometimes into panic. But he was disinterested
140

Some Northern Leaders 141 "
and great-hearted. Other men broadened the Tribune's
scope; its editorial tone was for its audience persuasive and
convincing; and the Tribune was one of the great educa
tional influences of the country. Beside it stood the New
York Times, edited by Henry J; Raymond, an advocate of
moderate anti-slavery and Republican principles, with less
of masterful leadeirship than the Tribune, but sometimes
better balanced ; and the Herald, under the elder James Gor
don Bennett, devoted to news and money-making, and pan
dering to Southern interests.
The clergy at the South were by this time generally united
in the defense of slavery. At the North, there was great
variety among them. Many ministers ignored slavery as
apart from their province. Many spoke of it occasionally
as a sin, but regarded it as little concerned with that daily
life of their people which was their main concern. A. few
treated it as a great national wrong, speaking such de
nunciation as the Hebrew prophets gave to the national
sins of their people ; and of these some were driven from their
pulpits. A few expressed open sympathy or apology for
slavery, — such as Dr. Nehemiah Adams, of Boston, and
Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont.
The foremost preacher in America was Henry Ward
Beecher. He was above all things a preacher, — charged
with a great spiritual message ; of extraordinary and various
eloquence, dramatic, inspiring, thrilling ; impelled and some
times controlled by a wonderful imagination. He was
taking a leading part in transforming the popular belief.
Theology has radically altered under two influences, — the
new view of facts given by science, and a higher ethical and
spiritual feeling. It was under the ethical and spiritual
impulse that Beecher so altered the emphasis of the tradi
tional theology, so dwelt on the love of God, on Christ's
character as the revelation of God, on the opportunities and

142 The Negro and the Nation
incitements of daily life, on all the hopeful and joyful
aspects of existence, — that in the minds of his hearers the
harsher elements, not only of Calvinism, but of the whole
traditional orthodoxy, melted as imperceptibly and steadily
as icebergs melt when they drift southward. He always
avoided any avowed or precipitate break with the old sys
tem of dogma, — partly from a personal sentiment associated
with the faith of the fathers; partly from an instinctive
preference of practical and emotional over intellectual
methods; and partly from a studied regard to the most
effective results, — a shrewdness which tempered his im
petuosity. In these stirring days Beecher began to take active part
in political discussion, — rarely in his pulpit, but as an occa
sional speaker at political meetings, or as a writer in the
New York Independent. His ground was that of moderate
anti-slavery and Republicanism. Shut off on the political
platform from the highest flights of his pulpit oratory, he
yet had large scope for his ideality, his common sense, his
rich and abounding humor, his marvelous range of illus
tration from all things in earth and heaven. As the public
questions of the day came still closer home to the business
and bosoms of men, he dealt with them more freely in his
preaching, though never to the subordination of the personal
religious life as the paramount interest. One scene in his
church comes vividly to mind; after the sermon, he stated
the case of a little slave girl, allowed to come North on the
chance of her being ransomed; and after a few moving
words, he set her beside him — a beautiful, unconscious
child — and money rained into the contribution boxes till in
a few minutes the amount was raised, and the great congre
gation joined in a triumphant closing hymn.
Of a different type was Theodore Parker. He stood in
his pulpit, the embodiment of courageous attack on every

Some Northern Leaders 143
falsehood and abuse as it appeared to the lofty and luminous
mind of the preacher. With his prophecy there mingled no
expediency. He spoke the truth as he saw it, and let con
sequences take care of themselves. For a generation, the
Unitarian ministers had denied the doctrine of the Trinity,
but they held the founder of Christianity in such reverence
that they would scarcely define his divine or semi-divine
nature. Parker spoke frankly of Jesus as a man, and a
man liable to imperfections and mistakes, while he honored
him as the greatest leader of humanity. The Unitarians, —
their intellectual radicalism kept well in check by the con
servatism natural to their social and ecclesiastical tradi
tions, — ^had held to a decided supernaturalism. Parker put
religion on a purely natural basis, and sent home to men's
consciousness the ideas of God and immortal life. His ser
mons were iconoclastic, but his prayers were full of rever
ence, aspiration, and tenderness. He was ostracized by
most of the Unitarian churches, and dreaded by the ortho
dox, but he was a power in Boston and in America. He
attacked social wrongs as fearlessly as he discussed theology.
Against slavery he struck as with a battle ax. He was not
greatly concerned with constitutions or tolerant of compro
mises. When a fugitive slave was seized in Boston, Parker
took active part in a project of rescue. He roused the
conscience of New England and the North. He died at
fifty, just before the Civil War, consumed by his own fire.
The fable of the traveler who clung the closer to his
cloak when the wind tried to strip it off but cast it aside
when addressed by the sun's genial warmth, had an illus
tration in the many who surrendered their- prejudice and
selfishness, not at the bidding of the stormy reformers, but
touched by the serene light of Emerson. Emerson's specific
influence on slavery or any other social problem is hard to
measure, for his power was thrown on the illumination and

144 The Negro and the Nation
inspiration of the individual man. But in the large view
his was an incomparable influence in diffusing that temper
of mingled courage and sweetness, the idealist's vision and
the soldier's valor, which is the world's best help and hope.
He spoke out against slavery whenever he saw that his
word was needed; he vindicated the right of the Abolition
ists to free speech, whether they spoke wisely or not ; and in
some of his poems, as the " Concord Ode," and " Boston
Hymn," he thrillingly invoked the best of the Puritan and
Revolutionary temper to right the wrongs of the present.
It was said of him that he gave to the war for the Union,
" not one son, but a thousand." But he also gave watch
words that will long outlast the issues of the war and our
issues of to-day. The homely yet soaring idealism of the
true American will always answer to the word, " Hitch
your wagon to a star."
The group of writers who gave brilliancy to this period
have already been cited as champions of freedom. Most
effective in his advocacy was Whittier, who, in early days,
took active part in politics as a Free Soiler, and after
ward did greater service by the lyrics of freedom, which
like his songs of labor and poems of home life and religion,
went to the heart of the common people as no other American
voice has done. One who reads Whittier to-day may be
allowed to wish that he had known the sunny as well as the
shady side of Southern life ; and that, as in a later poem he
softened his fierce criticism on Webster, so he had celebrated
the virtues and graces of his white countrymen below the
Potomac and the Ohio, as well as the wrongs of his black
countrymen. Lowell, usually a scholarly poet, spoke to the
common people nobly for peace and freedom in the Biglow
Papers. In 1857 the Atlantic Monthly was started under
his editorship, the organ at once of the highest literary
ability of New England, and of pronounced anti-slavery

Some Northern Leaders 145
and Republican sentiment. After he gave up the editorship
in 1862, he wrote at intervals of a few years the second series
of Biglow Papers, and his " Commemoration Ode " was the
noblest literary monument of the triumph of Union and
freedom. Longfellow's main vocation was away from the turmoils
of the hour. He interpreted to America the art, the culture,
the legends of Europe and the Middle Ages; he found the
poetry in the early soil of America, as in " Hiawatha" and
" Evangeline." He was not deaf to the wrongs of the slave,
and gave to them some touching poems. But his finest con
tribution to the national idea was the apostrophe to the Union
which crowns " The Building of the Ship." It was written
in 1849, iri the stress of the struggle over California, and
it may well last as long as the nation lasts. The poem is an
idyl of the ship-building folk and the sea ; the consummation
is the bridal of the captain and the builder's daughter, and
the launching of the ship, christened " The Union " — emblem
of the wife's and husband's voyage begun together on the
sea of life ; then, —
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears.
With all the hopes of future years.
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel.
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel.
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope.
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'Tis of the wave and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail.
And not a rent made by the gale!

146 The Negro and the Nation
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears.
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears.
Are all with thee,— are all with theel

CHAPTER XVII
DRED SCOTT AND LECOMPTON
Under Buchanan's administration, 1857-61, three events
befell which were like wedges riving farther and farther
apart the national unity. They were the Dred Scott decis
ion by the Supreme Court, the Lecompton constitution in
Kansas, and John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry.
President Buchanan declared in his inaugural that the
people of a Territory had a right to shape their institutions
in their own way, but as to how far that right extended
before they organized as a State, the United States Supreme
Court was the proper arbiter. Two days after the inaugural,
the Supreme Court announced its decision, in a case made
up expressly to test the status of slavery in the Territories.
Suit was brought before it to obtain freedom for Dred Scott,
who being held as a slave in Missouri had been taken by his
master to reside for a time in Illinois, and afterward at Fort
Snelling in unorganized territory north of 36 degrees 30
minutes, and so free under the Missouri compromise. It
was claimed that by being taken upon free soil, in State or
Territory, he became free. The court, in an elaborate opin
ion delivered by Chief-Justice Taney, dismissed the case
for want of jurisdiction, on the ground that no person of
slave descent or African blood could be a citizen of the
United States or be entitled to sue in its courts. The court
affirmed that the sweeping language of the Declaration, that
" all men are born free," had no appHcation to negroes,
because at that time they were generally regarded " as so
147

148 The Negro and the Nation
far inferior that they had no rights which the white man
was bound to respect." The case being thus thrown out of
court, all further discussion of its merits was superfluous —
a mere obiter dictum, without legal force. Nevertheless,
the court through its chief- justice went on to pronounce
upon the plaintiff's claim and declare it baseless; on the
ground that inasmuch as a slave was lawful property, and
the Constitution decreed that no man should be deprived
of his property without due process of law, therefore an act
of Congress declaring in effect that when carried beyond
a certain line a slave was lost to his master, was unconstitu
tional and void. Thus the court set aside as invalid the
exclusion of slavery from the Territories by Congress. As
to the effect of a slave's residence in a free State by his
master's act, followed by a return to a slave State, — ^the court
held that this question belonged properly to the Missouri
courts, which had decided against the slave's claim.
Two of the justices, McLean and Curtis (Northern
Whigs), dissented emphatically from the decision. Justice
Curtis pointed out, as to the alleged incapacity of the negro
for citizenship at the era of the Constitution, that at that
period free negroes had the right of suffrage in five of
the thirteen States. As to the argument against depriving a
man of his property, the contention of the Republicans was
that slaves were property, not by the common usage of
mankind, but only by local law, and that when a slaveholder
moved into a Territory he did not carry with him that local
law by which alone a man could be held as a chattel. But
the authoritative voice of the highest court in the land had
proclaimed these amazing propositions, — ^that the guarantee
of freedom to the Northwest, which the nation had accepted
for a third of a century, was invalid, and that no person
with negro blood had any civil rights as a citizen of the
United States.

Dred Scott and Lecompton 149
When, forty years later, a law of Congress establishing
an equitable income tax was declared unconstitutional by
the Supreme Court, and a Democratic national convention
protested against that decision, the Republican papers of
the day denounced the protest as hardly less than treason.
But the Republicans of an earlier day were not so reverential
toward the Supreme Court as an infallible authority. Could
the court as a finality outlaw the negro from the common
rights of man, and prevent Congress from establishing
freedom in the national domain? Not so thought the men
who led the Republican party and the sentiment of the
North. The New York Legislature, for example, promptly
enacted that African descent should not disqualify from
State citizenship; that any slave brought into the State by
his master became free, and any attempt to hold him was a
penal offense. It passed a resolution declaring that the
Supreme Court had lost the confidence and respect of the
people. Lincoln said in his dry way that the Republican
party did- not propose to declare Dred Scott a free man (by
the way, he was soon manumitted by his former master's
daughter) — ^but neither did they propose to accept the court's
decision as a political rule binding the voters, or Congress,
or the President; and they intended so to oppose it as to
have it reversed if possible, and a new judicial rule estab
lished. Seward was very outspoken. He said a year later,
in the Senate, " The people of the United States never can
and never will accept principles so unconstitutional, so abhor
rent. Never, never! Let the court recede. Whether it
recede or not, we shall reorganize the court, and thus reform
its political sentiment and practices, and bring them in
harmony with the Constitution and the laws of Nature."
The court's decision, obiter dictum and all, extended only
to the power of Congress over the Territories. What a Ter
ritorial Legislature might do by way of excluding slavery

150 The Negro and the Nation
had not been passed on ; and Douglas thus found room for
his doctrine of " popular sovereignty." But as to just what
that meant, he was adroitly non-committal, till the more
adroit Lincoln in the joint debate in 1858 drew from him
the statement that a Territorial Legislature might by " un
friendly legislation " practically exclude slavery — a com
mittal which ended his favor from the South.
But meanwhile attention was focused on a different and
more concrete question. Buchanan began his administra
tion with an effort to pacify Kansas, by sending a new gov
ernor, Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, with strong
pledges from the President that the people should have fair
dealing. But the situation was badly complicated. The
Legislature had provided for a convention to frame a State
Constitution. This was to be elected on the basis of a
census taken by the county officials. But the Free State men
having never recognized this Territorial Legislature, and
having kept up the form of a State government of their
own, there were no officials to take the census and register
the votes in fifteen out of the thirty-four counties, and the
registration was confined to the part of the Territory lying
convenient for invasion from Missouri. Under these cir
cumstances the Free State party resisted all Governor
Walker's appeals to take part in the election, and the con
vention was chosen by a small vote. It met at Lecompton,
and drew up a constitution. One article provided for the
exclusion of free negroes, and another forbade any amend
ment for seven years. One section affirmed ownership of
slaves as an inviolable right of property, and 'forbade any
adverse legislation; and this section alone of the Constitu
tion was submitted to the popular vote. A vote of the
people was ordered, as between " constitution with slavery "
and " constitution without slavery." The Free State men
scouted the whole proceeding, and refused to vote. So, by

Dred Scott and Lecompton 151
the form of a popular election, the "constitution with
slavery" was adopted.
The administration now gave its whole strength to the
admission by Congress of Kansas with the Lecompton con
stitution. The same election that made Buchanan President
had made the House as well as the Senate Democratic. But
it was no longer the disciplined and docile Democracy of
old. The proposal to admit a State under a constitution of
which only a single article had been submitted to even the
form of a popular vote, was too obnoxious for any but the
most unflinching partisans. It was impossible to a leader
whose watchword was " popular sovereignty."
Douglas broke squarely with the administration, and
acted with the Republicans against the bill. He came in
close touch with their leaders, and his open accession to
their party seemed probable. Meanwhile in the Democratic
party he had a small following in Congress and a large
following among the people. The struggle in Congress
over the Lecompton bill was obstinate. Senator Crittenden,
of Kentucky, — belonging nominally to the remnant of the
American party, which sheltered some of the moderate
Southerners, and himself one of their best leaders — pro
posed a bill submitting the entire Constitution to a direct
popular vote. This was defeated in the Senate, but passed
by the House, with the support of the Republicans. A com
mittee of conference sought for some agreement, and found
a singular one : a bill proposed by and named from Mr.
English, a Douglas Democrat from Illinois. It provided
that the Constitution should be submitted to a popular vote ;
if accepted, Kansas was at once to become a State and re
ceive an immense land grant; if rejected, it was to remain
a Territory until it had the population requisite for one repre
sentative in the House, — 93,340, — ^and get no land grant.
The combination of a bribe and a threat gave an almost

152 The Negro and the Nation
grotesque air to the proposition. Party lines were broken
in the vote ; Douglas and a part of his associates joined
with the bulk of the Republicans in opposing the bill; but
enough of both sides saw in it the best they could get, to
win a majority in both houses, and the English bill became
law, in April, 1858.
In the previous summer, the assurances of Governor
Walker and the advice of sagacious politicians like Henry
Wilson had induced the Free State men to give up their
separate organization and take part in the election of the
Territorial Legislature. They carried the election by two to
one. But again fraud was attempted. From a hamlet with
eleven houses was sent in a return of 1624 votes, — the names,
it was found, copied in alphabetical order from a Cincinnati
directory; and from another district an equally dishonest
return was made; and the two would have changed the
majority in the Legislature. This catastrophe was averted
by the firmness of Walker, who threw out the fraudulent
returns. In this he was vainly opposed by the Territorial
chief justice, a servile partisan. After this the President
turned against Walker and in the following December
drove him into resignation. He protested in an indignant
letter that the President had betrayed and deserted him,
and that his policy had saved the Territory from civil war
and brought the entire people together for the first time in a
peaceable election.
Indeed the troubles of Kansas were practically ended.
The people rejected the Lecompton constitution and its
land grant by a heavy majority. They framed and ratified
a Constitution of their own at Wyandotte, and came into
the Union as a free State when secession had left the Repub
licans in full control of Congress in the winter of 1860-1.
The accession of Kansas to the Free States was full of
significance. It was fresh evidence that in the actual settle-

Dred Scott and Lecompton 153
ment of the new country the inevitable preponderance lay
with free labor. Its industrial advantage could not be
overborne by a hostile national administration, nor by the
inroads of aggressive and lawless neighbors. The man
agement of their affairs by the Free State settlers was a great
vindication of the methods of peace. The guerrilla warfare
undertaken by Brown and his party had won no real ad
vantage. The decisive triumph came from the habitual self-
control of the Free State men, their steady refusal to resist
the Federal authority, and the sympathy they thus won
from the peaceful North, turning at last the scales of Con
gressional authority in their favor. Thus far, peace and
freedom moved hand in hand.
The tide in the country was running strongly with the
Republicans. The alliance with Douglas failed, because his
price was the Senatorship from Illinois, and the Republi
cans of that State were " willing to take him on probation,
but not to make him the head of the church." They named
Abraham Lincoln as their candidate for the Senatorship,
and these two men held a series of joint debates which
fixed the attention of the country ; with the result that Lin
coln won the popular majority, but Douglas the Legislature
and the Senatorship. In the country at large, the Republi
cans made such gains, in this election of 1858, that they won
the control of the National House. The Whigs were de
funct, the Americans were a dwindling fraction ; the " Con
stitutional Union " party held a number who sought peace
above all things; but the great mass divided between the
Republicans and the Democrats. Douglas, the most dex
trous of rope-dancers, had regained his place as the fore
most man in his old party. The Republicans held firmly
to their constitutional principles ; but the depth of the antag
onism of the two industrial systems grew ever more appar
ent. Lincoln had declared : " A house divided against

154 The Negro and the Nation
itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure
permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but
I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all
one thing or all the other." Seward, too, had said : " The
United States must and will, sooner or later, become either
entirely a slave-holding or entirely a free-labor nation." Be
tween the two systems there was an " irrepressible con
flict." But he added that he desired and expected the
triumph of freedom " not otherwise than through the action
of the several States, co-operating with the Federal Govern
ment, and all acting in conformity with their respective con
stitutions." Yet over these utterances of Lincoln and
Seward some conservatives in the party shook their heads,
as liable to be misinterpreted and to needlessly alarm the
South. But men more radical than Lincoln and Seward
were coming to the front. Sumner was silenced for the
time, but among the leaders of Massachusetts now appeared
John A. Andrew, her future war Governor, large-brained
and large-hearted. In this year, 1858, at the State conven
tion of which he was president, he said, " I believe in the
Republican party because I believe that slavery, the servi
tude of humanity, has no business to exist anywhere; be
cause it has no business to exist and no right to be sup
ported where the sun shines or grass grows or water runs."
One of the sensations of the time was a book, dated 1857,
which showed a rift in the solid South. It was The Im
pending Crisis, by Hinton Rowan Helper, a North Caro
linian by long descent, birth, and residence ; the son of "' a
merciful slave-holder " ; writing at the age of twenty-seven.
His standpoint was that of the non-slave-holding Southern
white. " Yankee wives " — so he begins — " have written the
most popular anti-slavery literature of the day. Against
this I have nothing to say ; it is all well enough for women

Dred Scott and Lecompton 155
to give the pictures of slavery ; men should give the facts."
His method is largely the comparison of the industrial prog
ress of the two sections, and his chief arsenal is the United
States census. North and South started, he says, with the
establishment of the government and the North's abolition
of slavery, with advantage in soil, climate, rivers, harbors,
minerals, forests, etc., on the side of the South, but in sixty
years she has been completely outstripped. He brackets
Virginia and New York; at the start, Virginia had twice
the population of New York; now New York's population
doubles Virginia's. Virginia's exports have been about
stationary at $3,000,000; New York's have risen from
$2,500,000 to $87,000,000. New York almost trebles Vir
ginia in valuation, even including slaves. So he compares
North Carolina and Massachusetts ; the empty port of Beau
fort and the teeming one of Boston ; the northern State with
a production from manufactures, mines, and mechanic arts
double the whole cotton crop of the South. So he com
pares South Carolina and Pennsylvania. Again : Sail down
the Ohio, and you will find the lands on the right bank
worth double and treble those on the left bank, — slavery
makes all the difference. The hay crop of the free States
is worth more in dollars and cents than all the cotton,
tobacco, rice, hay, and hemp, in the slave States. The
marble and free-stone quarries in New England yield more
wealth than all the subterranean deposits in the slave States.
And so for many pages he goes on piling Pelion upon Ossa
with his figures. He pictures the South's economic depend
ence : " In infancy we are swaddled in Northern muslin ;
in childhood we are humored with Northern gewgaws; in
youth, we are instructed out of Northern books ; at the age
of maturity, we sow our wild oats on Northern soil. . . .
In the decline of life we remedy our sight with Northern
spectacles, and support our infirmities with Northern canes ;

156 The Negro and the Nation
in old age we are drugged with Northern physic ; and finally,
when we die, our inanimate bodies, shrouded in Northern
cambric, are stretched upon the bier, borne to the grave
in a Northern carriage, entombed with Northern spade,
and memorized with a Northern slab 1 "
Land in the Northern States averages $28.07 ^u acre in
value, and in the Southern States it is $5.34. The difference
measures the robbery committed on a community of 10,000,-
000 by the 350,000 slave-holders. These " chevaliers of
the lash " he arraigns with a rhetoric compared to which
Sumner's and Phillip's words were pale. The slave-holders
are worse, he declares, than thieves, for they steal from all.
They are worse than common murderers, for they issue to
themselves licenses to murder ; the slave who resists may be
killed. He is for no half-measures, — he avows himself a
free-soiler, an emancipationist, an abolitionist, a coloniza-
tionist. " The liberation of five millions of ' poor white
trash,' from the second degree of slavery, and of three mil
lions of miserable kidnaped negroes from the first degree,
cannot be accomplished too soon." The process is simple
and easy ; emancipation will be followed by such an instant
rise in all values and in general prosperity that the slave
owners themselves will be recouped. Let each of these, he
says, give to each slave his freedom and $60 in money ; half
that sum will transport him to Liberia, whither all should
go. He foresees the tempest which his book will arouse.
" What are you going to do about it? Something dreadful
as a matter of course? Perhaps you will dissolve the Union.
Do it, if you dare! Our motto, and we would have you
understand it, is the abolition of slavery and the perpetua
tion of the American Union. If by any means you do suc
ceed in your treasonable attempt to take the South out of
the Union to-day, we will bring her back to-morrow, — if
she goes away with you, she will return without you." In

Dred Scott and Lecompton 157
his closing paragraph he predicts the election to the Presi
dency in i860 of some anti-slavery Southerner, of the type
of Cassius M. Clay, or James G. Birney, and in 1864, of a
Northerner like Seward or Sumner. And he thus concludes :
" Furthermore, if in these or in any other similar cases the
oligarchy do not quietly submit to the will of a constitutional
majority of the people, as expressed at the ballot-box, the
first battle between freedom and slavery will be fought at
home — and may God defend the right ! "
The book raised a tempest of denunciation. The more it
was denounced the more it was read. It was easily " the
best-selling book " of the time. The concrete reply of the
party criticised was first to drive Helper out of North
Carolina. Next his book was condemned in a resolution
proposed at the opening of Congress in 1859-60, and aimed
especially at John Sherman, of Ohio, the Republican candi
date for speaker, who had signed a qualified recommenda
tion of the book. After a long contest the Republicans
dropped Sherman for Pennington, of New Jersey, whom
they elected. The Impending Crisis was a portent and
an impulse of the coming catastrophe.

CHAPTER XVIII
JOHN BROWN
About this time there was a revival of activity in the slave
trade between Africa and Cuba. The American Govern
ment had always acted half-heartedly in its co-operation
with the British Government for the suppression of this
traffic. Now it happened that some British cruisers in the
West Indies stopped and examined some vessels under the
American flag, suspected of being slavers. This was re
sented by the American Government, which sent war ships
to the scene and took the British Government to task. In
Congress both parties joined in denunciation of British
aggression. The right of search, exercised by England for
the reclamation of her seamen from American vessels, had
been one of the grounds of war in 1812. It had been left
unmentioned in the treaty of peace, but England had silently
relinquished the practice. Now, at the demand of the United
States, she expressly relinquished the right of search in the
case of supposed slave ships under the American flag, unless
the result should justify the suspicion. Thus the honor
of the Stars and Stripes was vindicated, — and the flag was
made a great convenience to slavers. The administration,
however, bestirred itself toward doing its own share in the
work of sea-police, and several slave ships were captured.
The crew of one of these were acquitted, by a Charleston
jury, against the clearest evidence. There was some open
talk in the Southern papers of legalizing the traffic. But
the trade was destined to a discouraging check a year or
158

John Brown 159
two later, when President Lincoln signed the first death
warrant of the captain of a slaver.
After the Kansas troubles had subsided, John Brown
sought some way to make a direct attack on slavery. For
many years he had brooded on the matter, in the light of his
reading of the Old Testament, and he felt himself called to
assail it as the Jewish heroes assailed the enemies of Jehovah
and his people. As early as 1847 he had disclosed to Fred
erick Douglass, during a visit to Brown's home in Spring
field, Mass., a plan for freeing the slaves. He did not con
template a general insurrection and slaughter. But he pro
posed to establish a fugitive refuge in the chain of moun
tains stretching from the border of New York toward the
Gulf. " These mountains," he said, " are the basis of my
plan. God has given the strength of the hills to freedom;
they were placed here for the emancipation of the negro
race; they are 'full of natural forts, where one man for
defense will be equal to one hundred for attack; they are
full also of good hiding-places, where large numbers of
brave men could be concealed, and baffle and elude pursuit
for a long time. . . . -The true object to be sought is,
first of all, to destroy the money-value of slave property;
and that can only be done by rendering such property in
secure. My plan, then, is to take at first about twenty-five
picked men, and begin on a small scale; supply them arms
and ammunition, and post them in squads of five on a line
of twenty-five miles. The most persuasive and judicious
of them shall then go down to the fields from time to time,
as opportunity offers, and induce the slaves to join them,
seeking and selecting the most restless and daring."
It was substantially this plan to which Brown now re
turned, and he sought aid among those men at the East who
had backed the Free State cause in Kansas. He was not
known to them, as he has been presented to the reader, as

i6o The Negro and the Nation
the chief actor in the Pottawatomie massacre, but as a bold
guerrilla chief, who had lost a son in the Kansas strife. Even
so, he was a recognized dissenter from the peace policy
which had finally won success for freedom in the Territory.
But there were men in the anti-slavery ranks who were im
patient of the whole policy of peace, and the impressive
personality of Brown won some of these to active support
of his project. Among them were Theodore Parker, Gerritt
Smith, Dr. S. G. Howe, George L. Stearns, Thomas Went-
worth Higginson, and Franklin B. Sanborn, who formed a
secret committee to forward this plan. They were not in
formed of its details, but knew its general scope. To a con
siderable number Brown was known as a hero of past fights
and not averse to fresh ones. He visited Concord, where
he spoke at a public meeting, and made a great impression
on Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau. Alcott made a pen-
picture of him. " I think him equal to anything he dares, —
the man to do the deed, if it must be done, and with the
martyr's temper and purpose. Nature obviously was deeply
intent in the making of him. He is of imposing appearance
personally, — tall, with square shoulders and standing; eyes
of deep gray, and couchant, as if ready to spring at the
least rustling, dauntless yet kindly ; his hair shooting back
ward from low down on his forehead ; nose trenchant and
Romanesque ; set lips, his voice suppressed yet metallic, sug
gesting deep reserves ; decided mouth ; the countenance and
frame charged with power throughout."
Emerson, from his own observation and from hearsay,
drew his spiritual portrait : " For himself. Brown is so
transparent that all men see him through. He is a man to
make friends wherever on earth courage and integrity are
esteemed, — the rarest of heroes, a pure idealist, with no
by-ends of his own. Many of us have seen him, and every
one who has heard him speak has been impressed alike by

John Brown i6i
his simple, artless goodness and his sublime courage. He
joins that perfect Puritan faith which brought his ancestor
to Plymouth Rock, with his grandfather's ardor in the
Revolution. He believes in two articles — two instruments,
shall I say? — ^the Golden Rule and the Declaration of In
dependence; and he used this expression in a conversation
here concerning them : ' Better that a whole generation of
men, women, and children should pass away by a violent
death, than that one word of either should be violated in
this country.' . . . He grew up a religious and manly
person, in severe poverty ; a fair specimen of the best stock
of New England, having that force of thought and that
sense of right which are the warp and woof of greatness.
, . . Thus was formed a romantic character, absolutely
without any vulgar trait; living to ideal ends, without any
mixture of self-indulgence or compromise, such as lowers
the value of benevolent and thoughtful men we know;
abstemious, refusing luxuries, not sourly and reproachfully,
but simply as unfit for his habit ; quiet and gentle as a child,
in the house. And as happens usually to men of romantic
character, his fortunes were romantic."
But the romance in this portrait is due quite as much to
the imagination of the artist as to the character of the
subject. Emerson seems to have entirely overlooked in his
estimate of Brown that he had no rational idea of the moral
obligations of the citizen to the civil government and to the
peace of society; and that his conscience in its apparent
simplicity was really in dire confusion. The sentence he
quotes from Brown's conversation has its practical com
mentary in Brown's acts. He was as ready to take the
sword, to redress what he considered a breach of the Golden
Rule or the Declaration of Independence, as if mankind
had not for thousands of years and with infinite cost been
building up institutions for the peaceful settlement of diffi-

1 62 The Negro and the Nation
culties. In Kansas he saw in the political struggle simply
an issue to be tried out by force between good men and bad
men; and he made himself executioner of a group of men
he considered bad, thereby plunging into a series of mur
ders utterly repugnant to his natural humanity. He after
ward justified the deed, without avowing his own part in
it, which was not fully known till twenty years later. After
Harper's Ferry, the Springfield Republican (which judged
him very favorably), speaking partly from personal knowl
edge gained during his residence in Springfield, said : " He
is so constituted that when he gets possessed of an idea he
carries it out with unflinching fidelity to all its logical con
sequences, as they seem to him, hesitating at no absurdity
and deterred by no unpleasant consequences to himself per
sonally. He is a Presbyterian in his faith, and feels that it
is for this very purpose that God has reared him up."
When a man is so possessed by the conviction that he is
God's instrument as- to set himself outside of ordinary
human morality, he is presumably on the verge of ship
wreck. The Republican, while emphasizing the popular esti
mate of John Brown as " a hero," coupled with this the
characterization of him as " a misguided and insane
man." The project he was now pressing — ^the establishment of
a mountain refuge for fugitive slaves, working toward the
depreciation of slave property, and the ultimate extinction
of the system — had a certain superficial plausibility; and it
seemed to avoid the inhumanity of general insurrection.
But it was at the best hardly more than a boy's romance,
and at the last moment Brown abandoned it for a still more
impracticable plan.
On the morning of October 17, 1859, the little town of
Harper's Ferry, on the upper Potomac, awoke to the amaz
ing discovery that in the night the buildings of the United

John Brown 163
States armory had been seized and held by a company of
armed men, white and black; that they had gathered in a
number of prisoners, including some prominent citizens;
and that their design was to free the slaves. Brown had
struck his blow. With eighteen faithful associates, includ
ing three of his sons, he had lurked near the town till all
was ready ; then in the night he had marched in and seized
the armory, and brought in as prisoners some of the neigh
boring planters who were told they were held as hostages.
Other citizens were captured almost without resistance in
the early morning hours, till the prisoners were twice the
number of their captors. But there was no rising of the
negroes. Brown, after his first easy success, stayed still
as if paralyzed. Either he had no further plan, or his
judgment and will failed him at the crisis. His complete
failure to improve his first advantage — whether the vveak-
ness lay in his plan or the execution — indicated the radical
unsoundness which underlay his impressive exterior. The
town rallied its forces, surrounded the armory, and a fight
was kept up through the afternoon. At night Colonel
Robert E. Lee with a force of troops arrived from Wash
ington, and the next morning they easily stormed the
armory, which had lost half its garrison, including two of
Brown's sons, and Brown and the rest of his party were
made prisoners.
The country was in a state of profound peace; Kansas
had fallen out of mind ; the Presidential election was a year
away; and even political discussion was languid. The
news of the raid came as an utter surprise. Brown was
unknown to the general public, and beyond the patent fact
of an attempted slave insurrection there was at first general
bewilderment as to the meaning of the event. Brown's
secret committee, — ignorant of his exact plan, most of them
having had but little to do with him, and none of them

164 The Negro and the Nation
expecting the blow when it fell, — were in no haste to en
lighten the public, or acknowledge their responsibility. But
Brown became his own interpreter. The ubiquitous New
York Herald reporter was instantly on the ground, and
never were interviews more eagerly read and more impres
sive in their effect than Brown's replies to his various
examiners. A prisoner, wounded, in the shadow of a felon's
death, the old man bore himself with perfect courage and
composure. Asked on what principle he justified his acts,
he replied : " Upon the Golden Rule. I pity the poor in
bondage, that have none to help them; that is why I am
here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or
vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and
wronged, that are as good as you and as precious in the
sight of God." The Virginians recognized his sincerity
and integrity. The Governor of the State, Henry A. Wise —
an extreme Southerner in his politics — visited Brown, and
said publicly : " They are mistaken who take Brown to be
a madman. He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw, —
cut and thrust and bleeding and in bonds. He is a man
of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuous
ness. He is cool, collected, and indomitable, and it is but
just to him to say that he was humane to his prisoners,
and he inspired me with great trust in his integrity as a
man of truth. He is a fanatic, vain and garrulous, but
firm, truthful, and intelligent."
For Brown and his associates there could be but one
conclusion to the business. They were put on trial for
treason and murder. They had a fair trial, and indeed the
case admitted of no doubt. They were sentenced to be
hanged, and the sentence was carried out, within six weeks
of their act.
At the North, Brown was widely honored as a hero
and a martyr. No one defended his act, — a slave insur-

John Brown 165
rection, in whatever form, found no public justification.
Probably a considerable majority of the community, includ
ing all the more conservative political elements, condemned
the man and his deed, and perhaps justified his execution.
But wherever anti-slavery feeling was strong, and with a
multitude who, apart from such feeling, were sensitive to
striking qualities of manhood, there was great admiration
and sympathy for Brown and sorrow for his fate. John
A. Andrew spoke a common feeling when he said : " What
ever may be thought of John Brown's acts, John Brown
himself was right." Emerson eulogized him in daring
words. If, he said, John Brown is hung, he will glorify
the gallows as Jesus glorified the cross. On the day of his
death the church bells were tolled in many a Northern town.
Said the Springfield Republican the next morning: " There
need be no tears for him. Few men die so happily, so
satisfied with time, place, and circumstance, as did he.
. . . A Christian man hung by Christians for acting
upon his convictions of duty, — a brave man hung for a
chivalrous and self-sacrificing deed of humanity, — a philan
thropist hung for seeking the liberty of oppressed men.
No outcry about violated law can cover up the essential
enormity of a deed like this."
Never was a man dealt with more generously by posthu
mous fame. In the Civil War, two lines of verse, fitted to
a stirring melody, became the marching song of the Union
armies : John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave
His soul is marching on!
This was the last touch of the apotheosis. John Brown
became to the popular imagination the forerunner and
martyr of the cause of Union and freedom.
At the North, one immediate and lasting effect of the

1 66 The Negro and the Nation
tragedy was to intensify the conviction of the essential
wrong of slavery. Howevei mistaken was Brown's way
of attack, it was felt that nothing short of an organized
system of injustice and cruelty could have inspired such a
man to such an attempt. The very logic of facts, which
compelled Virginia in self-defense to hang him, showed the
character of the institution which needed such defense.
Yes, it was necessary to hang him, — ^but what was the sys
tem that made necessary the sacrifice of such a life?
But Andrew's words " whatever may be thought of John
Brown's acts " — call for further consideration. What were
his acts, and what were their consequences? A part of
the answer was seen in the bodies of men of Harper's Ferry,
lying in the streets, peaceful men with wives and children,
slain for resisting an armed invasion of their quiet little
village. The first man to fall was a negro porter of a
railway train, who, failing to halt when challenged by one
of Brown's sentinels, was shot. The second man killed
was a citizen standing in his own doorway. The third was
a graduate of West Point who, hearing of trouble, came
riding into town with his gun, and was shot as he passed
the armory.
Among the letters that came to Brown in prison was one
from the widow of one of the Pottawatomie victims, with
these words : " You can now appreciate my distress in
Kansas, when you then and there entered my house at mid
night and arrested my husband and two boys, and took
them out in the yard, and in cold blood shot them dead in
my hearing. You can't say you did it to free our slaves ; we
had none and never expected to own one; but it only
made me a poor disconsolate widow with helpless
children." Brown's first plan, of drawing off the slaves to a moun
tain fortress, — ^peaceable only in semblance, and involving

John Brown 167
inevitable fighting,^-he exchanged at last for a form of
attack which was an instant challenge to battle. In a con
ference with Frederick Douglass, on the eve of the event,
Douglass vainly urged the earlier plan, but found Brown
resolved on " striking a blow which should instantly rouse
the country." On the day of his death. Brown penned these
sentences and handed them to one of his guards : " I, John
Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty
land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as
I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much
bloodshed it might be done." But no man so directly and
deliberately aimed to settle the difficulty by bloodshed as
he. It is thus that men make God responsible for what
themselves are doing.
The Civil War when it came brought enough of suffering
and horror. But it was mild and merciful compared to
what a slave insurrection might have been. And it was
essentially a slave insurrection that Brown aimed at. The
great mass of the Northern people would have recoiled
with abhorrence from a servile revolt. But who could
wonder if the Southern people did not believe this, when
they saw honors heaped on a man who died for inciting
such an insurrection? How could they nicely distinguish
between approval of a man's acts and praise for the man
himself? If the North had one thinker who set forth its
highest ideals, its noblest aims, that man was Emerson.
Yet Emerson passed Brown's acts almost unblamed, and
named his execution together with that on Calvary. Not
all the disclaimers of politicians, the resolves of conven
tions, could reassure the South, after that day of mourning
with which Northern towns solemnized John Brown's death.
What wonder that an ardent Southerner like Toombs, speak
ing to his constituents a few months later, called on them
to " meet the enemy at the door-sill. " And what wonder

1 68 The Negro and the Nation
that the Southern people were inclined as never before to
look upon the Northern people as their foes?
The more deeply we study human life, the more do we
realize that as to individual responsibility " to understand
is to forgive." Half a century after the event, we may
well have forgiveness — not of charity, but of justice — for
John Brown, and for the Governor who signed his death-
warrant; we can sympathize with those who honored and
wept for him, and with those who shuddered at his deed.
But, for the truth of history and for the guidance of the
future, we must consider not only the intentions of men,
but the intrinsic character of their deeds; not only John
Brown himself, but John Brown's acts. And in that long
series of deeds of violence and wrong which wrought
mutual hatred and fratricidal war between the two sections
of a people, that midnight attack on the peaceful Virginia
village must bear its heavy condemnation. Hitherto ag
gression had been almost entirely from the South ; this was
a counter-stroke, and told with dire force against the hope
of a peaceable and righteous settlement.
Probably most readers of to-day will wonder at the de
gree of admiration and praise which Brown received. It
must be ascribed in part to some quality in his personality,
which cast a kind of glamour on some of those who met
him, and inspired such highly idealized portraiture as
Emerson's. But there remains the extraordinary fact that
men like Theodore Parker and Gerritt Smith and Dr. S.
G. Howe gave countenance and aid to Brown's project.
Before history's bar, their responsibility seems heavier than
his; they, educated, intelligent, trained in public service;
he an untaught, ill-balanced visionary, who at least staked
his life on his faith. Their complicity in his plot illustrates
how in some moral enthusiasts the hostility to slavery had
distorted their perception of reality. Such men saw the

John Brown 169
Southern communities through the medium of a single in
stitution, itself half-understood. They saw, so to speak,
only the suffering slave and his oppressor. They failed to
see or forgot the general life of household and neighbor
hood, with its common, kindly, human traits. They did
not recognize that Harper's Ferry was made up of much
the same kind of people, at bottom, as Concord. They did
not realize that a slave insurrection meant a universal social
conflagration. Indeed, Brown's original scheme of a gen
eral flight of slaves to a mountain stronghold had a fal
lacious appearance of avoiding a violent insurrection, and
it was with the background of this plan that Brown, a
wounded prisoner with death impending, appealed to the
Northern imagination as a hero and martyr.
But this glorification of him wrought a momentous effect
in the South. It is best described by those who witnessed
it. John S. Wise, son of the Governor who signed Brown's
death-warrant, writes in his graphic reminiscences. The
End of an Era: " While these scenes were being enacted "
— ^the trial and execution of Brown and the Northern com
ments — " a great change of feeling took place in Virginia
toward the people of the North and toward the Union
itself. Virginians began to look upon the people of the
North as hating them, and willing to see them assassinated
at midnight by their own slaves, led by Northern emis
saries; as flinging away all pretense of regard for laws
protecting the slave-owner; as demanding of them the
immediate freeing of their slaves, or that they prepare
against further attacks like Brown's, backed by the moral
and pecuniary support of the North. During the year
i860 the Virginians began to organize and arm themselves
against such emergencies."
The spirit of proscription against all anti-slavery men
broke out afresh. At Berea, Kentucky, a little group of anti-

170 The Negro and the Nation
slavery churches and schools had been growing for six
years, championed by the stalwart Cassius M. Clay, and
with the benignant and peaceful John G. Fee as their
leader. A month after Brown's foray a band of armed
horsemen summoned twelve of their men to leave the State.
Governor Magoffin said he could not protect them, and
with their families they went into exile — stout-heartedly
chanting at their departure the 37th Psalm : " Fret not thy
self because of evil-doers."
In the South itself there had been developing recently
an antagonism to the slave power. Its strength lay not in
the moral opposition to slavery, which indeed always ex
isted, but was quiet and apparently cowed; but rather in
the growing class of city residents, — ^merchants and pro
fessional men, — whose interests and feelings were often
antagonistic to the large planters. The hostility to slavery
on economic grounds, and in the white man's interest, found
passionate expression in Helper's Impending Crisis, and in
a milder form was spreading widely. But at the menace
of invasion and servile insurrection all classes drew to
gether. Especially the women of the South became sud
denly and intensely interested in the political situation.
The suggestion of personal peril appealed to them, and to
the men who were their natural defenders. The situation
is well described in Prof. J. W. Burgess's The Civil War
and the Constitution, — a generally impartial book, written
with personal appreciation of the Southern standpoint:
" No man who is acquainted with the change of feeling
which occurred in the South between the i6th of October,
1859, and the i6th of November of the same year can regard
the Harper's Ferry villainy as anything other than one of
the chiefest crimes of our history. It established and re
established the control of the great radical slaveholders over
the non-slaveholders, the little slaveholders, and the more

John Brown 171
liberal of the larger slaveholders, which had already begun
to be loosened. It created anew a solidarity of interest
between them all, which was felt by all with an intensity
which overbore every other sentiment. It gave thus to the
great radical slaveholders the willing physical material for
the construction of armies and navies and for the prosecu
tion of war."

CHAPTER XIX
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Every American may be presumed to be familiar with the
external facts of Abraham Lincoln's early life, — ^the rude
cabin, the shiftless father, the dead mother's place filled by
the tender step-mother; the brief schooling, the hungry
reading of the few books by the fire-light; the hard farm-
work, with a turn now of rail-splitting, now of flat-boating ;
the country sports and rough good-fellowship; the upward
steps as store-clerk and lawyer. But the interior qualities
that made up his character and built his fortune will bear
further study.
He was composed of traits which seemed to contradict
each other. In a sense this is true of everyone. Dr.
Holmes says (in substance) : " The vehicle in which each
one of us crosses life's narrow isthmus between two oceans
is not a one-seated sulky, but an omnibus." Sometimes, as
depicted in that wonderful parable. Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, one inmate ejects the others. But in Lincoln the
various elements were wrought as years passed by into har
mony. He was prized among his early companions as a wit and
story-teller. The women complained because at their par
ties all the men were drawn off to hear Abe Lincoln's
stories. When he came to be a public speaker, he feathered
the shafts of his argument with jest and anecdote. The
vein of humor in him was rich and deep; it helped him
through the hard places. When as President he announced
17a

Abraham Lincoln 173
to his cabinet the Emancipation Proclamation, he first re
freshed himself by reading to them a chapter from Artemus
Ward. His early growth was in rough soil, and some of the mud
stuck to him, — his jests were sometimes broad. But if
coarse in speech he was pure in life, and neither the rancor
of political hate nor the research of unsparing biographers
ever charged him with an unchaste act.
Along with this rollicking fun he had a vein of deepest
melancholy. In part it was temperamental. The malarial
country sometimes bred a strain of habitual depression.
His mother was the natural daughter of a Virginia planter,
and had the sadness sometimes wrought by such pre-natal
conditions; it was said she was never seen to smile. Lin
coln's early years had hardships and trials, over many of
which he triumphed, and triumphed laughing; but there
were others for which there was neither victory nor mirth.
Some of his early letters of intimate friendship (as given
in Hay and Nicolay's biography), show a singular ca
pacity for romantic affection, and gleams of hope of
supreme happiness. But death frustrated this hope, and
the disappointment brought him to the verge of insanity.
In his domestic life, — it was an open secret, — he had some
of the experience which disciplined Socrates. Perhaps we
go to the root of his sadness if we say that in his deepest
heart he was a passionate idealist, and by circumstances
he was long shut out from the natural satisfaction of
ideality. His partner Herndon said of him, " His melan
choly dripped from him as he walked."
Out of these experiences he brought a great power of
patience and a great power of sympathy. These armed
him for his work. He became invincible against the per
versities and follies of men, and the blows of fate. He
ripened into a tenderness such as prompted him, when bur-

174 The Negro and the Nation
dened with cares beyond measure, to give a sympathetic
hearing to every mother who came to the President with
the story of her boy's trouble.
To take another brace of qualities, he was at once a
powerful fighter and an habitual peace-maker. His long,
gaunt, sinewy frame, and his tough courage, made him a
formidable antagonist, but it was hard to provoke him to
combat. Lamon, — whose biography is a treasury of good
stories, sometimes lacking in discretion, but giving an in
valuable realistic picture, — relates an encounter with the
village bully. Jack Armstrong. The "boys" at last teased
Lincoln into a wrestling match, and when his victory in
the good-natured encounter provoked Jack to unfair play,
Abe shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. Then he made
peace with him, drew out the better quality in him; and
the two reigned " like friendly Caesars " over the village
crowd, Abe tempering Jack's playfulness when it got too
rough, and winning the boys to kindly ways.
In that day and region, men were very frank about their
religious beliefs and disbeliefs. The skepticism or unbe
lief which lies unspoken in the hearts of a multitude of
men, — silent perhaps out of regard to public opinion, per
haps from consideration for mother or wife — found free
and frequent utterance in the West, long before Robert
Ingersoll gave it eloquent voice. Lincoln, though we have
called him an idealist at heart, habitually guided himself by
logic, by hard sense, and by such evidence as passes in a
court of law. He was one of the class to whom books like
Tom Paine's Age of Reason appealed strongly. In early
life he wrote a treatise against Christianity. A politic
friend to whom he showed his manuscript put it in the
stove, but the writer was not changed in his opinions. To
Christianity as a supernatural revelation he never became a
convert, but the belief in " a Power that makes for right-

Abraham Lincoln 175
eousness " grew with his growth and strengthened with his
strength. With deepening experiences, the awe and mystery of
life weighed heavily on him. When travelling on circuit,
his days spent in law-cases, diversified with sociability and
funny stories, he would sometimes be seen in the early
m.orning brooding by the fire-place with hands outspread,
and murmuring his favorite verses, — a soliloquy on the
mournfulness and mystery of life : " Oh, why should the
spirit of mortal be proud ! "
In his early youth he read eagerly and thoroughly such
few books as came in his way. Later, his taste for reading
seemed to grow less. He had a keen instinct for reality,
and perhaps he found little in books that satisfied him.
For poetry and philosophy he had small aptitude, and in
science he had no training. What books he read he seemed
to digest and get the pith of. Once, made suddenly con
scious by defeat of his lack of book-culture, he took up
Euclid's geometry, and resolutely studied and re-studied
it. Doubtless that helped him in the close logic which
often characterized his speeches. The strength of his
speeches lay in their logic, their close regard to fact, their
adaptation to the plain people of whom he was one, their
homely illustrations, and, as the years developed him, an
appeal to some high principle of duty. His chief library
was men and women. From them, and from his own ex
perience, he drew the elements of his politics, history,
philosophy. He had the ambition natural to a man of high powers.
With all his genial sociability, he was in a way self-cen
tered. His associates often thought him, — and Lamon
shares the opinion — not only moody and meditative, but
unsocial, cold, impassive; bent on his own ends, and using
other men as his instruments. Partly we may count this

176 The Negro and the Nation
as the judgment of the crowd to whom Lincoln's inner life
was unimaginable. He shared their social hours, and then
withdrew into thoughts and feelings and purposes which
he could share with no one. Doubtless, too, he was in
fault for some of that neglect of the small courtesies and
kindnesses which besets men whose own thoughts fascinate
them too strongly. There is a graphic touch, in the story
of his love affairs, of a girl who rejected his advances
because she had seen him on a hot day walk up a hill with
a woman and never offer to relieve her of the baby she
was carrying.
As a lawyer he won more than ordinary success, making
good his lack of erudition by shrewdness and knowledge
of human nature. It was observed that he always tried a
case honestly and fairly; that he was not fond of contro
versy, and always preferred to settle a case out of court;
that he never argued well or strongly unless his conviction
was fully on his client's side; that, if unconvinced himself,
he simply brought forward the proofs which fairly counted
on his side, and left the decision to others ; and that he was
so little attentive to gain that, although he became one of
the leading lawyers of Illinois, he never accumulated much
money. His fairness as a lawyer, and his integrity in politics,
won his popular nickname of " Honest Abe." Perhaps
honesty, in its fullest sense, was his central quality. He
was always true to the truth as he saw it — true in thought
and word and deed. One feels in his printed speeches that
he is trying to see and to say things as they are. He had
not the aid of the mystic's vision, in which the moral uni
verse is revealed in such splendor that to accept and obey
it is pure joy. But he saw and felt and practiced the
homely obligations of honesty and kindness. His education
came largely as at successive epochs there were disclosed

Abraham Lincoln 177
to him new heights of moral significance in the life of the
nation; and as fast as such disclosures came to him he
set himself to obey them with absolute loyalty.
His conscience was not of the self-contemplating and
self-voicing kind. He was chary of words about duty. It
has been alleged that the typical New Englander is affiicted
with " a chronic inflammation of the moral sense." Such
a malady does exist, though many a New Englander is
bravely free from it, while it is not unknown in Alaska
or Japan. From such an over-conscientious conscience, and
from its incidents and its counterfeits, there is bred a re
dundancy of verbal moralising. That was not a foible of
Lincoln. The sense of moral obligation underlies his
weightier utterances, as the law of gravitation underlies
scientific demonstrations, — not talked of, but assumed.
Lincoln's political career gave high promise at the start.
He seemed to have the qualities for success, — ambition,
shrewdness in managing men, power as a speaker, integrity
which won general confidence, ideals not too high above the
crowd. Yet his success was so moderate that in contrasting
himself with Senator Douglas, at the outset of their debate
in 1858, he declared that, " With me the race of ambition
has been a failure, — a flat failure ; with him it has been one
of splendid success." There were reasons for it: Douglas
had given himself without reserve to his personal advance
ment, and Lincoln had been hampered by regard for other
men and for larger ends. After one term in Congress as
a Whig, 1847-8, he retired in deference to the fashion of
" rotation " between localities. When roused to new
activity by the anti-Nebraska campaign in 1854, he was the
favorite candidate of his party for the senatorship; but
seeing that the knot of men who held the balance of power
were gravitating to the other side, he insisted on withdraw
ing in favor of Lyman Trumbull, as a stronger candidate.

178 The Negro and the Nation
who accordingly won the day. Before the revival of the
slavery issue, there had been nothing in the oldtime Whig
and Democratic contests to appeal to the deeper elements
in Lincoln's nature, and personal ambition alone was not
strong enough to push him to eminence. Though he could
handle men skillfully, he had a distaste for the petty arts of
the politician's trade. " Politics," he said, " is the combina
tion of individual meannesses for the general good." And
he had small relish for the game, until " the general good "
loomed clear and large.
His attitude on slavery was typical of the men at the
North who were at once humane and regardful of the
established order. He gave his general position, in homely
and graphic fashion, in a letter to his old friend, Joshua
F. Speed, of Kentucky, in 1855. This was at the time he
referred to when he wrote : " I was losing interest in
politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise roused
me again." To Speed he wrote : " I acknowledge your
rights and my obligations under the Constitution in regard
to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor creatures
hunted down and caught, and carried back to their stripes
and unrequited toils ; but I bite my lips and keep quiet. In
1841, you and I had together a tedious low-water trip in
a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may re
member, as well as I do, that from Louisville to the mouth
of the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves
shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued
torment to me; and I see something like it every time I
touch the Ohio or any other slave border. It is not fair
for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which
has, and continually exercises, the power of making me
miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the
great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings,
in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and

Abraham Lincoln 179
the Union. I do oppose the extension of slavery, because
my judgment and feelings so prompt me; and I am under
no obligations to the contrary."
It was this strong regard for the established law of the
land which set the moderate anti-slavery men apart from the
Abolitionists of the extreme type. And up to this time,
Lincoln, though hostile to slavery, had not been especially
concerned as to the nation's dealing with it. But now
came the opportunity and call to resist its extension into
the territories, and with the response to that call came the
sense that a great contest was impending between right
and wrong, between the good of the many and the selfish
ness of the few.
Lincoln had close at hand a friend to spur him on. His
law-partner, William H. Herndon, was an enthusiastic
radical in politics and religion. He was an Abolitionist,
and a follower of Theodore Parker. He had long plied
Lincoln with Parker's sermons and with anti-slavery lit
erature. When in 1856 Herndon and his friends began to
organize to support armed resistance in Kansas, Lincoln
remonstrated with them successfully. Then came the part
ing of the ways, — Republican, Democrat, or Know-nothing?
The Illinois Abolitionists threw themselves heartily into the
Republican movement. At its first State convention, at
Bloomington, Lincoln was the great figure. The faithful
Herndon, his missionary zeal rewarded at last by such a
convert, describes in glowing language the speech of Lin
coln, — which so carried him away that after trying for
fifteen minutes to take notes as usual, he threw away his
pencil. " Heretofore, and up to this moment, he had
simply argued the slavery question on grounds of policy, —
on what are called the statesman's grounds, — never reach
ing the question of the radical and the eternal right. Now
he was newly baptized and freshly born ; he had the fervor

i8o The Negro and the Nation
of a new convert; the smothered flame broke out; enthu
siasm unusual to him blazed up ; his eyes were aglow with
an inspiration; he felt justice; his heart was alive to the
right; his sympathies, remarkably deep for him, burst forth,
and he stood before the throne of the eternal Right, in
presence of his God, and then and there unburdened his
penitential and fired soul. This speech was fresh, new,
genuine, odd, original ; filled with fervor not unmixed with
a divine enthusiasm; his head breathing out through his
tender heart its truths, its sense of right, and its feeling
of the good and for the good. If Lincoln was six feet four
inches high usually, at Bloomington he was seven feet, and
inspired at that."
But the prairie fire was slow to light. Five days after the
convention, Herndon and Lincoln got up a ratification meet
ing in Springfield. There were posters, illuminations, a
band of music, — and at the appointed hour, one man in the
hall besides Lincoln and Herndon! Lincoln took the plat
form, began with words half-sad, half-mirthful, and con
cluded : " All seems dead, dead, dead ; but the age is not
yet dead; it liveth as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all
this seeming want of life and motion, the world does move
nevertheless. Be hopeful. And now let us adjourn, and
appeal to the people."
The prairie caught fire at last. The Republicans carried
Illinois that autumn for Fremont. Two years later, Lin
coln and Douglas traversed the State in their famous series
of joint debates. The main issue was slavery in the ter
ritories; the background was the general attitude of the
white man toward the negro. Douglas held that the whole
business was a question for white men only. If they
wanted slavery in any Territory, let them have it. If they
did not want it, let them keep it out — unless the Supreme
Court forbade. Lincoln summed up this "popular sove-

Abraham Lincoln i8i
reignty " doctrine : " If one man wants to make another
man a slave, a third man has no right to prevent him ! "
His position was that the nation's duty was to hold the com
mon domain for freedom, and that this was the business
of Congress. Douglas constantly twitted Lincoln with
belief in negro equality. This Lincoln disclaimed; he did
not believe in the negro's equality with the white man ; did
not Believe in making him a voter or a juror; but because
an inferior, had a negro no rights? Lincoln's anti-slavery
position was very moderate ; in reply to Douglas's challenge,
he disclaimed any disposition to agitate against the fugi
tive slave law ; as to practical restriction, he had nothing to
urge except exclusion from the territories. Here he was
emphatic, and he protested earnestly against Douglas's " not
caring whether slavery was voted up or voted down."
The best test which the debate gave of his quality was
the memorable passage in which he declared his conviction
that " A house divided against itself cannot stand. I be
lieve this government cannot permanently endure half slave
and half free." In this he rose above his wonted level, and
spoke with a prophet's forecast. He read this passage in
advance to a group of the party leaders. Though, after
this bold opening, the speech was only a calm and weighty
argument that the interest of slavery was being deliberately
and systematically promoted by all branches of the De
mocracy, — ^yet all, except Herndon, were alarmed at this
passage, and besought Lincoln to withhold it. But he
answered soberly and half-moumfuUy that it expressed his
full conviction, and he would face defeat rather than sup
press it. In the immediate result, it injured his cause; a
general comment of Republicans, through the campaign,
says Herndon, was " Damn that fool speech ! "
Douglas won the Legislature and the senatorship, though
Lincoln won the popular majority. When he was asked

1 82 The Negro and the Nation
how he felt about his defeat, he answered : " I feel as the
boy did when he stubbed his toe, — he was too big to cry,
"and it hurt too bad to laugh!" The country at large,
which had closely watched the debate, forgot him for two
years. Early in i860 he was invited to lecture in New York.
He was not regarded as a Presidential candidate ; and when
he appeared, — in clothes full of creases from his carpet-bag,
with no press copy of his speech and not expecting the
newspapers to report it — he was such a figure as to his audi
ence in Cooper Institute seemed to give little promise. But
he carried them with him completely, and the next morning
the seven-column report in the Tribune told the country
that in this man there was a new force to reckon with. The
speech ranks with the great historical orations of the
country. The first part was a careful review of the posi
tion which the signers of the Constitution took in their
individual capacity as to the right of Congress to regulate
or exclude slavery from the territories. He showed by
specific proof that of the thirty-nine signers twenty-one
voted definitely on various occasions for Congressional
Acts which did so exclude or regulate slavery ; and that of
the remaining eighteen almost all were known to have held
the same opinion. This was a masterly refutation of the
claim of Douglas and the Democracy that the fathers of
the nation were on their side as to the territorial question.
Lincoln then passed to a broader view, and inquired:
What can we do that will really satisfy the South ? Every
word is sober, temperate, well-weighed. The South, he
showed, is really taking very little interest now in the Terri
tories. It is excited about the John Brown raid, and accuses
the Republican party of responsibility for that. But not a
single Republican was implicated in the raid — not one.
You, said Lincoln, addressing the South — interpret your
constitutional rights in a different way from what we do.

Abraham Lincoln 183
and say if we do not admit your interpretation, — if we elect
a Republican president, — you will break up the Union.
But this is simply the highwayman's plea. What, then, can
we Republicans do to satisfy the South? We must not
only let them alone, but somehow convince them that we
do let them alone. In a word, this and this only will con
vince them; we must cease to call slavery wrong, and join
them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly,
— done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be
tolerated; we must place ourselves avowedly with them.
" Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and en
forced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong,
whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private.
We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy
pleasure. We must pull down our Free-State constitutions.
The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint
of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe
that all their troubles proceed from us."
Thus he concludes : " If our sense of duty forbids this,
then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively.
Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances
wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored, —
contrivances such as groping for some middle ground be
tween the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a
man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man, —
such as a policy of ' don't care ' on a question about which
all true men do care, — such as Union appeals beseeching
true Union men to yield to disunionists, reversing the divine
rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous, to re
pentance, — such as invocations to Washington, imploring
men to unsay what Washington said and undo what Wash
ington did. Neither let us be slandered from our duty
by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by
menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons

184 The Negro and the Nation
to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might;
and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as
we understand it."
In behalf of the South, Jefferson Davis, at about this
time, presented in the Senate, as their ultimatum, a set of
resolutions. These called for the recognition of slave-
property as an indefeasible right of territorial settlers, en
titled to congressional protection; for the enforcement of
the fugitive slave law, and the repeal of the " personal
liberty laws " by which it was hindered or nullified in many
States; and in general, for the rebuke of all anti-slavery
agitation. This was an exact equivalent of Lincoln's in
terpretation of the South's demand; the North must say
that slavery is right, and act accordingly. And this was
indeed an ultimatum, with the distinct intimation: "This,
or we dissolve the Union."

CHAPTER XX
THE ELECTION OF i860
Now came on the battle in the Presidential convention. The
Democratic convention was dramatic and momentous. It
met at Charleston, S. C, in the last days of April, i860.
The struggle was between Douglas and the extreme South.
The contest was not over the nomination, but on the resolu
tions. The Douglas party proposed the reaffirmation of
the Cincinnati platform of 1856, of which the kernel lay
in the words : " Non-intervention by Congress with slavery
in State or Territory " ; and to this they would now add
only a clause referring doubtful constitutional points to the
Supreme Court. But the Southern party would accept
nothing short of an affirmation that in the Territories until
organized as States, the right of slave-holding was absolute
and indefeasible, and Congress was bound to protect it.
On this issue the dispute in the convention was obstinate
and irreconcilable.
The South had long held unbroken sway in the Democ
racy and in the nation. It had absolutely controlled the last
two administrations, though headed by Northern men. Its
hold on the Senate had been unbroken, and temporary suc
cesses of the Republicans in the House had borne no fruit.
The Supreme Court had gone even beyond the demands of
the South. Only in Kansas had its cause been lost, because
the attempt to coerce a whole territorial population had at
last provoked revolt in the Northern Democracy. The
breach had been in some sort healed, but the leader of the
185

1 86 The Negro and the Nation
revolt was not forgiven or trusted. Meantime the alarm
at John Brown's raid had intensified the South's hostility
to all opponents or critics. All through the winter there
had been constant expulsion of anti-slavery men from that
section. And now the Southern forces mustered in the con
vention of the party they had so long controlled, insistent
and imperious, rejecting anything short of the fullest affir
mation of their claims in the territories.
Douglas was not on the ground, but through his lieu
tenants, and still more through the spirit he had infused
into his followers, he was a great and decisive power. In
the Senate he had been almost isolated among the Demo
crats; of late only Senator Pugh of Ohio had stood with
him against the administration. But he had appealed to the
people, and they had answered the call of the sturdy, au
dacious leader. However he might at times court the
favor of the South, he really stood for a broad and simple
principle, — the right of the majority of white men to rule.
For the negroes he cared nothing. But, in the territories,
the majority of white men should have slavery or not as
they pleased. In the Democratic partj^ the. majority should
control. And, in tlie last resort, in the nation itself the
majority should rule. Douglas thus stood squarely for the
rule of the majority within the white racfe. The Republi
cans coupled with the supremacy of the legal majority in
the nation the right and obligation of the majority to main
tain the personal freedom of the negro, except where the
Constitution allowed the States to maintain slavery. The
Southern Democracy asserted as its paramount principle the
right of slave-holding wherever the flag flew, except where
the State constitution forbade. If that right was denied
or limited — by a majority in the Democracy, or by a ma
jority in the nation — ^then beware!
The Douglas men met the threat with a defiance, — ^not

The Election of i860 187
wordy, but resolute. In Charleston, the stronghold and
citadel of the South, with their leader absent, with the dis
ruption of the party impending, they stood their ground.
The majority should rule, or they would know the reason
why! They decisively outvoted their opponents as to the
platform. Then the delegates from South Carolina and the
Gulf States deliberately and solemnly marched out of the
hall, and organized a separate convention. With that act
the rift began to open which was to be closed only after
four years of war.
With what expectation did the extreme South thus break
up the party? Did they beheve that their Northern asso
ciates would again capitulate, as they had done so often
before? Failing that, did they not know that a divided
Democracy meant victory for the Republicans? and had
they not committed themselves in that event to dissolve the
Union? Were they deliberately courting disunion, and
wilfully throwing away the large chance of continued
dominance within the Union which a united Democracy
might have? Did they really attach supreme importance
to this dogma about the territories, when Kansas had
shown how inevitably the local population must determine
the question, even against the efforts of the Federal Govern
ment? Did the Southern leaders prefer the election of a
Republican, their open opponent, to Douglas, their friend
and half-ally? To such questions as these there can be
little more than a conjectural answer. It would be most
interesting to know the true thoughts and purposes of the
leading delegates. We shall see a little later the interpre
tation given by one of their defenders. But the strong
presumption is that their action was the fruit less of a
policy than of a temper. They had long been growing into
a disposition which could brook no resistance and no con
tradiction. The irresponsible power of the master over his

1 88 The Negro and the Nation
slaves; the domination of the slave-holding class over the
local communities, and the expulsion of their opponents;
the control of the government by a united South over a
divided North, — ^these things had bred a self-confidence and
self-assertion which would stop at nothing. The slave-
holding principle, in full flower, was a principle which
recked nothing of legal majorities or governments. Its
basis was force, and it would use whatever force was neces
sary to maintain itself.
The Douglas Democrats were still patient. Left with
the original convention in their hands, they declined to
press their advantage. The traditional rule required a two-
thirds vote to nominate; and it was agreed that for this
purpose the seats left vacant by the seceders must be
counted, — which would prevent the nomination of Douglas.
Administration men from the North had stayed in the con
vention when their Southern friends left. The body ad
journed, to meet in Baltimore in the last of June. The rival
convention met in Richmond only to adjourn to the same
time and place. But any hopes of reunion were vain.
Neither side would yield. In the regular convention, to
some of the vacant seats Douglas delegates had in the
interim been chosen. They were admitted, against the pro
test of the administration minority, who found in this a
pretext for withdrawing and joining the seceding conven
tion. With these went a majority of the Massachusetts
delegates, including Benjamin F. Butler and Caleb Cush-
ing; Gushing had been president of the Charleston body.
The two conventions now made their respective nominations.
With Douglas was joined for Vice-President Herschel V.
Johnson of Georgia. The seceders nominated John C.
Breckinridge of Kentucky and Joseph Lane of Oregon.
Breckinridge was Vice-President under Buchanan; a man
of character and abiUty, of fine presence and bearing, a

The Election of i860 189
typical Kentuckian, afterward a general in the Confederate
service. Alexander H. Stephens in his War Between the States —
perhaps the best statement of the Southern side of the whole
case that has ever been made, — says that this secession from
the party was made (against his own judgment) not reck
lessly, nor to provoke disunion, but with the expectation of
electing Breckinridge. The calculation was that with four
Presidential candidates there would be no choice by the
people, and, the election being thrown into the House,
Breckinridge would be chosen; or, if the House could not
choose. Lane would surely be elected by the Senate. This,
says Stephens, was the view of President Buchanan, of
Breckinridge, Davis and a great majority of the Charleston
seceders. Stephens himself considered this a most pre
carious and hazardous calculation, wholly insufficient for so
grave a step. So obviously sound was this judgment, that
we inevitably recur to the belief that the Southern seces
sion was inspired not by calculation, but by a temper of
self-assertion, which fitted its hopes to its wishes.
The " Constitutional Union " party — legatee of the Whig
and American parties — held a convention at Baltimore in
May ; resolved simply for the maintenance of the Union and
Constitution and the enforcement of the laws; and nomi
nated John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massa
chusetts. It was the refuge of those who disliked the whole
sectional controversy, and were indifferent to both pro-
slavery and anti-slavery claims in comparison with peace
and union. It held a middle position, geographically as
well as in sentiment, and was strong in the border States.
The Republican convention met in Chicago in May. It
was a more sophisticated body than its predecessor of 1856 ;
with less of youthful and spontaneous enthusiasm for a
principle, and more of keen maneuvering for the candidates.

190 The Negro and the Nation
But it represented a disciplined and powerful party, clear
and strong in its essential principles, and looking confidently
to a national victory as almost within its grasp. The plat
form affirmed its familiar doctrines a« to slavery, and threw
out various inviting propositions as to foreign immigrants,
a homestead law, a Pacific railroad, etc. The vote of Penn
sylvania being important and doubtful, a bait was thrown
out in a high-tariff resolution. When a year or two later
the exigencies of the war demanded a large revenue, this
was obtained partly by a high tariff. In these circum
stances originated the Protectionist character of the Repub
lican party; a character confirmed by the natural alliance
of the favored interests with the favoring power.
The most prominent and in a sense logical candidate was
William H. Seward. As Governor and then Senator of New
York, as a polished and philosophic orator, as a man whose
anti-slavery and constitutional principles were well under
stood, — he was easily in the popular estimate the foremost
man of the party. Lincoln was in comparison obscure ; his
fame rested mainly on his achievements as a popular
debater ; he was wholly unversed in executive work and
almost equally so in legislation ; highly esteemed in his own
State, but little known beyond its borders. He had been-
proposed for the Presidency only a week before in the State
convention, with great hurrahing for " the rail-splitter,"
" honest old Abe." It seemed hardly more than one of the
" favorite son " candidacies which every canvass knows
in plenty. But he was supported by a group of very skillful
Illinois politicians. They worked up the local sentiment in
his favor; they filled the galleries of the Wigwam at day
light of the decisive day, and they took quieter and effective
measures. Simon Cameron claimed to control the vote of
Pennsylvania in the convention, and a bargain was made
with him that if Lincoln were elected he should have a

The Election of i860 191
seat in the Cabinet. Lincoln was not a party to the compact,
but when informed of it afterward he reluctantly made good
his part. The same thing was done with the friends of
Caleb B. Smith of Indiana, and with a like sequel.
Meantime, Seward met such difficulties as always beset
the first favorite in a race. The old alliance between
Seward, Weed and Greeley, had been broken, with anger
and resentment on Greeley's part, and he was now on the
floor of the convention actively opposing his old ally. Will
iam M. Evarts led the New York delegation for Seward.
Edward Bates of Missouri had some support, as more
moderate than Seward in his anti-slavery principles, but he
was too colorless a candidate to draw much strength. One
of Seward's friends, in seeking to win over the Bates men,
declared that Lincoln was just as radical as Seward. A
newspaper containing this being shown to Lincoln, he
penciled on the margin a reply which was forwarded to his
supporters, " Lincoln agrees with Seward in his irrepress
ible-conflict idea, and in negro equality ; but he is opposed to
Seward's higher law." The " irrepressible conflict " was
the exact counterpart of the " house divided against itself."
" Negro equality " marked a distinct advance since the
Douglas debate two years before, and such advance, gradual
but steady, was characteristic of Lincoln. It was no less
characteristic of him to disclaim the " higher law " doctrine,
— an obligation recognized by the individual conscience as
paramount to all human enactments. Indeed Seward,
though the phrase was his, was as little an idealist of the
individual conscience as was Lincoln.
Of the circumstances just mentioned, a part belongs to
the undercurrents which few spectators at the time discerned.
What the crowd and the world saw was three successive
ballots. First, Seward, 173^ ; Lincoln, 102 ; Cameron, 50^ ;
Chase and Bates following close. Then Cameron's name

192 The Negro and the Nation
was withdrawn, and Lincoln shot up abreast of Seward. A
third ballot, and Lincoln went up, up till he touched the line
of a clear majority. Then the Wigwam roared; the guns
boomed; in the first subsidence of the cheering Evarts gal
lantly moved that the choice be made unanimous, — and the
tall, homely Illinois lawyer was the Republican candidate
for the Presidency. If the result was not without its illus
trations of his own definition of politics — " the combination
of individual meannesses for the general good," — he at least
had sacrificed nothing of his convictions, had not worked
for his own elevation, or smirched his hands. And, unproved
though he was as to administrative power and seamanship
in a cyclone, there was yet a singular and intrinsic fitness in
his candidacy. His recognized quality was that which is
basal and dear to the common people, honesty; honesty in
thought, word and act. In his convictions, he was near to
the great mass of the party of freedom as it actually was;
frankly opposed to slavery, but reverent and tenacious of the
established order, even though it gave slavery a certain
standing-ground. He had, too, that intimate sympathy with
the common people, that knowledge of their thoughts and
ways, that respect for their collective judgment and will as
the ultimate arbiter — which are the essential traits in a
great leader of democracy.
In the four-sided canvass which followed, the lines were
not strictly geographical. The Republican party indeed took
its Vice-Presidential candidate from the North — Hannibal
Hamlin of Maine ; for no Southern man was likely to invite
exile or worse by taking the place; and the Republican
electoral tickets had no place or only a nominal one south
of Mason and Dixon's line, except in Missouri, where the
emancipation idea was still alive. But the three other parties
contested with each other in all the States. In Massachu
setts, the Breckinridge party had as its candidate for Gov-

The Election of i860 193
emor the unscrupulous Butler; and among its supporters
was Caleb Gushing, erudite, brilliant, conscienceless, and a
pro-slavery bigot. At the South, the Douglas party had
considerable strength. The hot-heads who had split the
Democracy and were ready to divide the nation had by no
means an undisputed ascendency. Stephens and Toombs
parted company; they headed respectively the Douglas and
Breckinridge electoral tickets in Georgia. Davis spent part
of the summer in privacy at the North ; he saw enough to
convince him that the North would fight if challenged, but
the warning was in vain.
The special interest of the campaign centered in the
menace of disunion. The territorial question in itself had
grown almost wearisome, and had no immediate application.
The fugitive slave law had fallen into the background;
renditions were so uncertain and dangerous that they were
seldom attempted. John Brown's foray was to the North
a bygone affair, with no dream of its repetition. The few
promoters of his project had shrunk back at the catastrophe ;
the mass of the people had always looked on it as a crazy
affair; and with personal sympathy or honor for him, the
raid was almost forgotten, — but the South could not so easily
forget. But the living and burning issue was the threat of
secession if Lincoln should be elected, — a threat made openly
and constantly at the South. The campaign was full of bit
terness. " Black Republicans " was a term in constant use.
The violent language was not all at the South. Gushing
declared, when in the preceding autumn Massachusetts
reelected Banks as governor, " A band of drunken mutineers
have seized hold of the opinion of this commonwealth — the
avowed and proclaimed enemies of the Constitution of the
United States," — with further hysteric talk about the ship
of state, with the pirate's flag at the masthead, drifting into
the gulf of perdition. The New York Herald was full of

194 The Negro and the Nation
wild and inflammatory words. Papers of a different char
acter — like the Boston Courier, representative of the party
which included Everett and Winthrop — habitually charged
the Republican party with John Brownism and disunionism.
The South not unnaturally believed that the North was
seriously divided, and could never hold together against its
claims. But most Northern people regarded the disunion
threats as mere gasconade, — meant only to carry an election,
and then to be quietly dropped. But if they were meant in
earnest, — well, there would be something to be said, and
done too, on the other side.
Douglas, with almost no chance of success, made a bold
and active canvass. Through this year he showed a courage
far higher than the mere dexterity which had been his
chief distinction before. In part, it was an expression of a
changing temper in the people. He stood openly and stoutly
for the principle of majority rule. While speaking at Wheel
ing, Va., he was questioned as to whether he held that the
election of Lincoln would justify secession. He answered
promptly that it would not, and if secession were attempted,
he would support a Republican President in putting it down
by force. That pledge to the country he redeemed, when at
the outbreak of the war he gave his immediate and full
adherence to President Lincoln, — representing and leading
the " War Democrats " who practically sohdified the North,
and insured its victory. At Wheeling, he passed on the
question answered by him for Breckinridge to answer. But
Breckinridge ignored the challenge, — a silence which was
what the lawyers call a " pregnant negative."
November brought victory to the Republicans. In the
popular vote, Lincoln had about 1,860,000; Douglas, i,370)"
000 ; Breckinridge, 840,000 ; and Bell, 590,000. The electoral
votes stood — or would have stood, if the electoral conven
tions had all met — Lincoln, 180; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39;

The Election of i860 195
Douglas, 12. Lincoln carried every Northern State except
New Jersey; Douglas, only part of New Jersey and Mis
souri; Bell, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee; Breckin
ridge, all the rest of the South. The successful candidate
was thus in a popular minority, — no new thing. The dis
tinctively Southern candidate was doubly in a minority. The
supporters of Lincoln, Douglas and Bell, were all to be
counted against the extreme Southern claim, and much more
against any assertion of that claim by secession. Unitedly,
their support outnumbered that of Breckinridge by more
than four to one. If ever a party was fairly and overwhelm
ingly out-voted, it was the party whose central doctrine was
that slavery must be protected in the United States ter
ritories. Now the question was, would that party acquiesce in the
decision of the majority? At every previous election in
the nation's history the minority had acquiesced promptly
and loyally. When Jefferson was elected. New England
looked on the new President as a Jacobin in politics and an
infidel in religion. But New England acquiesced without an
hour's hesitation. When Jackson was chosen, his opponents
saw in him a rude and ignorant demagog. But the anti-
Jackson people accepted the new President as they had
accepted Monroe and Adams. In the choice of Buchanan,
the Republicans saw an assertion of the nationalism of
slavery, and a menace of the subjugation of Kansas. But
the supporters of Fremont recognized Buchanan as unhes
itatingly as if he had been their own choice. What was the
meaning of popular government, except that the minority
should submit to the legitimate victory of the majority? On
what did the nation's existence rest, but the loyalty of its
citizens to the nation's self-determination in its elections?
And now, would the minority resist the decision of the
majority? Would the Southern States attempt to break up

196 The Negro and the Nation
the Union ? The North could not and would not believe it.
But there was a strong party at the South which was fully
convinced that the election of Lincoln was the crown of a
series of grievances which justified the South in withdraw
ing from the Union ; that such withdrawal was a clear con
stitutional right; and that the honor and interest of the
South demanded that it be made.

CHAPTER XXI
FACE TO FACE
To understand the meaning of secession and the Civil War
which followed it, we must fathom the thoughts and feelings
of the opposing parties. Let us suppose two representative
spokesmen to state their case in turn.
Let the Secessionist speak first. The Secessionists were
not at first a majority of the people of the Southern States,
but it was their view which prevailed. What that view was
we know certainly and from abundant evidence, — the formal
acts of secession, the speeches of the leaders in Congress
and at home, the histories since written by the President
and Vice-President of the Confederacy, and countless sim
ilar sources. This, substantially, was the Secessionist's
position : —
" This Union is a partnership of States, of which the
formal bond is the Constitution; the vital principle is the
enjoyment by each section and community of its rights ; and
the animating spirit is the mutual respect and good-will of
all members of the Union. The Northern people have vio
lated the provisions of the Constitution ; they have infringed
the essential rights of the Southern communities, and
threatened to invade them still further; and they have dis
placed the spirit of mutual good-will by alienation, suspicion,
and hostility. The formal bond of the Union being thus
impaired, and its vital spirit lost, we propose explicitly and
finally to dissolve this partnership of States, and reorganize
our Southern communities in a new Confederacy.
" We charge you of the North with explicit violation of
197

198 The Negro and the Nation
the Constitution in the matters of the territories, the Supreme
Court and the fugitive slaves.
" You deny our right to carry a part of our property, —
our unquestioned property under the Constitution, — into
the territories which belong equally to the whole nation, and
which have been acquired by our treasure and our blood not
less than by yours. You prevent slave-holders from par
ticipating in the colonization of this domain, and thus deter
mine in advance that its future States shall exclude our
institutions. You thus unfairly build up a political pre
ponderance, which you use for the discouragement and
injury of our industrial system.
"Against this wrong we have appealed to the Supreme
Court, and secured its express affirmation of the right to
carry slave property, equally with any other property, into
the territories. This solemn decree of the highest judicial
authority you set at naught and defy. You say you will
reorganize the court and reverse the decision. You do not
even wait for that ; you assume in party convention to reverse
the mandate of the Supreme Court. You not only contradict
its declaration that slavery in the territories is protected
by the Constitution; you go farther, and affirm that Con
gress has no authority to protect it there.
" The Constitution affirms that fugitives from labor must
be returned to their masters. A Federal statute provides
for such return. That statute is not only decried by your
orators and resisted by your mobs; it is contravened and
practically nullified by statutes in all the free States.
" These specific wrongs against us are inspired by a dis
position which in itself dissolves the bond of friendship
between you and us, — a spirit of open and avowed hostility
to our social and industrial system. The Union as our
fathers established it, and as alone it has any value, is not
a thing of mere legalities, — it must be a true union of hearts

Face to Face 1199
and hands, a spirit of mutual confidence and respect among
the various communities of one people. But for many years
our most characteristic Southern institution has been widely
and loudly denounced among you as wicked and inhuman.
It has been proclaimed as ' the sum of all villainies.' We
have been held up to the reprobation of the world as tyrants
and man-stealers. Those at the North who disapproved
of such abuse have failed to silence or repress it. This
denunciation has spread until apparently it has won the pre-
.ponderating sentiment of the North. A national household
in which we are thus branded as sinners and criminals is
no longer a home for us.
" This hostility has borne its natural fruit in open attack.
A peaceful Virginia village has been assailed by armed men,
its citizens shot down while defending their homes, and the
summons given for servile insurrection with all its horrors.
The leader in this crime, justly condemned and executed
under Virginia's laws, has been widely honored through
out the North as a hero and martyr. By the light of that
applause we must interpret the real feeling of the North,
and its probable future course toward us.
" The Presidential election has now been won by a party
whose avowed principle is the restriction of slavery, while
its animating spirit is active hostility to slavery. We cannot
trust the Republican party in its profession of respect for
the Constitution. Even in its formal declaration it ignores
a Supreme Court decision, and advances a revolutionary
doctrine as to slavery in the territories. Its elected candi
date has declared that 'this government cannot endure
permanently half slave and half free.' The party's only
reason for being is opposition to slavery, and there is every
probability that this opposition will, with growing power
and opportunity, be directed against the system as it now
exists in our Southern States.

200 The Negro and the Nation
" The spirit of the American Union is dissolved already,
when its chief magistrate has been elected by the votes of
one section and by a party animated solely by hostility to
the industrial and social system of the other section. The
formal bond of the Union can hereafter be only an instru
ment to harass and destroy our liberties. We therefore pro
pose that that bond be at once and finally cancelled. It is
and has been from the beginning the right of any State
to withdraw from the national partnership at its own
pleasure. We call on our brethren of the South to take
prompt action for the deliberate, legal and solemn with
drawal of their States from the Union, and their organiza
tion in a new Confederacy."
So in effect spoke the leading spirits of the Gulf and Cot
ton States as soon as Lincoln was elected in November, i860.
Less promptly, coming only gradually into unison, but with
growing clearness and emphasis, spoke the dominant spirit
of the North in the months between Lincoln's election and
inauguration. This in substance was the Northern reply to
the Secessionist: —
" We deny that we have violated the Constitution, that we
have wronged you, or that we intend to wrong you. We
have taken no advantage of you beyond the legitimate vic
tories of political controversy. We are loyal to the Consti
tution, and to that which is deeper and higher than the
Constitution, — the spirit of American nationality.
" Taking up your specific charges, — the status of slavery
in the various territories has been debated and battled in
Congress and among the people for seventy years, and as
now one decision and now another has been reached it has
been accepted by all until peaceably changed. For six
years past it has been the cardinal question in national
politics. Within that period three views have been urged,
— that slavery goes by natural and constitutional right into

Face to Face 201
all the territories, that the matter is to be settled in each ter
ritory by the local population, and that slavery should be
excluded by national authority from all the territories. For
this last view we have argued, pleaded, waited, until at last
the supreme tribunal of all — the American people in a
national election — has given judgment in our favor.
" You cite the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court
as establishing slavery in the territories. But you wrest
from that decision a force which it does not legally carry.
The best lawyers are with us as to this. The court at the
outset dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction, because
Dred Scott, being a negro, could not be an American citizen,
and therefore had no standing before the court. This being
said, the court by its own decision could go no farther with
the case. When a majority of the judges went on to dis
cuss the status of slavery in the territories, — as it might have
come up if they had gone on to try the case on its merits —
they were uttering a mere obiter dictum, — a personal opinion
carrying no judicial authority. The attempt to make these
side-remarks a decisive pronouncement on the supreme
political question of the time is beyond law or reason. It
is preposterous that the court's incidental opinion, on a case
which it had disclaimed the power to try, should invalidate
that exclusion of slavery by national authority which had
been affirmed by the great acts of 1787 and 1820, and had
been exercised for seventy years.
" As to fugitive slaves, the Personal Liberty laws are
designed to safeguard by the State's authority its free black
citizens from the kidnapping which the Federal statute, with
its refusal of a jury trial, renders easy. If they sometimes
make difficulty in the rendition of actual fugitives, — you
must not expect a whole-hearted acceptance of the role of
slave-catchers by the Northern people. You have the Fed
eral statute, and may take what you can under it, — but if

202 The Negro and the Nation
under the bond Shylock gets only his pound of flesh, there
is no help for him.
" Come now to your broader complaint, that the spirit
of the Union has been sacrificed by Northern hostility
toward your peculiar institution. True, you have had to
put up with harsh words, but we have had to put up with
a harsh fact. You have had to tolerate criticism, but we
have had to tolerate slavery under our national flag. It is
an institution abhorrent to our sense of right. We believe
it contrary to the law of God and the spirit of humanity.
We consider it unjust in its essential principle, and full of
crying abuses in its actual administration. Its existence
in one section of the Union is a reproach to us among the
nations of the earth, and a blot on the flag. Yet we so
thoroughly recognize that our national principle allows each
State to shape its own institutions that we have not
attempted and shall not attempt to hinder you from cherish
ing slavery among yourselves as long as you please. If,
for the vast and vital interests bound up with the unity of
this nation, we can tolerate the presence within it of a sys
tem we so disapprove, cannot you on your part tolerate the
inevitable criticism which it calls out among us ?
" If mutual grievances are to be rehearsed, we have our
full share. What has become of the constitutional pro
vision which guarantees to the citizens of every State their
rights in all the States? When black seamen, citizens of
our commonwealths, enter South Carolina ports, they are
thrown into jail or sold into slavery. If we send a lawyer
and statesman to remonstrate, he is driven out. Our news
papers are excluded from your mails. You have extin
guished free speech among your own citizens. If the
Republican party is sectional, it is because any man who
supports it, south of the Ohio, is liable to abuse and exile.
You have shaped our national policy in lines of dishonor.

Face to Face 203
With your Northern allies you have forced war on a weak
neighbor and dispoiled her of territory. You have poured
thousands of fraudulent voters into Kansas, have supported
their usurping government by Federal judges and troops,
and have tolerated the ruffians who harried peaceful settlers.
One of your congressional leaders has answered a senator's
arguments by beating him into insensibility, and you have
honored and reelected the assailant. And now, when we
have fairly won the day in a national election, and for
purposes peaceful, constitutional, and beneficent, — you pro
pose to break up the nation, and reorganize your part of it
expressly for the maintenance and promotion of slavery.
" With such complaints on your part, and such com
plaints on ours, what is the manly, the patriotic, the suffi
cient recourse? That which we offer is that you and we,
the whole American people, go forward loyally and patiently
with the familiar duties of American citizens. Let Time
and Providence arbitrate our controversies. Let us trust
the institutions under which for seventy years our nation
has grown great; let us, now and hereafter, acquiesce in
that deliberate voice of the people which our fathers estab
lished as the sovereign authority. For thirty years you
have had in the Presidency either a Southerner or a North
ern man with Southern principles, — and we acquiesced.
Now we have chosen a genuine Northerner, — will not you
acquiesce? Four years ago the Presidential contest was
held on the same lines as this year ; you won, and we cheer
fully submitted, — now we have won, will not you loyally
submit? We disclaim any attack on your domestic institu
tions. The invasion by John Brown was repudiated by
practically the entire North. Honor for a brave, mis
guided man meant no approval of his criminal act. For
the advance of our distinctive principles, — inimical, we
own, to your system of slave labor, — we look only to the

204 The Negro and the Nation
gradual conversion of individual opinion, and to the ultimate
acceptance by your own people of the principles of universal
liberty. We believe that civilization and Christianity must
steadily work to establish freedom for all men. On that
ground, and in that sense, do we believe that ' this govern
ment cannot permanently endure half slave and half free.'
Pending that advance, we propose only to exclude slavery
from the common domain; to tolerate slavery as sectional,
while upholding freedom as national. If you are still dis
satisfied, yet is it not better to bear the evils that we have
than fly to others that we know not of ? Nay, do we not too
well know, and surely if dimly foresee, the terrific evils
which must attend the attempted disruption of this nation?
" A nation it is, and not a partnership. A nation, one and
inseparable, we propose that it shall continue. We deny
that the founders and fathers ever contemplated a mere
temporary alliance dissoluble at the caprice of any member.
To the Union, established under the Constitution, just as
earnestly as to the cause of independence, they virtually
pledged ' their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.'
With every year the nation has knitted its texture closer,
as its benefits increased and its associations grew. A nation
is something other than a pleasure party, or a mutual admi
ration society, — it includes a principle of rightful authority
and necessary submission. The harmony vital to national
unity is not merely a mutual complacence of the members,
— at its root is a habitual, disciplined obedience to the
central authority, which in a democracy is the orderly
expressed will of the majority. You cannot leave us and we
cannot let you go. And if you attempt to break the bond, it
is at your peril."

CHAPTER XXII
HOW THEY DIFFERED
If the typical Secessionist and the typical Unionist, as just
described, could rally a united South and a united North to
their respective views, there was no escape from a violent
clash. Whether the two sections could be so united each
in itself appeared extremely doubtful. But below these
special questions of political creed were underlying diver
gences of sentiment and character between North and South,
which fanned the immediate strife as a strong wind fans
a starting flame. There was first a long-growing alienation
of feeling, a mutual dislike, rooted in the slavery 'contro
versy, and fed partly by real and partly by imaginary dif
ferences. Different personal and social ideals were fostered
by the two industrial systems. The Southerner of the
dominant class looked on manual labor as fit only for
slaves and low-class whites. His ideal of society was a
pyramid, the lower courses representing the physical toilers,
the intermediate strata supplying a higher quality of social
service, while the crown was a class refined by leisure and
cultivation and free to give themselves to generous and
hospitable private life, with public affairs for their serious
pursuit. He regarded the prominence of the laboring
class in Northern communities as marking the inferiority
of their society, and in the absorption of the wealthier class
in trade he read a further disadvantage. The virtues he
most honored were courage, courtesy, magnanimity, — all
that he delighted to characterize as " chivalry." He was
inclined to consider the North as materialistic and mer-
aos

2o6 The Negro and the Nation
cenary, and even its virtues as based largely on "honesty
is the best pohcy."
This low opinion was heartily reciprocated by the North
erner. He believed the very foundation of Southern society
to be injustice, — the unpaid labor of the slave, — and the
superstructure to correspond. He looked on the slave
holders as cruel to their slaves and arrogant toward the
world at large, especially toward himself. The popular
opinion of slavery fastened on its abuses and ignored its
mitigations. On the average reader of Uncle Tom's
Cabin, Legree made a deeper impression than St. Clare
or Mrs. Shelby.
Even the religious and intellectual life of the two sections
had grown unsympathetic and often antagonistic. The
South held tenaciously to the traditional orthodox theology.
In the North there was free discussion and movement of
thought. Even the conservative Presbyterian church had
its New School and Old School ; and in New England the
Congregational body was divided by the birth and growth
of Unitarianism. At all this turmoil the South looked
askance, and was genuinely shocked by the disintegration of
the old creed. The North in turn looked with something
like suspicion, if not scorn, on a Christianity which used
the Bible as an arsenal to fortify slavery. The Northern
brood of reforms and isms, — wise, unwise, or fantastic, —
moved the South to a hostility which made little discrimi
nation between the idealism of Emerson, the iconoclasm of
Parker, and the vagaries of " free love." The group of
literary lights, — Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier,
Holmes, and their compeers, — won Southern dislike by their
hostility to slavery. The South itself, singularly barren of
original literature, — its prolific new births in our own day
are one of the most conspicuous fruits of emancipation, —
clung fondly to the classical and feudal traditions, and

How They Differed 207
hardly admitted any literary sovereign later than Scott and'
Byron. In a national union, as in marriage, there may be long
continuance and even substantial happiness in spite of many
differences. So was it with England and Scotland, so is
it with Germany and with Italy. But in slavery there was
so profound an incompatibility with the fact and idea of
personal freedom as held by the American people at large,
that the inevitable opposition of the two systems was des
perate almost beyond cure. That opposition, and all the
attendant circumstances of divergence, were aggravated in
their divisive effects by the extreme bitterness of the fore
most debaters on both sides. The very nature of the sub
ject tempted to vehement criticism, and defense of equal
vehemence. But there was a great aggravation of bitter
ness when, in the van of the attack on slavery, the temper
of Woolman and Lundy, of Jefferson and Franklin and
Channing, was replaced by the temper of Garrison and his
followers. Their violence inflamed alike the North and the
South, and, with the answering violence it provoked, worked
the two peoples into a largely false and unjust conception
of each other's character. The South's retort was no less
passionate in words, while in act it took form in expulsion
of citizens and suppression of free speech. Garrison's burn
ing words, and the polished invective of Phillips, live in
literature; the wrath which answered them in Southern
orators and newspapers has left less of record; but on both
sides the work was effectually done of sowing mutual
suspicion and hate.
If only North and South could have known each other's
best, as they knew each other's worst! They were kept
apart by the want of any stream of migration between them,
like that which united East and West, with the resulting
network of family connections and friendly intercourse.

2o8 The Negro and the Nation
Sometimes a Northern visitor, or an English traveler like
Thackeray, saw and appreciated the cultivated society of
Charleston or Richmond, or plantation life at its best, — a
hospitable, genial, outdoor life, with masters and mistresses
who gave their best thought and toil to the care of their
servants. Sometimes a Southerner had a revelation like
that of General Zachary Taylor, when, looking from one
of the heights in Springfield, " the city of homes," on a
landscape thick dotted with the cheerful abodes of an indus
trial community, he exclaimed : " You can see no such
sight as that in a Southern State ! " And always there were
some men and women who out of wide knowledge or a
natural justice recognized and loved the people of the whole
land. But too frequently, in those days, the Southerner saw
in the North only a mass of plebeian laborers excited by
political and religious fanaticism; while the Northerner
looked south to a group of tyrannical and arrogant slave
holders lording it over their victims. To the one, the
typical figure of the North was John Brown; to the other,
the representative of the South was Brooks of South
Carolina. There were two other marked differences between the
sections. The first was the greater concentration of interest
in the South on national politics, and the leadership conceded
to the political class. In the North, the general occupation
in laborious and gainful pursuits, and the wide variety
of social interests which competed for attention, — education,
reform, the debating society, the town-meeting, — all acted
to hold men in other fields than those of national politics.
The best brains were invited by commerce, the factory, the
railroad, the college, the laboratory, the newspaper, — as well
as by the Capitol. But to the Southern planter and his
social compeer no pursuit compared in attraction with the
political field, and above all the public life of the nation.

How They Differed 209
The mass of the people, especially in the country districts,
found in the political meeting an interest whose only rival
was the camp-meeting. Besides, when the burning political
question was slavery, it came home to the business and
bosoms of the South, while to the North it was remote.
And thus, when the secession movement broke upon the
land, the Southern people grasped it with a concentration,
energy, and response to their habitual leaders, in strongest
contrast to the surprise, hesitation, and division, which at
first characterized the North.
And, as the last distinction to be here noted, one section
was far more habituated than the other to methods of
physical force in private and public affairs. It was an
instance of this that the duel was in common practice at
the South up to the Civil War, while at the North it had
disappeared sixty years earlier, after the encounter of Burr
and Hamilton. At the South the street affray was common.
There is a picture of Southern life which ought to have a
wide reading, in Kate Beaumont, a story of South Car
olina, written by J. W. De Forest, a Northerner and a Union
soldier. Its tone is sympathetic, and neither the negro nor
the sectional question plays a part. It portrays admirable
and delightful people ; old Judge Kershaw is indeed " the
white rose of South Carolina chivalry," and the Beaumonts
and McAllisters, with all their foibles, are a strong and lov
able group. But the pistol is the ready arbiter of every
quarrel ; the duelist's code is so established that it can hardly
be ignored even by one who disapproves it; and the high-
toned gentleman is no whit too high for the street encounter
with his opponent. Old-time Southerners know how faith
ful is that picture. So, too, the Southern people turned
readily to public war. They supplied the pioneers who
colonized Texas and won by arms its independence of
Mexico. They not only supported the Mexican war by

2IQ The Negro and the Nation
their votes, but many of the flower of their youth enlisted
for it. From their young men were recruited the "fili
busters " who, from time to time, tried to revolutionize or
annex Cuba or some Central American State. The soldier
figured largely in the Southern imagination. But the North
inclined strongly to the ways of peace. That is the natural
temper of an industrial democracy. It is the note of a civ
ilization advanced beyond slavery and feudalism. And of
the moral leaders of the North, some of the foremost had
been strong champions of peace. Channing had pleaded for
it as eloquently as he pleaded for freedom. Intemperance,
slavery, and war had been the trinity of evil assailed by
earnest reformers. Sumner had gone to the length of pro
claiming the most unjust peace better than the justest war,
— an extreme from which he was destined to be converted.
Garrison and Phillips, while their language fanned the pas
sions whose inevitable tendency is toward war, had in
theory declared all warfare to be unchristian. And, apart
from sentiment or conviction, the industrial and peaceful
habit was so widely diffused that it was questionable how
much remained of the militant temper which can and will
fight on good occasion. The South rashly believed that
such temper was extinct in the North, and the North on its
part doubted how far the vaunts of Southern courage had
any substance.

CHAPTER XXIII
WHY THEY FOUGHT
Now, when the issue was about to be joined, let it be noted
that Secession based itself, in profession and in reality,
wholly on the question of slavery. There lay the grievance,
and for that alone a remedy was to be had even at the price
of sundering the Union. Later, when actual war broke
out, other considerations than slavery came into play. To
unite and animate the South came the doctrine of State
rights, the sympathy of neighborhood, and the primal
human impulse of self-defense. But the critical movement,
the action which first sundered the Union and so led to
war, — was inspired wholly and solely by the defense and
maintenance of slavery. The proposition is almost too plain
for argument. But it receives illustration from the great
debate in the Georgia Legislature, when Toombs advocated
Secession and Stephens opposed it. Toombs, evidently un
willing to rest the case wholly on slavery, alleged three other
grievances at the hands of the North — the fishery bounties,
the navigation laws, and the protective tariff. Stephens
easily brushed aside the bounties and navigation laws as
bygone or unimportant. As to the tariff, he showed that
the last tariff law, enacted in 1857, was supported by every
Massachusetts member of Congress and every Georgia mem
ber, including Toombs himself. Whait further he said
belongs to a later chapter. But he was unquestionably right,
and all rational history confirms it, that the one force im
pelling the South to Secession was the imperilled interest of
slavery, 211

212 The Negro and the Nation
But the resistance which Secession encountered from the
North was from the outset other and wider than hostility
to slavery. Anti-slavery feeling was indeed strong in the
Northern heart; the restriction of slavery was the supreme
principle of the Republican party; the resentment that the
national bond should be menaced in the interest of slavery
gave force to the opposition which Secession instantly
aroused. But, on the one hand, the extreme opponents of
slavery. Garrison and his followers, were now, as they had
always been, willing and more than willing that the South
should go off and take slavery with it. And on the other
hand, the anti-secessionists of the nation included a multi
tude. North and South, who were either friendly to slavery
or indifferent to it. Even of the Republican party the mass
were more concerned for the rights of the white man than
of the black man. They were impatient of the dominance
of the government by the South, and meant to unseat the
Southern oligarchy from the place of power at Wash
ington. They intended that the territories should be kept for the
free immigrant, who should not be degraded by slaves at
work in the next field. Only a minority of the party,—
though a minority Hkely in the long run to lead it— looked
with hope and purpose to ultimate emancipation. And when
the question of Secession was at issue by the people's votes
and voice, and had not yet come to the clash of arms, the
rights and interests of the slave fell into the background.
The supreme question of the time was felt to be the unity
or the division of the nation.
The Secessionists' plea was in two clauses; that their
States were aggrieved by Northern action, and that they
had a legal right to leave the Union without let or hin
drance. A double answer met them, from their fellow-
Soutberncrs that it was impolitic to secede, and from the

Why They Fought 213
North that secession was illegal, unpermissible, and to be
resisted at all costs.
The Secessionists were fluent in argument that the
framers of the Constitution intended only a partnership of
States, dissoluble by any at will. However difficult to prove
that the original builders purposed only such a temporary
edifice, there was at least ground for maintaining that they
gave no authority for coercing a State into obedience or
submission, and indeed rejected a proposal to give such
authority. If there were no legal or rightful authority
to keep a State in the Union by force, then for all practical
purposes its right to go out of the Union was established.
But against that right, as ever contemplated by the fathers,
or allowable under the Constitution, there was strong con
tention on legal and historic grounds.
But deeper than all forensic or academic controversy was
the substantial and tremendous fact, that the American peo
ple had grown into a nation, organic and vital. That unity
was felt in millions of breasts, cherished by countless fire
sides, recognized among the peoples of the earth.
There had developed that mysterious and mighty senti
ment, the love of country. It rested 'in part on the recog
nition of material benefits. From the Atlantic to the Pacific,
from the Lakes to the Gulf, the tides of commerce flowed
free, unvexed by a single custom-house. The Mississippi
with its traffic united the Northern prairies and the Lou
isiana delta like a great artery. Safety to person and prop
erty under the laws, protection by an authority strong
enough to curb riot or faction at home, and with a shield
ing arm that reached wherever an American traveler might
wander, — these benefits rooted patriotism deep in the soil
of homely usefulness. And the tree branched and blos
somed in the upper air of generous feeling. Man's sym
pathy expands in widening spheres, and his being enlarges

214 The Negro and the Nation
as he comes into vital union, first with wife and children,
then successively with neighborhood, community, country,
and at last with humanity. The Russian peasant, in his
ignorance and poverty, or facing the foe in war, is subli
mated by his devotion to the White Czar and Holy Russia.
Still more inspiring and profound is the patriotism of a
citizen whose nation is founded on equal brotherhood.
Deeper than analysis can probe is this passion of patriotism.
Gladstone characterized it well, when, writing in August,
1 86 1, he recognized among the motives sustaining the
Union cause, " last and best of all, the strong instinct of
national life, and the abhorrence of Nature itself toward all
severance of an organized body."
This sentiment, though strained and weakened in the
South, was still powerful even in that section. This was
especially true of the border States, where slavery was of
less account than in the Gulf and Cotton States. The spirit
of Clay was still strong in Kentucky, and was represented
by the venerable John J. Crittenden in the Senate. Of a
like temper was John Bell of Tennessee, Presidential candi
date of the Union and Constitutional party in i860. From
the same State Andrew Johnson, in the Senate, stood for
the sturdy and fierce Unionism of the white laboring class.
Virginia was strongly bound to the Union by her great his
torical traditions. North Carolina, Missouri, and Arkansas
were, until the war broke out, attached to the Union rather
than the Southern cause. It was in the belt of States from
South Carolina to Texas, in which the planter class was
altogether dominant, that the interest of slavery, and the
pride of class and of State, had gradually loosened the bonds
of affection and allegiance to the national idea. Calhoun
himself had been an ardent lover of the Union. The clash
between the national and sectional interests had been to him
a tragedy. Nullification was his device for perpetuating

Why They Fought 215
the Union while allowing its members relief from possible
oppression, — ^but nullification had failed, in fact as in logic.
Now the Secessionists went further than Calhoun had
ever found occasion to go. They proposed to break up the
nation, at first by the withdrawal of their separate States,
to be followed by the organization of a Southern Confed
eracy. Their grievance was the restriction of their indus
trial system, and its threatened destruction, and the failure
of the Union to serve its proper ends of justice and frater
nity. But they wholly disclaimed any revolutionary action.
They maintained that the withdrawal of their States was an
exercise of their strictly legal and constitutional right. This
is the plea which is insistently and strenuously urged by
their defenders. Their foremost actors in the drama, Davis
and Stephens, became at a later day its historians, not so
much to record its events, as to plead with elaboration and
reiteration that Secession was a constitutional right. But
all their fine-spun reasoning ran dead against a force which
it could no more overcome than King Canute's words could
halt the tide, — the fact of American unity, as realized in the
hearts of the American people.
The mass of men live not by logic, but by primal instincts
and passions. Where one man could explain why the nation
was an indestructible organism rather than a partnership
dissoluble at will, a thousand men could and would fight
to prevent the nation from being dissolved. But here and
there on this planet is a man who must think things through
to the end, and have a solid reason for what he
does. Such a man was Abraham Lincoln. He never
could rest contented till he had worked the problem
out clearly in his own head, and then had stated the answer
in words that the common man could understand. Such an
answer to the whole Secessionist argument, quite apart from
the slavery question, he gave in one brief paragraph of his

2i6 The Negro and the Nation
inaugural. " There is no alternative for continuing the gov
ernment but acquiescence on the one side or the other. If
the minority in such a case will secede rather than acquiesce,
they make a precedent which in turn will ruin and divide
them; for a minority of their own will secede from them,
whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a
minority. For instance, why not any portion of a new Con
federacy, a year or so hence, arbitrarily secede again, pre
cisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede
from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now
being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there
such perfect identity of interests among the States to com
pose a new Union as to produce harmony only, and prevent
renewed Secession? Plainly, the central idea of Secession
is the essence of anarchy." That was the key-word of the
situation, in the court of reason and conscience, — "the
central idea of Secession is the essence of anarchy."
The system which the Secessionists proposed to break up
had a part of its highest value in that very division of
authority between State and nation which gave them their
pretext for a separation. The Federal plan was the special
contribution of America to the evolution of popular self-
government. Until that step had been taken, not only did
the practical difficulties of democracy increase enormously
with the increase of area and population, but a vast central
ized democracy was liable to be itself an oppressive despot
ism, as France has learned at bitter cost. The Federal plan,
like most other great advances, came not as the conception
of an ingenious brain, but from the growth of social facts*
The thirteen colonies started and grew as individual off
shoots from Great Britain. Under a common impulse they
broke loose from the mother-country; then, by a common
necessity, they bound themselves together in a governmental
Union, each member retaining jurisdiction in such affairs

Why They Fought 217
as were its special concern. The resulting Federal Union
was a combination of strength and freedom such as the
world had never seen. With this for its organic form, with
its spritual lineage drawn from the Puritan, the Quaker
and the Cavalier, with Anglo-Saxon stock for its core, yet
with open doors and assimilating power for all races, and
with a continent for its field of expansion, — the American
people became the leader and the hope of humanity. This
was the nation which the Secessionists proposed to rend
asunder. All government implies a principle of authority, and re
quires the occasional sacrifice of the individual's pleasure.
The national bond has one strand in mutual good-will, but
another strand is personal sacrifice, and another is stem
command. The Union required some sacrifices, not only of
material price, — as when a man pays just taxes, or acquiesces
in a fiscal system which he considers unjust, — but sacrifices
sometimes even of moral sentiment. Lincoln, explaining
his position in 1855 to his old friend Speed, of Kentucky,
repelled the suggestion that he had no personal interest in
slavery. He says that whenever he crosses the border he
sees manacled slaves or some similar sight which is a tor
ment to him. " You ought to appreciate how much the great
body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings in
order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the
Union." That acquiescence, — a costly sacrifice to the higher good ;
and the typical attitude of the Republicans and the moderate
anti-slavery men, — seemed to Garrison and Phillips and
their school a sinful compliance with evil. The extreme
Abolitionists, as much as the extremists of the South, were
opposed to the Union. They had no comprehension of the
interests and principles involved in the preservation of the
national life. One of the pleasant traits told of Garrison's

2i8 The Negro and the Nation
private hfe is this: He was fond of music, especially relig
ious music, but had little cultivation in that direction; and
he would sit at the piano and pick out the air of the good
old hymn-tunes with one hand, not knowing how to play
the bass which makes a harmony. That was typical of his
mental attitude, — ^he knew and loved the melody of freedom,
but the harmony blended of freedom and national unity he
did not comprehend.
The Southern disunionists finally carried their section, but
the Abolition disunionists never made the slightest approach
to converting the North. It was not merely that many at
the North were indifferent to slavery, while to the whole
community its interest was remote compared to what it was
to the South. There was another reason for the failure of
the Northern disunionists. Among the class to whom the
appeal for freedom came closest home, the idealists, the men
of moral conviction and enthusiasm, were many to whose
ideality and enthusiasm American unity also spoke with
powerful voice. Patriotism was more to them than a mate
rial interest, more than an enlarged and glowing sentiment
of neighborhood and kinship, — it was devotion to moral
interests of which the national organism was the symbol and
the agent. They saw, as Webster saw, that " America is in
separably connected, fast bound up, in future and by fate,
with these great interests," — of free representative govern
ment, entire religious liberty, improved systems of national
intercourse, the spirit of free inquiry, and the general dif
fusion of knowledge. They looked still higher than this, —
they saw that America rightly tended toward universal per
sonal liberty, and full opportunity and encouragement to
man as man, of whatever race or class. That was what
America stood for to those moral enthusiasts whose sanity
matched their ardor. They saw that this ideal was still
in the future, and that progress might be slow and difficult,

Why They Fought 219
but they were pledged in their souls to pursue it. And, with
that purpose at heart, they were ready to maintain the
national unity at whatever cost.
This was the composite and mighty force against which
the Secessionists unwittingly set themselves, — the love of
country, strong alike in the common people and the leaders,
a love rooted in material interest and flowering in generous
sentiment; and beyond that the moral ideals which, born in
prophets and men of genius, had permeated the best part
of the nation. With this, too, went the preponderance of
physical resources which free labor had been steadily win
ning for the North. Judging even in the interest of slavery,
was it not wise to acquiesce in the election, to remain under
the safeguards with which the Constitution surrounded
slavery in the States, to have patience, and to make the best
terms possible with the forces of nature and society? So
urged the wisest counselors, like Stephens of Georgia. But
men rarely act on a deliberate and rational calculation of
their interests. They are swayed by impulse and passion,
and especially by the temper and habit which have become
a second nature. The leaders in Secession acted in a spirit
generated by the very nature of slavery, and fostered by
their long defense of slavery. That genesis of the move
ment is all the more impressive when we recognize the high
personal character of its leaders, and acquit them of con
scious motives of personal ambition. Slavery was their
undoing. The habit of absolute control over slaves bred the
habit of mastery whenever it could be successfully asserted.
There grew up a caste, its members equal and cordial among
themselves, but self-assertive and haughty to all besides.
They brooked no opposition at home, and resented all criti
cism abroad. They misread history and present facts, mis
conceived their place in the order of things, and set them
selves against both the finest and the strongest forces of the

220 The Negro and the Nation
time. When the political party which had been their most
effective tool became difficult to handle, they broke it in
two. When they could no longer rule the nation, they set
out to sunder it.
Thus, after forty-five years, we try to trace the springs
of action, — action which at the time moved swiftly, in
cloud and storm and seeming chaos. We have endeavored
to see a little of how the men of the North and of the South
thought and felt. Now let us see what they did.

CHAPTER XXIV
ON NIAGARA'S BRINK— AND OVER
The election of Lincoln in November, i860, found South
Carolina expectant and ready for action. The Legis
lature was in session, and immediately ordered an election
to be held December 6 for a convention to meet December
17, and pass on the question of Secession. The action of the
convention was in no doubt.
Governor Pettus of Mississippi summoned a group of
leading men to consider the question of immediate Seces
sion. In the conclave the principal opponent of instant
action was Jefferson Davis. His grounds were prudential ;
he knew that the arsenals, foundries, and military supplies
were chiefly at the North ; he foresaw a long and bloody war ;
he advised that further efforts be made at compromise, or at
least that united action of the South be insured. This coun
sel prevailed, and the convention was deferred until mid-
January. In the Georgia Legislature it was proposed that the ques
tion of Secession be at once submitted to a popular vote.
Toombs and Stephens threw each his whole weight respect
ively for and against Secession. Stephens has preserved his
own speech in full. He emphasized the gravity of the South's
grievances, and the need of redress from the North if the
Union was to permanently endure. But he denied that the
danger was so pressing as to justify immediate Secession.
He pointed out that Lincoln would be confronted by a hos-

222 The Negro and the Nation
tile majority in the Senate, the House and the Supreme
Court, and could not even appoint his Cabinet officers ex
cept with the approval of a Senate in which his opponents
outnumbered his friends. He urged that it was wise to
wait for some overt aggression on the President's part
before seceding. He dwelt on the immense advantages the
Union had brought to all sections. He showed (as in our
last chapter) that Toombs could allege no injuries except
such as affected slavery. Georgia's wealth had doubled be
tween 1850 and i860. " I look upon this country," he said,
" with our institutions, as the Eden of the world, the para
dise of the universe. It may be that out of it we may be
come greater and more prosperous, but I am candid and
sincere in telling you that I fear if we yield to passion, and
without sufficient cause shall take that step, that instead of
becoming greater or more peaceful, prosperous and happy,
— instead of becoming gods we will become demons, and at
no distant day commence cutting one another's throats."
Stephen's counsel was that the State should hold a con
vention, that with the other Southern States it should draw
up a formal bill of complaint as to the personal liberty laws
and the like, and if the North then refused redress, secede.
But whatever the State should do, he would accept its de
cision, since the only alternative was civil war within the
State. He succeeded in having the convention deferred till
January, and the other Gulf States took similar action, while
Virginia called a convention for February 13.
With the tide of secession rising swiftly in the South, and
surprise, consternation, and perplexity at the North, Con
gress met in early December. President Buchanan, in his
message, following the advice of his attorney-general, Jere
miah S. Black of Pennsylvania, — both of them honest and
patriotic men, but legalists rather than statesmen — argued
that Secession was wholly against the Constitution, but its

On Niagara's Brink — and Over 223
forcible repression was equally against the Constitution.
Thus encouraged, the Southern leaders confronted the Re
publicans in Congress,— how far would they recede, how
much would they yield, to avert Secession? Naturally, the
Republicans were not willing to undo the victory they had
just won, or to concede the very principle for which they
had fought. But in both Houses large committees were ap
pointed and the whole situation was earnestly discussed. On
all sides violence was deprecated; there was general dread
of disruption of the Union, general doubt of the feasibility
of maintaining it by force, and the wide wish and effort to
find some practicable compromise.
But there was no hesitation on South Carolina's part. Her
convention passed, December 20, an Ordinance of Secession ;
a clear and impressive statement of her complaints and the
remedy she adopts. The Federal compact has been broken ;
the personal liberty laws violate the Constitution ; the North
ern people have denounced as sinful the institution of
slavery; they have elected a man who has declared that
" this government cannot permanently endure half slave and
half free " ; they are about to exclude Southern institutions
from the territories, and to make the Supreme Court sec
tional. "All hope of redress is rendered vain by the fact
that public opinion at the North has invested a great polit
ical error with the sanction of a more erroneous religious
belief." So, from a partnership of which the letter has been
broken and the spirit destroyed. South Carolina with
draws. The State was, at least on the surface, almost unanimous,
— in Charleston only the venerable James L.Petigru ventured
to call himself a Unionist, — and was in high heart and hope
for its new venture. But, facing the palmetto flags so gayly
unfurled to the breeze, still floated the Stars and Stripes
over a little garrison in Fort Moultrie, commanded by Major

224 The Negro and the Nation
Anderson. His supplies were low ; should aid be sent him ?
No, said Buchanan timidly; and thereat Cass withdrew
indignantly from the Cabinet, to be replaced as Secretary of
State by Black, while the vigorous Edwin M. Stanton took
Black's former place; and Buchanan's courage rose a little.
At the request of the South Carolina authorities, Floyd, the
Secretary of War, had ordered Anderson to act strictly on
the defensive. Finding himself at the mercy of his oppo
nents on the mainland, he quietly withdrew his handful of
men, on the night of December 26, to Fort Sumter, whose
position on an island gave comparative security. The South
Carolinians instantly occupied Fort Moultrie and Castle
Pinckney, and took possession of the custom-house and post-
office. They cried out against Anderson's maneuver as a
breach of good faith, and Secretary Floyd resigned, in sym
pathy with the Carolinians. The President, heartened by
his new counselors, dispatched the steamer Star of the West
with supplies for Anderson, but she was fired on by the
South Carolinians and turned back, January 9. Resenting
the President's act, Thompson of Mississippi and Thomas of
Maryland left his cabinet. The President brought in Gen
eral Dix of New York ; Joseph Holt, now Secretary of War,
was a Southern loyalist, and in its last months Buchanan's
Cabinet was thoroughly Unionist. But in him there was no
leadership. Leadership was not wanting to the Secessionists. A
movement like theirs, once begun and in a congenial atmos
phere, advances like a glacier by its own weight, but with
the pace not of the glacier but of the torrent. In the country
at large and at Washington there was confusion of counsels.
There was manifest disposition among the Republicans to
go a long way in conciliation. Of forcible resistance to
Secession there was but little talk. But that the Republicans
should disown and reverse the entire principles on which

On Niagara's Brink — and Over 225
their party was founded was out of the question. On the
night of January 5 there met in a room at the Capitol the
Senators from Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. They agreed on a com
mon program, and telegraphed to their homes that Secession
was advisable at the January conventions and that a com
mon convention was to be held at Montgomery, Ala., in
mid-February, for the organization of the Southern Confed
eracy. Meantime, all United States officials were to resign,
and the Federal forts, arsenals and custom-houses were to
be seized.
A last formal presentation of the Southern ultimatum was
made by Toombs in the Senate. It was the familiar de
mand — slavery in the territories; slavery under Federal
protection everywhere except in the free States; fugitives
to be returned; offenders against State laws to be surren
dered to justice in those States ; inter-State invasion and in
surrection to be prohibited and punished by Congress. No
partial concessions would answer : this, or nothing ! " Noth
ing be it then ! " was the answer of the Republicans : and
Toombs, Davis, and their associates bade a stern and sad
farewell to their fellow-congressmen and went home to
organize the Confederacy. Congress took up fresh plans
for reconciliation and reunion.
Mississippi, through its convention, seceded January 9, '
1861. Florida followed, January 10, and Alabama, January
II. Then, in the great " keystone State " of Georgia, came
deliberation and momentous debate. Against immediate
Secession, the policy of patience, of conference with the other
Southern States including the new " independent republics,"
and a united remonstrance to the North, of which the re
jection would justify Secession, — this policy was embodied
in a resolution presented by Herschel V. Johnson and sup
ported by all the eloquence and persuasiveness of Stephens.

226 The Negro and the Nation
Against him was the strong personal influence of Howell
Cobb, and the argument — which Stephens says was decisive,
— " we can make better terms out of the Union than in it."
The test vote was 164 to 133 for immediate Secession. On
the motion of Stephens the action was made unanimous.
This accession of Georgia marked the triumph of the Seces
sionists' cause ; and most fitly, in a speech on the evening of
the same day, Stephens declared the fundamental idea of
that cause. Jefferson, he said, and the leading statesmen of
his day, " believed slavery wrong in principle, socially,
morally, and politically . . . Those ideas, however,
were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assump
tion of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a
sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell
when the storm came and the wind blew. Our new govern
ment is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas ; its founda
tions 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 white race — is his natural and normal
condition. This, our new government, is the first in the
history of the world based upon this great physical, philo
sophical, and moral truth."
The Louisiana convention voted to secede January 26,
and Texas February i. The seven seceded States sent dele
gates to a convention which met at Montgomery, February
4. They quickly organized the Confederate States of
America, with a Constitution closely resembling that of the
United States. One article forbade the foreign slave trade,
except that with "the United States of America," which
was left subject to Congress. Davis was elected President,
by general agreement. He was clearly marked for the place
by ability, by civil and military experience, by unblemished
character, and by his record as a firm but not extreme cham
pion of the Secessionist cause. He disclaimed any desire for

On Niagara's Brink — and Over 227
the office, preferring the position which Mississippi had
given him as commander of her forces, but when the sum
mons came to him at his plantation home he promptly ac
cepted. Stephens was chosen Vice-President, in spite of his
late and half-hearted adherence, to conciliate Georgia and
the old Whigs. In the Cabinet the leading figures were
Toombs of Georgia and Benjamin of Louisiana.
With this purposeful, swift, and effective action. Seces
sion seemed to have reached its limit. The other Southern
States held back. Among the plain folk, not over-heated
about politics, there was wide disinclination to any such ex
treme measure as disunion. It was well represented by
Robert E. Lee, in whom the best blood and worthiest tradi
tion of Virginia found fit exemplar. He wrote to his son,
January 23 : " Secession is nothing but revolution. The
framers of our Constitution never expended so much labor,
wisdom and forbearance, in its formation, and surrounded it
with so many guards and securities, if it was intended
to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at
will." North Carolina voted against a convention by 1,000
majority. Tennessee voted against it by 92,000 to 25,000.
Arkansas postponed action till August. Missouri held a
convention which voted not to secede. In Maryland the
governor would not convene the Legislature, and an irreg
ular convention took no decisive action. Delaware did noth
ing. Virginia held a convention, which was not ready for
Secession, but remained in session watching the course of
events. The Kentucky Legislature refused to call a con
vention, but pledged assistance to the South in case of
invasion. This last declaration illustrated the second line of de
fense, behind the Secessionist advance. The sentiment was
general throughout the South, even among Unionists, that

228 The Negro and the Nation
there must be no armed repression of Secession. It rested
partly on the theory of State Sovereignty, and partly on the
sympathy of neighborhood and of common institutions.
Even at the North there was wide disinclination to the use
of force against the Secessionists. The venerable General
Scott, chief of the Federal Army, gave it as his personal
opinion that the wise course was to say, " Wayward sisters,
depart in peace." The New York Tribune, foremost of
Republican newspapers, declared : " If the cotton States
wish to withdraw from the Union, they should be allowed
to do so." " Any attempt to compel them to remain by
force would be contrary to the principles of the Declaration
of Independence, and to the fundamental ideas upon which
human liberty is based." And again : " We hope never to
live in a Republic whereof one section is pinned to the resi
due by bayonets." Such expressions were not uncommon
among Republicans, and very frequent among Democrats.
Garrison and Phillips were loud in welcoming a separa
tion. But there were leaders like Wade of Ohio and Chand
ler of Michigan, whose temper was very different, and
ominous that the West would never consent to a disruption
of the nation.
The governor of Virginia invited all the States to send
delegates to a Peace congress to find means to save the
Union. Almost all sent delegates, and the congress held
long sessions, while the Senate and House were essaying
the same task. Little result came in either body, because
neither party would accept the other's concessions. The
favorite measure was that known as the Crittendon com
promise, framed by the Kentucky senator, of which the
central feature was the extension of the old Missouri com
promise line of 36 degrees 30 minutes to the Pacific, with
express provision that all territory north of this should be
free and all south should be slave. To this the Republicans

On Niagara's Brink — and Over 229
would not consent, but they went far toward it by agreeing
to a plan proposed by Charles Francis Adams of Massa
chusetts, — ^that New Mexico (including all present territory
south of 36 degrees 30 minutes except the Indian territory),
be admitted as a State with slavery if its people should so
vote. They offered also to admit Colorado, Nevada, and
Dakota as territories, with no express exclusion of slavery.
But neither side would leave to the other the possible
future extension to the South — in Mexico and Cuba.
Further, the Republicans showed a willingness to amend the
Personal Liberty laws, so far as they might be unconstitu
tional, and to provide for governmental payment for fugi
tives who were not returned. They expressed entire readi
ness to unite in a national convention for the revision of the
Constitution. And finally there was not only proposed,
but actually passed by the Senate and House, by two-thirds
majorities, at the very end of the session, a constitutional
amendment prohibiting any future amendment that should
authorize Congress to interfere with slavery in the States
where it existed.
In vain, all, — in vain for the Republicans to hold out the
olive branch, to mutilate their own principles, and to bar the
door against any ultimate constitutional abolition of slavery.
Even the slave States still in the Union were not to be satis
fied by all this, and the Confederacy gave it no heed. And
now, in the background, was visible a rising force, in which
the temper was far other than compromise. The most sig
nificant voice came from Massachusetts. After all the old
antagonism of Massachusetts and South Carolina, — after
the clash of Calhoun and Hayne with Webster, the expul
sion of Samuel Hoar, the assault of Brooks on Sumner, —
the two commonwealths stood forth, each the leader of its
own section. It was a hostility which sprung from no acci
dent, and no remembrance of old feuds, but from the oppo-

230 The Negro and the Nation
sition of two types of society, the oligarchic idea most fully
developed in South Carolina, the industrial democracy in
Massachusetts. The new Governor of the State was John
A. Andrew, a man of clear convictions, a great heart, and
a magnanimous temper. His New Year's message to the
Legislature opened with a businesslike discussion of the
State's finances and other materialities. Thence he passed
to national affairs; he defended the Personal Liberty law,
of which his more conservative predecessor. Governor
Banks, had advised the repeal, but which Andrew justified
as a legitimate defense against kidnapping ; while suggesting
that whatever slaves South Carolina had lost from this
cause were offset by Massachusetts black seamen enslaved
in her ports. Then he took up the matter of disunion.
" The question now is. Shall a reactionary spirit, unfriendly
to liberty, be permitted to subvert democratic republican
government organized under constitutional forms? . . .
The men who own and till the soil, who drive the mills,
and hammer out their own iron and leather on their own
anvils and lapstones . . . are honest, intelligent, pat
riotic, independent, and brave. They know that simple
defeat in an election is no cause for the disruption of a
government. They know that those who declare that they
will not live peaceably within the Union do not mean to five
peaceably out of it. They know that the people of all sec
tions have a right, which they intend to maintain, of free
access from the interior to both oceans, and from Canada
to the Gulf of Mexico, and of the free use of all the lakes
and rivers and highways of commerce. North, South, East
and West. They know that the Union means peace and
unfettered commercial intercourse from sea to sea and
from shore to shore ; that it secures us against the unfriendly
presence or possible dictation of any foreign power, and
comm.ands respect for our flag and security for our trade.

On Niagara's Brink — and Over 231
And they do not intend, nor will they ever consent, to be
excluded from these rights which they have so long en
joyed, nor to abandon the prospect of the benefits which
humanity claims for itself by means of their continued
enjoyment in the future. Neither will they consent that
the continent shall be overrun by the victims of a remorse
less cupidity, and the elements of danger increased by the
barbarizing influences which accompany the African slave
trade. Inspired by the ideas and emotions which com
manded the fraternization of Jackson and Webster on
another great occasion of public danger, the people of Mas
sachusetts, confiding in the patriotism of their brethren in
other States, accept this issue, and respond in the words of
Jackson, ' The Federal Union, it must be preserved.' . . .
We cannot turn aside, and we will not turn back."
The crowded, anxious, hurrying months, brought the 4th
of March, and Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as Pres
ident. His speeches on his way to the capital, — pacific,
reassuring, but firm for national unity and liberty, — had in
a degree brought him into touch with the mass of the peo
ple. But when his gaunt and homely form rose to deliver
the inaugural address, it was as a little-known and untried
man that he was heard. That speech gave signal that the
man for the hour had come. No words could better describe
its quality than " sweet reasonableness " ; — that, and un
flinching purpose. He began by earnest reassurances as to
the fidelity to the Constitution of himself and the party be
hind him. He suggested the means and temper by which
mutual grievances might be approached. Then in his clear,
logical fashion, and in the plain speech of the common man,
he showed that the Union is in its nature indissoluble, older
than the Constitution, unaffected by any attempted Seces
sion. His own official, inevitable duty is to maintain the
Union. But there need be no bloodshed or violence. " The

232 The Negro and the Nation
power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and pos
sess the property and places belonging to the government,
and collect the duties and imports ; but beyond what may
be necessary for these objects there will be no invasion, no
using of force against or among the people anywhere." If
resident citizens will not hold Federal offices, there is to be
no intrusion of obnoxious strangers. The mails will be
furnished wherever they are wanted. " So far as possible
the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect se
curity which is most favorable to calm thought and re
flection." This will be his course unless events shall com
pel a change. And then follows a most calm, rational,
moving plea against sacrificing a great, popular, orderly
self-government, to individual caprice or fancied wrongs ; a
demonstration, irresistible as mathematics, that " the cen
tral idea of Secession is anarchy." " Unanimity is impos
sible, the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is
wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority prin
ciple, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left."
In the address there is not one word of heat or bitterness;
it is alL in the spirit of his words spoken in private, " I shall
do nothing maliciously, — the interests I deal with are too
vast for malicious dealings."
He does not belittle the complaints of the South, but
pleads for mutual forbearance. If there are defects in the
organic framework of the nation, let them be discussed and
amended if necessary in a constitutional convention. No
justice can be done to this inaugural in a condensation; it
should be studied line by line ; it is one of the great classics
of American literature and history. Thus he ended : " I
am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We
must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained,
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic
chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and

On Niagara's Brink — and Over 233
patriot's grave to every living heart and hearthstone all
over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union
when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better
angels of our nature."
Through the weeks that followed, Lincoln was plunged in
a sea of perplexities, while the nation seemed weltering in
chaos, with nothing clear but the steady purpose of the Con
federate leaders to maintain their position and achieve com
plete independence by the shortest road. Lincoln had formed
a Cabinet including some very able and some ordinary men,
with one — Seward — of highest promise and at first of most
disappointing performance. He regarded himself as the
real power in the administration; he underrated alike the
gravity of the situation and the President's ability to cope
with it; he trusted to conciliation and smooth assurance;
and he tried to take the reins of control into his own hands
— an attempt which Lincoln quietly foiled. The President
and his Cabinet were as yet strangers to each other. In the
Senate (the House was not in session), Douglas assailed
the President's position, and declared three courses to be
open: Constitutional redress of the South's grievances;
the acceptance of Secession ; or its forcible repression, — ^the
first the best, the last the worst. Three commissioners of
the Confederacy were in Washington, refused official recog
nition, but holding some indirect intercourse with Seward,
which they apparently misunderstood and exaggerated. A
swarm of office-seekers, like Egyptian locusts, beset the
President amid his heavy cares. The border States, trem
bling in the balance, called for the wisest handling.
Heaviest and most pressing was the problem what to do
with Fort Sumter. Closely beleaguered, with failing sup
plies, it must soon fall unless relieved. Almost impossible
to relieve or save it, said the army officers; easy to slip in
supplies, contradicted the naval officers. Leave Sumter to

234 The Negro and the Nation
fall and you dishearten the North, urged Chase and Blair
in the Cabinet ; answered Seward, Reinforce it, and you pro
voke instant war.
Lincoln answered the question in his own way. He was
true to the principle he had laid down in his inaugural, — to
maintain the essential rights of the national government,
but with the least possible exercise of force. He would
" hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belong
ing to the government, and collect the duties and imports "
— that and nothing more. Practically the only " property
and places " now left to the government at the South were
Forts Sumter and Pickens. To yield them without effort
was to renounce the minimum of self-assertion he had re
served to the nation.
As to the means of supply, he had recourse to the best
instrument that offered, — a scheme' proposed by Captain
Fox, an energetic naval officer, who planned a relief expedi
tion of five vessels to be privately dispatched from New
York and try to run past the batteries. The expedition
was quickly fitted out and sent, in early April. According
to promise, in case of any such action, notice was tele
graphed to the Governor of South Carolina. He communi
cated with the Confederate government at Montgomery.
That government was bent on maintaining, without further
debate, its full sovereignty over the coasts and waters
within its jurisdiction. There is no need to impute a de
liberate purpose to rouse and unite the South by bloodshed,
any more than there is reason to impute to Lincoln a crafty
purpose to inveigle the South into striking the first blow.
Each acted straight in the line of their open and avowed
purpose, — Lincoln, to retain the remaining vestige of
national authority at the South; the Confederacy, to make
full and prompt assertion of its entire independence.
Orders were telegraphed from Montgomery, and General

On Niagara's Brink — and Over 235
Beauregard, commanding the Charleston forces, sent to
Major Anderson a summons to surrender. It was rejected ;
and the circle of forts opened fire and Sumter fired back.
The roar of those guns flashed by telegraph over the coun
try. In every town and hamlet men watched and waited
with a tension which cannot be described. All the accumu
lated feeling of months and years flashed into a lightning
stroke of emotion. All day Friday and Saturday, April 12,
13, men watched the bulletins, and talked in brief phrases,
and were conscious of a passion surging through millions
of hearts. Saturday evening came the word, — the fort had
yielded. After a thirty-four hours' fight, overmatched, the
expected relief storm-delayed, his ammunition spent, his
works on fire, Anderson had capitulated.
There was a Sunday of intense brooding all over the
land. Next morning, April 15, came a proclamation from
the President. The laws of the United States, it declared,
were opposed and their execution obstructed in seven States,
by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordi
nary course of judicial proceedings; and the militia of the
States, to the number of 75,000 were called to arms for
three months to suppress the combinations and cause the
laws to be duly executed.
The North rose as one man to the call. Party divisions
were forgotten. Douglas went to the President and
pledged his support. Regiments from Pennsylvania and
Massachusetts hurried to the capital. Every Northern State
hastened to fill its assigned quota of militia. No
less promptly the South rallied to defend the seceding States
from invasion. The Virginia convention voted Secession
two days after the President's proclamation, and the peo
ple's vote ratified it by six to one. North Carolina, Ten
nessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. Maryland,
Kentucky, and Missouri, wavered and were distracted, but

236 The Negro and the Nation
as State organizations remained in the Union, while their
populations divided.
Constitutional logic, argumentation, distinctions between
holding the national property and invasion, all vanished in
the fierce breath of war. Between union and disunion,
argument was exhausted, and the issue was to be tried out
by force. In a day a great peaceful people resolved itself
into two hostile armies.

CHAPTER XXV
THE CIVIL WAR
At the outbreak of war, what the Northerner saw con
fronting him was an organized attempt to overthrow the
government and break up the nation in the interest of
slavery. This as the essential fact took form in the circle
of fire let loose on a beleaguered fort, and the Stars and
Stripes lowered before an overwhelming force. Close fol
lowing came the menace against the national capital, for
Washington was believed to be in imminent peril. A Mas
sachusetts regiment marching to its relief was assailed by
the populace of Baltimore; communication was cut; and
the city which was the centre and symbol of the national
life seemed stretching her hands in appeal to the country's
faithful sons. To the conscience, the heart, the imagina
tion of the North, it was a war of national self-defense, —
a holy war.
What the Southerner saw was an attempt to crush by
force a legitimate exercise of the right of sovereign States to
an independent existence. The typical Southerner, whether he
had thought Secession expedient or not, believed that each
State was the rightful judge of its own course, that the citi
zen's first allegiance was due to his State; and that the at
tempt at coercion was as tyrannical as the refusal by Great
Britain of independence to the American colonies. And, apart
from all political theories, there instantly loomed on the hori
zon the armies of the North, bearing down with fire and
sword on the people of the Southern States. The instinct of
self-defense, and the irresistible sympathy of neighborhood
237

238 The Negro and the Nation
and community, prompted to resistance. Beyond doubt, the
typical Southern volunteer could say in all sincerity, as one
of them has expressed it : " With me is right, before me is
duty, behind me is home."
So natural and profound was the motive on each side,
when the war began. Wholly different from the moral re
sponsibility of those who initiated Secession, is the case of
those who afterward fought for what to each side was the
cause of home and country. But, driven though both par
ties felt themselves to war, none the less terrible was the
war in itself. There are difficulties from which the only
escape is through disaster. John Morley writes : " It is
one of the commonest of all cheap mis judgments in human
affairs, to start by assuming that there is always some good
way out of a bad case. Alas for us all, this is not so. Situa
tions arise, alike for individuals, for parties, and for States,
from which no good way out exists, but only choice between
bad way out and worse." For the American people, in the
situation into which by sins of commission and omission
they had been brought, the only way out was one of the
worst ways that human feet can travel.
It does not belong to this work to give a history of the
Civil War. But a truthful history might be written in a
very different vein from the accepted and popular narra
tives. These for the most part describe the conflict in terms
resembling partly a game of chess and partly a football
match. We read of grand strategic combinations, of mas
terly plans of attack and admirable counter-strokes of de
fense. On the battlefield we hear of gallant charges, superb
rushes of cavalry, indomitable resistance. Our military his
torians -largely give us the impression of man in battle as
in the exercise of his highest powers, and war as something
glorious in the experience and heart-thrilling in the con
templation.

The Civil War 239
But a succinct account of the whole business would be
to say that for four years the flower of the country's popu
lation were engaged in killing each other. All other indus
tries were overshadowed by the occupation of human
slaughter. Shop and farm, church and college, school and
home, all were subsidiary to the battlefield.
The battlefield itself is not easily conceived by the civil
ian, even with the aid of poets and story-tellers from Homer
to Kipling. The reader, who has perhaps never seen a shot
fired in anger, may have chanced to witness a man struck
down in the street by a falling beam or trampled by a run
away horse. Or, as a better illustration, he may remember
in his own case some hour of sudden and extreme suffer
ing, — a hand caught by a falling window, a foot drenched
by scalding water. Intensify that experience, extend it
through days, for the home couch and the nursing of mother
or wife put the bare ground and the onrush of hostile men,
— and you have the nucleus, the constituent atom, of a bat
tle. Multiply it by hundreds or thousands ; give to each suf
ferer the background of waiting parents, wife, children, at
home; give to a part death, swift or agonizing; to another
part lifelong infirmity or irritation, — and you begin to get
the reality of war.
It was Wellington who said that the worst sight on earth,
next to the field of defeat, was the field of victory. It was
Lee who wrote from Mexico to his son: "You have no
idea what a horrible sight a battle-field is." And he said
that the strongest memory left from his first battle was the
plaintive tone of a little Mexican girl whom he found lean
ing over a wounded drummer-boy.
Men not only witness such carnage but inflict it, in the
excitement of battle, because animated by feelings of which
only a part can rightly be called heroic. Honor indeed is
due to the subordination of personal fear to the sense of

240 The Negro and the Nation
duty and comradeship, — yes, high honor; and the appeal
of the soldier to the imagination, as a type of self-sacrifice
and nobility, has its element of truth. But the ordinary
courage of the battle-field is largely an excitement half-
animal, half-contagious, running often into savagery and
insensate fury. In that situation the highest and lowest ele
ments in man come into play. For the most part only the
highest is portrayed for us by the historians and romancers,
— they keep the wild beast and the devil out of sight. Only
in these later days, when mankind begins to scrutinize
its boasted glories more closely, do Tolstoi in literature
and Verestchagin in art give us glimpses of the grim
reality. An industry which has murder for its main output will
have some by-products to match. In the armies of both
sides the human stuff was of mixed character and motive.
Some enlisted from pure patriotism, — for Union, State, or
Confederacy; some from thirst of adventure; others for
ambition ; others for the bounty or under compulsion of the
conscription officer ; many from the mere contagious excite
ment. Army life always brings to many of its participants
a great demoralization. Take away the restriction of public
opinion in a well-ordered community, take from men the
society of good women, and there will be a tendency to bar
barism. A civilized army has indeed a code and public
opinion of its own, which counts for some sterling qualities,
but it is lax and ineffective for much that goes to complete
manhood. Just as the war left a host of maimed and crip
pled, so it left a multitude of moral cripples. At the re
union, around the " camp fire," with the reminiscences of
stirring times and the renewal of good comradeship runs a
vein of comment which the newspapers do not relate.
"What's become of A.?" "Drank himself to death."
"And where is X.?" "Never got back the character he

The Civil War 241
lost in New Orleans, — went to the dogs." It is a chronicle
not recorded on the monuments, but remembered in many
a blighted household. The financial debt the war left be
hind it was not the heaviest part of the after-cost.
Nor must there be forgotten the temper which war
begets, of mutual hate between whole peoples. Forty years
later we bring ourselves, — some of us, and in a measure, —
to see that our opponents of either side had some justifica
tion or some excuse ; that they perhaps were honest as we.
But little room was there for such mutual forbearance of
judgment while the fight was on. For the average man, for
most men, to fight means also to hate. While the contest
lasted. Northerners habitually spoke of their foes as " the
rebels," — not in contumely, but as matter-of-fact descrip
tion. They were " rebels " in common speech, and when one
warmed a little they were " traitors." Good men said that
now for the first time they saw why the imprecatory Psalms
were written, — theirs was the only cursing strong enough
for the country's enemies. Quite as hearty was the South's
detestation of the Yankee invaders and despots, — the fana
tics and their hired minions. The Southern feeling took the
keener edge, because sharpened by the bitter fact of in
vasion and the hardships it brought. With them the home
suffered, not only as at the North, by the departure of
father or son to danger or death ; the Southern homes often
saw the foes in their midst, and sometimes suffered ravage
and spoil. " How can you expect me to be well recon
structed," asked a Virginian after the war, " When I remem
ber the family vaults in which the silver plates were
wrenched from the coffins by your soldiers ? " When the
fighting was over, the life of the reunited nation had to work
its way for a generation, — and the end is not yet, — against
the hostilities, the rancors, the misunderstandings, gener
ated in those four years of strife.

242 The Negro and the Nation
The reality of war where it fell heaviest, — in the border
States, where neighborhoods and families were divided,
and both armies marched and fought, — is touched by the
graphic pen of a woman, Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis,
who saw and felt a part of it : " The histories which we
have of the great tragedy give no idea of the general
wretchedness, the squalid misery, which entered into every
individual life in the region given up to the war. Where
the armies camped the destruction was absolute. Even
on the border, your farm was a waste, all your horses
or cows were seized by one army or the other, or your shop
or manufactory was closed, your trade ruined. You had
no money; you drank coffee made of roasted parsnips for
breakfast, and ate only potatoes for dinner. Your nearest
kinsfolk and friends passed you on the street silent and
scowling; if you said what you thought you were liable to
be dragged to the county jail and left there for months.
The subject of the war was never broached in your home
where opinions differed; but one morning the boys were
missing. No one said a word, but one gray head was bent,
and the happy light died out of the old eyes and never came
to them again. Below all the squalor and discomfort was
the agony of suspense or the certainty of death. But the
parsnip coffee and the empty purse certainly did give a
sting to the great overwhelming misery, like gnats torment
ing a wounded man."
Visiting in war-time the sages of Concord, she saw the
difference between war as viewed by visionaries at a dis
tance and the reality : " I remember listening during one
long summer morning to Louisa Alcott's father as he
chanted paeans to the war, the ' armed angel which was
wakening the nation to a lofty life unknown before.' We
were in the little parlor of the Wayside, Mr. Hawthorne's
house in Concord. Mr. Alcott stood in front of the fire-

The Civil War 243
place, his long gray hair streaming over his collar, his pale
eyes turning quickly from one listener to another to hold
them quiet, his hands waving to keep time with the orotund
sentences which had a stale, familiar ring as if often re
peated before. Mr. Emerson stood listening, his head sunk
on his breast, with profound submissive attention, but
Hawthorne sat astride of a chair, his arms folded on the
back, his chin dropped on them, and his laughing, sagacious
eyes watching us, full of mockery.
" I had come up from the border where I had seen the
actual war; the filthy spewings of it; the political jobbery
in Union and Confederate camps; the malignant personal
hatreds wearing patriotic masks, and glutted by burning
homes and outraged women ; the chances in it, well improved
on both sides, for brutish men to grow more brutish, and for
honorable gentlemen to degenerate into thieves and sots.
War may be an armed angel with a mission, but she has the
personal habits of the slums. This would-be seer who was
talking of it, and the real seer who listened, knew no more
of war as it was, than I had done in my cherry-tree time,
when I dreamed of bannered legions of crusaders debouch
ing in the misty fields."
The youth who reads may ask in wonder, "And was
then the war to which we have been used to look back with
exultation and pride, — was it but a horror and a crime ? "
No; it was something other and more than that; it had its
aspects of moral grandeur and of gain for humanity; it
was a field for noble self-sacrifice, for utmost striving of
men and deepest tenderness of women, it had its heroes
and martyrs and saints ; it was in the large view the tremen
dous price of national unity and universal freedom. But
in the exaltation of these better aspects, we have as a people
too much forgotten the other and awful side. That is what
we need now to be reminded of. For among our present

244 The Negro and the Nation
dangers none is greater than the false glorification of war.
Against such glorifications stands Sherman's word, " War
is hell." And on that grand tomb with which our greatest
city crowns its proudest height is inscribed, as the one word
by which Grant forever speaks to his countrymen, " Let us
have peace."
The nobler side of the war is told and will be told in
many a history and biography, romance and poem. In the
broad view, the grandest fact was that a multitude of men
and women felt and acted as never before for a cause
greater than any personal gain. Under the discipline of
sacrifice and suffering, and with the personal horizon
widened to take in nations and races, a multitude on the
field and at home grew to loftier stature. The hardships
and perils which wrecked some strengthened others. The
development of energy and resource was beyond measure.
The North created armies and navies; it organized a new
system of finance ; it transformed a peaceful industrial com
munity into an irresistible military force ; and all the while
it carried on its productive industries with scarcely visible
shrinkage ; farm and mill, school and college, kept on with
their work. The South made itself into a solid army of
resistance; cut off from its accustomed sources of supply,
it developed for itself all the essentials of material life; it
showed an ingenuity and resourcefulness beyond all expec
tation ; and the fidelity of its slaves supplied its armies with
food while keeping its homes secure. In peace haunted
always by latent dread of insurrection, in war the South
found its servants its best friends. So, in both sections,
wonders were wrought and deeds never dreamed of were
achieved. In justly viewing the evil and the good of war, we must
compare it with other disturbances and catastrophes. The
finest traits and highest efficiency of men come out under

The Civil War 245
disasters which yet it must be our habitual effort to avert.
It is the ship on the rocks, the theater on fire, that shows
the hero. But what should we think of one who ran a ship
on shore, or set fire to a theater, in order to call out heroism ?
Exactly so are we to regard those who glorify war as in
itself a fine and admirable thing, a proper school and arena
of manhood. The refutation of such talk comes not so well
from men of the church or closet as from those who have
drunk deepest of war's reality. A man of exuberant vitality,
whose personal delight in physical strife colors his states
manship, and who is exhilarated by the memory of a skir
mish or two in Cuba, may talk exultantly of " glory enough
to go round," and preach soldiering as a splendid manifes
tation of the strenuous life. But the grim old warrior
whose genius and resolution split the Confederacy like a
wedge. General Sherman, in the very midst of his task
wrote to a friend : " I confess without shame that I am
sick and tired of the war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even
success, the most brilliant, is over dead and mangled bodies,
the anguish and lamentation of distant families appealing
to me for missing sons, husbands, and fathers. It is only
those who have not heard a shot, nor heard the shrieks and
groans of the wounded and lacerated (friend or foe), that
cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desola
tion." One glance we here may give at the traits which against
this dark background shone with the light which redeems
humanity. The worst scenes of all were not on the battle
field but in the military prisons. At Andersonville, and other
points, thousands of Northern prisoners were crowded
together, with insufficient supply of unnutritious food, with
scanty and foul water; surrounded by harsh guards, quick
to shoot if the " dead line " was crossed by a foot ; harassed
by petty tyranny; starved, homesick, diseased, dying like

246 The Negro and the Nation
infected sheep. It is a black, black page, — ^but let its black
ness be mainly charged to war itself, and what war always
breeds. In Northern prisons, the rate of mortality was
nearly as high as in Southern; the work of hunger in the
one was matched by cold in the other. " All things con
sidered," says J. F. Rhodes in his impartial History of the
United States, " the statistics show no reason why the
North should reproach the South. If we add to one side
of the account the refusal to exchange the prisoners " —
a refusal based by Grant at one time on the military dis
advantage of restoring the Southern prisoners to active serv
ice — " and the greater resources, and to the other the
distress of the Confederacy ; the balance struck will not be
far from even." Enough for our present purpose that the
Andersonville prison-pen was a hell. Well, after a time
the Union armies were recruited by negroes, and the Con
federates in resentment refused to consider these when
captured as prisoners of war, and would not include them
in the exchanges. Thereupon the Federal Government
declared that its negro soldiers must receive equal rights
with the whites, and until this was conceded there should
be no exchange at all. Then some of the Andersonville
prisoners drew up a petition, and signed and sent it to
Washington, praying the government to hasten their release,
and if necessary to hold the question of negro prisoners
for negotiation, while pressing forward the liberation of its
faithful and suffering white soldiers. But promptly by
others in the prison-pen a counter petition was started,
signed, and sent on. It ran in substance thus : " We are
in evil case, and we earnestly desire that you hasten our
deliverance by every means consistent with right and
honor. But — honor first! Let the nation's plighted faith
to its black soldiers be kept, at whatever cost to us. We
ask you to still refuse all exchange of prisoners, until the

The Civil War 247
same treatment can be secured for black and white." Was
ever a braver deed than that?
One picture more. In a military hospital at Washington,
Walt Whitman was engaged as a volunteer nurse. In a
letter to a friend, he depicted in a few sentences the tragedy
of it all, and yet the triumph of the spirit over the body
and over death itself. He wrote of a Northern hospital,
but the like might be seen on Southern soil, as to-day among
Russians or Japanese, — it is the tragedy and triumph of
humanity. " These thousands, and tens and twenties of
thousands, of American young men, badly wounded . . .
operated on, pallid with diarrhoea, languishing, dying with
fever, pneumonia, etc., open a new world somehow to me,
giving closer insights, . . . showing our humanity
. . . tried by terrible, fearful tests, probed deepest, the
living souls, the body's tragedies, bursting the petty bonds
of art. To these, what are your dreams and poems, even
the oldest and the tearfulest? . . . For here I see, not
at intervals, but quite always, how certain man, our Ameri
can man, — how he holds himself cool and unquestioned
master above all pains and bloody mutilation. . . . This,
then, what frightened us all so long! Why, it is put to
flight with ignominy — a mere stuffed scarecrow of the fields.
Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy
victory?"

CHAPTER XXVI
EMANCIPATION BEGUN
When the war began, the absorbing issue at the North
was the maintenance of the Union. The supreme, uniting
purpose was the restoration of the national authority.
Slavery had fallen into the background. But it soon began
to come again to the front. Two tendencies existed at the
North ; one, to seek the restoration of the old state of things
unchanged; the other, to seize the opportunity of war to
put an end to slavery.
The pressure of events raised special questions which
must be met. As soon as Northern armies were on Southern
soil, slaves began to take refuge in the camps, and their
masters, loyal in fact or in profession, followed with a de
mand for their return. Law seemed on the master's side;
but the use of the army, engaged in such a war, to send slaves
back to bondage, was most repugnant. At first some com
manders took one course, some another. General Butler,
a volunteer from Massachusetts, hit on a happy solution;
he declared that slaves, being available to the enemy for
hostile purposes, were like arms, gunpowder, etc., " contra
band of war," and could not be reclaimed. The stroke was
welcomed with cheers and laughter ; and " contraband " be
came a catchword. Congress, in March, 1862, forbade the
army and navy to return fugitives.
General Fremont was in command in Missouri. He was
ardent and uncompromising, and in August, 1 861, he issued
a drastic proclamation, declaring the State under martial
law, threatening death to all taken with arms in their hands,
248

Emancipation Begun 249
and giving freedom to the slaves of all rebels. The Presi
dent remonstrated by letter against this too heroic surgery,
and when Fremont declined to modify his order, used his
authority to cancel it. The public reception of the incident
marked and heightened the growing division of sentiment;
the conservatives and especially the border State men, were
alarmed and indignant at Fremont's action, while he became
at once a favorite of the strong anti-slavery men.
This divergence among his own supporters added another
to the complications which beset Lincoln and taxed him to
the utmost. He had extraordinary tact and shrewdness in
managing men, and in dealing with tangled situations. He
showed this power toward his Cabinet officers, who included
the most various material, — Seward, accomplished, resource
ful, somewhat superficial, but thoroughly loyal to his chief
after he knew him, managing the foreign relations with
admirable skill, and somewhat conservative in his views;
Chase, very able as a financier and jurist, but intensely
ambitious of the Presidency, regarded as a radical as to
slavery; Stanton, a great war minister but of harsh and
intractable temper. These men and their colleagues Lincoln
handled so skilfully as to get the best each had to contri
bute, and keep them and the political elements they repre
sented in working harmony. No less successfully did he
deal with Congress, guiding it to a great extent, but
acquiescing in occasional defeats and disappointments so
patiently that he disarmed hostility. He kept in closest
touch with the common people; he was accessible to every
one, listened to each man's grievance, remonstrance, or
advice ; and acquired an instinctive knowledge of what was
in the hearts and minds of the millions.
In his own conduct, his guiding principle was fidelity to
his official duty as he read it in the Constitution and the
laws. He felt the specific, supreme task laid upon him to be

2^0 The Negro and the Nation
the restoration and maintenance of the Union. And to
succeed in that, he knew he must rightly interpret and
enforce the general sentiment and desire of the loyal people.
If he let them become so divided as to no longer act together,
the cause was lost. And to follow any personal opinion or
conviction of his own, in disregard of his official duty, or in
defiance of the popular will, was to betray his trust.
It was under these conditions that Lincoln dealt with
slavery. No man more than he detested the institution, or
desired its removal. But he felt that he had no right to
touch it, except as empowered by the Constitution and the
laws, or as guided by the supreme necessity of saving the
nation's life. Beyond that he had no authority. Beyond
that, his position toward slavery must be like that of a
President toward, for example, a system of religion which
he believed to be false and injurious. Be he intensely ortho
dox, believing infidelity to be the road to hell, — yet he must
not as President, put a straw across the path of the free
thinker. Be he as heretical as Thomas Jefferson, he must
not as President, any more than did Jefferson, lay a finger
on the churches. Just so did Lincoln feel himself restricted
as to slavery, — he could not touch it, except as the civil
laws brought it within his province, or unless as supreme
military commander the laws and necessities of war brought
it within his authority.
Congress soon proceeded to discuss questions about
slavery. Sumner, the foremost leader of the radicals, pro
posed resolutions, in February, 1862, declaring that the
seceded States had by their acts extinguished their State
organizations and relapsed into a territorial condition, sub
ject only to Congress ; and that slavery within them, exist
ing only by a local authority now defunct, was thus
abolished. Congress would take no such ground as that.
But, as within its proper sphere, it abolished slavery in the

Emancipation Begun 251
District of Columbia, in April, 1862, giving compensation
to owners at a maximum rate of $300 for each slave. And
in the following June, it abolished slavery in all the
national territories, — ^thus giving full force to the cardinal
doctrine of the Republican party up to the war. But the
war had inevitably brought a more radical issue to the
front, — the question of slavery in the States.
Under the name of a confiscation act. Congress passed a
law, July 17, 1862, which declared freedom to all slaves of
convicted rebels; to slaves of rebels escaping within the
army lines, or captured, or deserted by their masters; and
to all slaves of rebels found in places captured and occupied
by the Union army. This came near to making the abolition
of slavery follow exactly the progress of the Union arms.
But, leaving untouched the slave property of loyalists, it
spared the institution as a system.
Lincoln, in many ways a man of the people by his convic
tions and sympathies, in other aspects towered in solitude.
He was almost unique in that he could fight — fight if need
were to the death, — with no spark of hatred in his heart.
In the midst of war he was a devoted peace-lover. To an
old friend, though a political opponent, Congressman D. W.
Voorhees, of Indiana, who called on him at the White
House, he said with a pathetic look of anxious pain:
" Voorhees, doesn't it seem strange that I should be here —
I, a man who couldn't cut a chicken's head off, — with blood
running all around me ? " While he was overseeing cam
paigns, selecting and rejecting generals, learning the busi
ness of a commander, keeping touch with all the great mat
ters of administration, besieged by office-seekers, impor
tuned by people in all manner of private troubles, — he found
intervals in which to devise ways out of the horrid busi
ness of war, ways that might lead both to peace and
freedom.

252 The Negro and the Nation
The key of the situation he thought lay largely with the
border States, — Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky, — all of
them formally in the Union, but their population divided,
sending recruits to both armies, and with hopes in the Con
federacy that they might be entirely won over. If they
could be bound faster to the Union, if at the same time they
could be helped to make themselves free States, — ^then might
the Union cause be mightily helped, and at the same time
the work of emancipation be begun. Aiming at this result,
Lincoln sent a message to Congress, March 6, 1862, pro
posing this resolution : " That the United States ought to
co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual
abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid,
to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate
for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such
change of system." He urged this with special reference
to its application in the border States; and, inviting the
Congressional members of these States in a body to the
White House, he pleaded with them earnestly to support the
resolution, and apply the plan. They hstened, but were
non-committal. Congress received the plan coolly. The
Radicals were little in the humor of compensating slave
holders, and the Conservatives apprehended a progressive
attack on slavery. But the President's influence triumphed ;
the resolution passed in mid- April ; and the nation pledged
itself to assist compensated emancipation in any State that
would adopt it.
Nothing came of it. The border States did not move.
Three months later, July 12, their delegations were again
invited to the White House. The situation was at the
gravest ; McClellan's army had been baffled in the desperate
seven-days' fight ; factions at the North were growing hot.
Lincoln pleaded reasonably, movingly, that they would bring
decisive help to the national cause, by committing their

Emancipation Begun 253
States to emancipation, with help from the nation, gradually
if they pleased, with colonization if they desired — ^peace,
union, freedom, all lay that way ! Two days they took to
make answer, and then of the twenty-nine members only
nine were favorable; the rest with one accord began to
make excuse, — and that hope failed.
Events were forcing on the question of slavery. In the
previous May, General David Hunter, in South Carolina,
finding himself with 10,000 fugitives in his camps, whom the
laws forbade him to return to their masters and did not
permit him to hold as slaves, met the difficulty by a procla
mation, declaring that the martial law of the United States
was incompatible with slavery, and the slaves in his military
district — South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, — were set
free. Again the President overruled his subordinate, but
in the proclamation he distinctly said that the question of
emancipation as a military necessity belonged to himself
as commander-in-chief. It was a note of warning. Twenty
years before, John Quincy Adams had written, — and the
words came from a conservative statesman of the highest
standing : " I say that the military authority takes for the
time the place of all municipal institutions, and slavery
among the rest " ; and had elaborated and reiterated the
doctrine that in case of war slavery might be abolished by
the commander. These statements had lately been recalled ;
the action of Fremont and Hunter had given life to the
idea; and Lincoln now intimated that he might yet assume
this authority.
Party divisions had soon reappeared at the North. The
Democrats were not harmonious; a part called themselves
" War Democrats," and a part were ready to let the South
go, or went as near that as they prudently could ; now one
and now the other faction controlled the party according
to time and locality. The Republicans were more united,

254 The Negro and the Nation
yet among them was a cleavage between conservatives and
radicals ; the one taking for their watchword, " the Con
stitution as it is and the L^nion as it was " ; the other eager
to see the war turned against slavery ; and both claiming the
President, and jealously watching any leaning on his part
toward their rivals.
There was developing at the North a profound sentiment
for attacking slavery. The war was protracted beyond all
early expectation ; it was costly, bitter, woeful. What was
to be at last the recompense for all this blood and tears?
Was there, if victory came at last, to be with it no advance,
nothing but the old Union, half slave and half free? For
nothing better than this were sons, fathers, brothers, hus
bands to be sacrificed? Was the nation crossing a Red
Sea of anguish only to emerge into the old bondage ? Rather,
let us fight at once for union and for liberty !
Those who voiced this cry could not always see the diffi
culties that beset the President. Many of them failed to
realize that at heart he was as true to freedom as they.
Even Lowell, in the later Biglow Papers, which pleaded
with deeper pathos and power than before for freedom — even
he could write of " hoisting your captain's heart up with a
derrick." Wendell Phillips on one occasion, impatient of
Lincoln's attitude toward the fugitive slave law, called him
" the slave-hound from Illinois." Beecher, — ^who did great
service, especially by his speeches in England, — wrote in
the Independent a series of articles, to spur the President
to more pronounced action. Some one gave the articles to
Lincoln; he sat down and read them all, then rose to his
feet exclaiming, " Am I a dog ? "
All this time the conservatives were no less urgent that
the President must make no move against slavery. Among
their spokesmen was General McClellan. On him rested
the chief hope of the North for military success during the

Emancipation Begun 255
year following the disaster of Bull Run. He was an admir
able organizer and a good theoretical strategist ; his care for
his men won their affection; and sometimes in the field he
struck heavy and effective blows. But he was always prone
to overrate the enemy's resources and underrate his own;
he was slow to follow up a success; and he lacked the bull
dog grip by which Grant won. Right on the heels of his
failure in the seven-days' fight in the Peninsula, he wrote
a letter to the President, from Harrison's Landing, July 7,
1862, lecturing him severely as to the errors he must avoid.
Nothing must be done or said looking to confiscation, forci
ble abolition, or territorial organization of the States.
" Until the principles governing the future conduct of our
struggle shall be made known and approved, the effort to
obtain requisite forces will be almost hopeless. A declara
tion of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly
disintegrate our armies." This letter was given to the public,
and on this platform McClellan began to loom up as an
opposition candidate for the Presidency.
So Lincoln was buffeted on the right hand and on the
left. In this summer of 1862, Greeley wrote in the Tribune,
August 20, an open letter to the President, upbraiding him
for his slackness against slavery. Lincoln replied, August
22, in a letter which startled many of his friends, and to this
day bewilders those who do not understand the man himself
or the position in which he stood. He wrote : " I would
save the Union, I would save it the shortest way under the
Constitution. . . . My paramount object in this struggle
is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy
slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any
slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all
the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing
some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." In
fact, the last was the course which he eventually took.

256 The Negro and the Nation
This letter stated with full sincerity Lincoln's basal prin
ciple. It was not necessary to add that the purpose was
growing within him to save the Union by freeing the slaves
in the seceded States. The very growth of that purpose
made it necessary for him to freshly bind to himself the
conservatives whose only care was for the Union and not
for emancipation. Nothing could serve this purpose better
than the declaration in this letter to Greeley. In Lincoln,
sincerity and shrewdness were thoroughly blended.
At a later day he told the artist Frank Carpenter, when
he was to paint " The Signing of the Emancipation Procla
mation " : " It had got to be mid-summer, 1862. Things
had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had
reached the end of our rope on the plan we had been pursu
ing; that we had about played our last card, and must
change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon
the adoption of the emancipation policy; and without con
sultation with, or the knowledge of, the Cabinet, I prepared
the original draft of the proclamation, and after much
anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting upon the sub
ject. ... I said to the Cabinet that I had resolved
upon this step, and had not called them together to ask
their advice, but to lay the subject-matter of a proclamation
before them, suggestions as to which would be in order
after they had heard it read." This proclamation — the first
sketch — set forth that at the next meeting of Congress,
four months later, the President designs to again recommend
a practical measure for tendering pecuniary aid to any State
then recognizing the authority of the United States, which
should have adopted, or should thereafter adopt, gradual
abolishment of slavery; that the object of this is to promote
the restoration of constitutional relations between the gen
eral government and all the States ; and finally, as comman
der-in-chief, the President declares that from the first of

Emancipation Begun 257
January next all slaves in States still rejecting the national
authority shall then and forever be free.
The Cabinet were amazed — and divided. Only Stanton
and Bates were for immediate promulgation. Chase thought
it would be better to leave the matter to district commanders,
but would support the proclamation as better than inaction.
Blair opposed it as likely to be unpopular and lose the Fall
election. All this Lincoln had weighed beforehand. But
now came a suggestion from Seward, that the immediate
time was inopportune, because just after military reverses
(McClellan's Peninsula defeat) it would seem like a desper
ate cry for help, — " our last shriek on the retreat," as Lin
coln phrased it. His judgment welcomed this as a wise
suggestion, and he put the draft of the proclamation aside
and waited for victory. Among the elements which entered
into his decisions was a subtle instinct as to when and how
far he could command the support of the various elements
on whom success depended. His rare capacity as a listener,
and his keen sagacity, enabled him to divine that the hour
was at hand when a decisive move against slavery would
attract more support than it would repel. Seward's sug
gestion gave the final shape to his purpose.
This happened July 22, 1862 ; and when the President
made his calm reply to Greeley's onslaught a month later,
the unsigned proclamation lay in his desk, and he was still
waiting for a victory before he issued it.

CHAPTER XXVII
EMANCIPATION ACHIEVED
Instead of victory came defeat. Pope, taking the com
mand after McClellan's failure, was beaten and driven back
in the second battle of Bull Run, and matters were at the
worst. McClellan was recalled ; his genius for organization
rehabilitated the demoralized army; the soldiers' confidence
in their old chief gave them new courage. When Lee, after
a year on the defensive, took the offensive and entered
Maryland, he was beaten and turned back at Antietam.
Then Lincoln summoned his cabinet again, September 22,
1862. Before he spoke the momentous word, he freshened
himself in his own way, — he said that Artemus Ward had
sent him his book, and he would read them a chapter which
he thought very funny ; and read it he did, with great enjoy
ment; the secretaries also laughing as in duty bound — all
except Stanton ! Then the President became grave enough —
he told them that he had been thinking a great deal about
the proclamation he had read them two months before;
that victory seemed to have brought a favorable occasion;
that when the rebel army was at Fredericksburg he deter
mined as soon as it was driven out of Maryland to proclaim
emancipation. He went on : "I said nothing to any one,
but I made the promise to myself, and," — hesitating a little —
" to my Maker." So now, he tells them, he fulfills that
promise. One last word, — some other might do better than
he ; he would surrender his place to a better man if he saw
the way ; he believes that he has not so much of the confi-
258

Emancipation Achieved 259
dence of the people as he once had, but on the whole he
does not know that any one has more, and at any rate there
is no way for him to give place to any other. " I am here ;
I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking
the course which I feel I ought to take." It is the counter
part of Luther's " Here stand I ; I cannot do otherwise ; God
help me ! "
Discussion in the Cabinet : general approval ; slight modifi
cation only. The proclamation runs on the original lines;
compensated abolition recommended; colonization favored;
freedom to be declared next New Year's day to all slaves
in rebellious States: ultimate compensation recommended
for all loyal owners. The proclamation is issued, September
23, 1862, and the nation is inexorably committed to emanci
pation, — compensated if possible ; forcible if necessary ; par
tial at first, but moving inevitably, swiftly, toward universal
freedom. The proclamation with its sequence was the best Lincoln
found himself able to do. What he wanted to do, — ^his own
ideal which he could not bring his countrymen to accept, —
was shown in his message to Congress when it met in De
cember. The main burden of that message was an earnest
plea for action on the line of compensated emancipation.
The President proposed an amendment to the Constitution,
to this effect: every State abolishing slavery before 1900 to
receive compensation from the United States, at some fixed
rate, in government bonds; meantime, all slaves freed by
chances of war to remain free, with compensation to loyal
owners ; Congress authorized to spend money for coloniza
tion of such as wish to go. For the general plan of com
pensation Lincoln argues as broadly and calmly as if dealing
with a purely economic question, and with the restrained
fervor of the patriot and statesman. He dwells on the vast
growth which the country promises; on the increasing re-

26o The Negro and the Nation
sources which will make light the burden of ransoming the
slaves; the safety of a process of gradual liberation; the
humane, economic. Christian superiority of this settlement
instead of prolonged war. This is the close : " We, even
we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In
giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free —
honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of
earth. Other means may succeed ; this could not fail. The
way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which, if
followed, the world will forever applaud and God must
forever bless."
But as for practical effect, he might as well have read Dr.
Watts's Cradle-hymn to a couple of fighting bulldogs. The
proposition of compensated emancipation was thirty years
too late. Now the blood of both sections was up, the fight
ing animal in man let loose, — and they would go on indefi
nitely killing and being killed, to free the slaves or to hold
them, but they would not lay down their arms and peacefully
share the light burden of emancipation.
So came in New Year's day, 1863, and the final word was
spoken, declaring freedom to all the slaved in Arkansas,
Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, the Caro
linas and the greater portion of Virginia and Louisiana;
enjoining good order on the freedmen ; and opening the army
and navy to their enlistment. " And upon this act, sincerely
believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitu
tion upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judg
ment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God."
How far, it may be asked, was the military necessity on
which the proclamation was based actually met by its results ?
Immediate gain, in a military sense, did not accrue. Not
a slave was freed except as the ground was conquered foot
by foot. But by opening the door to the enlistment of

Emancipation Achieved 261
negroes, there was soon a substantial advantage won to the
Union armies ; for, enlisting by many thousands, they proved
themselves docile, trustworthy, and not lacking in courage.
In the last two years of the war, they added nearly 200,000
men to the Union forces. They were not considered equal
to white soldiers, for they succumbed far more easily to
wounds and disease; and though their officers were chary
of exposing them in battle, their mortality was greater than
that of the whites. In a sense broader than the military,
the first results of the emancipation policy were adverse.
It was said by many that the proclamation would " unite the
South and divide the North." The seceded States could
hardly be more united than they were before, but a fresh
motive was added to their struggle. In the border States,
there was a wide alienation of slave owners and their sym
pathizers. At the North, a similar effect was obvious at
first. From the day of the first proclamation, a war now
evidently waged in part for emancipation lost favor with
many who cared nothing for the slaves. The elections two
months later, in November, 1862, were disastrous. New
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, all went
against the administration. Its majority in Congress was
greatly reduced.
But the emancipation proclamation had struck deep to
the hidden springs of power. For the exigencies of a pro
longed and desperate struggle, it had evoked the full power
of a great sentiment. It had roused the passion of freedom
which nerves men to suffer and die. It was an unselfish
passion, — it was for the freedom of other men that the North
now fought. The loss of the half-hearted and the material
ists was outweighed by the enlistment of the enthusiasts
for humanity. And the sympathies of the nations, which
had wavered while the Union cause was declared to be apart
from the slavery question, now swung weightily to the

262 The Negro and the Nation
side of the North, since it was avowedly the side of
freedom. By his proclamation, Lincoln had, — to use his language
to Greeley, — " freed some and left others alone." He could
not go further on the ground of military necessity. But
the work, or the promise, could not be left in that imperfect
shape. The natural resource was soon found, — universal
freedom by a constitutional amendment. This, the Thir
teenth Amendment, was brought forward in April, 1864,
and received more than the necessary two-thirds vote in
the Senate — 38 to 6; but in the House (elected in the re
action of 1862) only 95 to 66. The next winter it was
brought up again in the same House, but a House enlight
ened now by the Republican victory in Lincoln's re-election ;
and strongly urged by him it won the necessary two-thirds
vote — 119 to 56. The States had still to pass upon it, after
the war, but to resist emancipation then was fighting against
the stars in their courses ; and only Kentucky and Delaware
rejected the amendment, while Texas was silent, and Ala
bama and Mississippi gave a qualified assent. The amend
ment was declared adopted, December 18, 1865, and on that
day slavery in the United States came to an end.
When the issue was finally shaped by the Emancipation
Proclamation of January i, 1863, both sides set themselves
anew for the grim struggle — two years more of hard fight
ing. Since fighting it must be, they bore themselves all,
let us say, as brave men and women, — North and South,
white and black. The Confederates came often into dire
extremities. Men whose lives had been luxurious fared on
the plainest and hardest. Delicate women bore privations
uncomplainingly, and toiled and nursed and endured. Food,
clothing, medicines were scant. Invasion was borne, with
its humiliation and suffering, its train of ravage and desola
tion. The supporting motive was the common defense, the

Emancipation Achieved 263
comradeship of danger and of courage. The Confederacy
and its flag had won the devotion which sacrifice and suf
fering breed. Little thought was there of slavery, little cal
culation of the future, as the siege grew closer and the
shadows darkened — but an indomitable purpose to hold on
and fight on. The chief hero of the Confederacy was Lee.
He was the embodiment and symbol of what the Southern
people most believed in and cared for. He was not one of
those who had brought on the trouble; his whole attitude
had been defensive. He and his Army of Northern Vir
ginia were the shield of the South. A skilful commander,
strong to strike and wary to ward; his personality merged
in the cause; gentle as he was strong, — his army trusted
and followed him with a faith that grew with every victory,
and did not wane under reverses.
Let the negroes in the war-time be judged in the calm
retrospect of history. Their fidelity meant the security of
the families on every lonely plantation from Virginia to
Texas. Instead of the horror of servile insurrection, women
and children were safe in their homes, supported and pro
tected by their servants. It was their labor that made it
possible for the whole white population to take the field.
It was their fidelity and kindliness that kept the social struc
ture sound, even though pierced and plowed by the sword.
Their conduct was a practical refutation of the belief that
they were in general sufferers from inhuman treatment. It
was a proof that slavery had included better influences than
its opponents had recognized. But it suggested, too, that
a people capable of such things under slavery were fully
ready for an upward step, and might be trusted with free
dom. They gave another proof of fitness for freedom when, en
listed in the Union armies, they showed the qualities of

264 The Negro and the Nation
good soldiership. They accepted discipline, and developed
under it. They were brave in battle, and in victory they
were guiltless of excess. It was a wonderful epoch in the
race's history, — ^the transition from servitude to freedom, —
and in that ordeal, first as slaves and then as soldiers, they
showed themselves worthy of the deliverance that had come
at last.
As soldiers, they found leaders in the flower of the North.
Such was Robert Gould Shaw, of the best blood and train
ing of Massachusetts; a son of Harvard; serving from the
first as private and then as captain ; called by Governor An
drew in 1863 to the command of the Fifty-fourth Massa
chusetts, the first black regiment mustered into service;
taking a place which risked not battle peril only but social
obloquy ; training his recruits into soldiers ; leading them in
a hopeless onset against the batteries of Fort Wagner ; fall
ing at their head ; buried in a ditch with his men ; honored
in an immortal sculpture which portrays the young, high
bred hero in the midst of the humble, faithful men for
whom he gave his life.
All the energies of the North were at the highest stretch.
In those whose hearts were in the strife, at home or in the
field, there was a great glow and elation. The intensity of
the time communicated itself to industry and trade. There
was an almost feverish activity; with heavy taxation and a
fluctuating currency — gold was long at a premium of 250—
mills and markets and stores were in full tide of operation.
The North matched the South in personal courage and gen
eralship; and greatly outweighed it in numbers, material,
and in the productivity engendered in a free, urban, indus
trial society. The passion of the war touched everything.
The churches were strongholds of the national cause. The
Sanitary and Christian Commissions kept camp and home
in close touch. But under all this stir was the tragedy of

Emancipation Achieved 265
wide-spread desolation and bereavement. The multitu
dinous slaughter of campaigns like the Wilderness had an
awful background of woful families.
Arduous achievement, heroism and anguish, suffering
and sacrifice for the cause of the nation and humanity —
that was the North's story in those years. It is a sublime
story as we look back:
The glory dies not, and the grief is past.
Once more the North was called on to solemnly decide,
in the election of 1864. Against Lincoln was nominated
by the Democrats, General McClellan, himself a stainless
soldier and a patriot, but supported by every element of
hostility to emancipation, of sympathy with the Southern
cause, and of impatience with the long and burdensome
struggle. The platform called for an immediate armistice,
to be followed by a convention of the States, or other
peaceable measures for the restoration of the Union. Mc
Clellan's letter of acceptance ignored the platform, and de
clared strongly for the persistent maintenance of the Union.
The result of the election was a majority of 400,000 votes
in 4,000,000 for Lincoln, every State supporting him save
New Jersey, Kentucky, and Delaware.
It was the greatness of the prize at stake that justified the
cost. Lowell sang the true song of the war, when the end
was almost reached, in the poem that records the sore loss
to his own family, — his three nephews, " likely lads as well
could be," — slain on the battle-field. In that lofty, mourn
ful verse, there is no drum and trumpet clangor, but the
high purpose whose roots are watered by tears :
Come, Peace, not like a mourner bowed
For honor lost an' dear ones wasted.
But proud, to meet a people proud.
With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted!

266 The Negro and the Nation
Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt,
An' step that proves ye Victory's daughter!
Longin' for you, our sperits wilt
Like shipwrecked men's on raf s for water.
Come, while our country feels the lift
Of a gret instinct shoutin' " Forwards I "
An' knows thet freedom ain't a gift
Thet tarries long in han's o' cowards!
Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when
They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered,
An' bring fair wages for brave men,
A nation saved, a race delivered.

With Grant and Lee locked in the last desperate struggle
at Petersburg, with final victory almost in sight, Lincoln
spoke his second inaugural, — too grave for exultation, with
the note of humility and faith. He is awed before the
course of events since he stood there four years ago. He
feels the strangeness of both combatants appealing to the
same Bible and the same God. For himself and his people
he utters the fond hope, the fervent prayer, that " this
awful scourge of war may pass away." He accepts the suf
fering as the penalty of the nation — the whole nation — for
the sin of slavery. Humbly, resolutely, he faces with his
people the final effort, the sacred duty : " With malice to
ward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care
for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow
and his orphan, and to all which may achieve and cherish
a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all
nations."

CHAPTER XXVIII
RECONSTRUCTION: EXPERIMENTS AND
IDEALS
"God uses a good many ugly tools to dig up the stumps
and burn off the forests and drain the swamps of a howling
wilderness. He has used this old Egyptian plow of slavery
to turn over the sod of these fifteen Southern States. Its
sin consisted in not dying decently when its work was done.
It strove to live and make all the new world like it. Its
leaders avowed that their object was to put this belt of the
continent under the control of an aristocracy which believes
that one-fifth of the race is born booted and spurred and
the other four-fifths ready for that fifth to ride. The war
was one of freedom and democracy against the institutions
that rest on slaves. It will take ten years for the country
to shed the scar of such a struggle. The state of society
at the South that produced the war will remain and trouble
the land until freedom and democracy and the spirit of the
nineteenth century takes its place. Only then can we grap
ple the Union together with hooks of steel, and make it as
lasting as the granite that underlies the continent."
These were the brave words of a Southern newspaper, the
Galveston Bulletin, in January, 1867, in the mid-throes of
reconstruction. So it was that the best minds of the re
united nation foresaw and accepted the path on which we
still are slowly mounting; often slipping, stumbling, fall
ing, but still getting upward.
When, on January 31, 1865, the vote of the House com-
267

268 The Negro and the Nation
pleted the ratification by Congress of the Thirteenth Amend
ment, abolishing slavery, a burst of jubilant cheering swept
the whole assembly, and a wave of joy went through the
North. Universal freedom seemed close at hand. Two
months more, and the Confederate capital fell, on April 3,
and still higher rose the trimph. Another week, and the
North woke at midnight, to forget sleep and rejoice as over
the final consummation, — Lee had surrendered! In those
days it seemed to ardent souls that all the sacrifices of the
past four years were repaid, and freedom and Union were
completely won.
But real freedom of men, true union of a nation, are not
achieved by votes of Congress alone, or victories of the
sword. The first and worst was over, yet the work was
only begun. And these first steps had been by a rough and
bitter road, of which the next stage could not be smooth or
sweet. The plow of slavery had been followed by the
harrow of war, — ^blossoms and fruitage could not instantly
follow. Lincoln practically made his own the motto ascribed to
the Jesuits, " The goal of to-day, the starting-point of to
morrow." Even before to-day's goal was reached, his eye
was measuring the next stage. While his patient shoulders
were still bowed under the weight of war, his hands were
reaching out to the work of reconstruction. In December,
1863, a year after the Emancipation Proclamation, he issued
another proclamation. In this he offered full amnesty to
all who had taken arms against the government, on con
dition simply of an oath to support the Constitution, and
all laws and proclamations concerning slavery until such
were legally overruled. From this amnesty were excepted
those who had held diplomatic or high military offices in
the Confederacy ; those who had left Congress or the army
or navy to aid the Confederate cause; and those who had

Reconstruction: Experiments and Ideals 269
maltreated negro prisoners of war. Whether Lincoln in his
own mind regarded the official classes as more blameworthy
or more dangerous than their followers, we can only sur
mise; but he doubtless considered that public opinion was
not ripe — the war being still flagrant — for a wider offer of
pardon. Further, he invited a return of the seceded States to their
former relations, under these conditions : Wherever a num
ber of voters equal to one-tenth of the registered list of
i860, having individually taken the oath of allegiance, shall
unite to form a loyal State government, their organization
will be recognized by the Federal government. It is de
sirable to retain as far as practicable the old State boun
daries, constitution, and laws. Such a State government
may make regulations for the negroes, — if their freedom
and education are provided for, — as a " laboring, home
less, and landless class." The admission of representatives
and senators must depend on the action of Congress.
Under this plan — regarded by the President as somewhat
tentative and provisional, and expressly made dependent on
Congress for its consummation by the admission of senators
and representatives — within the next twelve months gov
ernments were established in three States where the Union
arms were partly in the ascendant, Louisiana, Arkansas, and
Tennessee. Congress, in July, 1864, passed a reconstruc
tion bill on more radical lines ; assuming that the rebel
States were by their own act extinguished as States and
were to be created de novo; directing that a provisional
governor be forthwith appointed for every such State; re
quiring the new Legislatures to abolish slavery, exclude high
Confederate officials from office, and annul the Confederate
debt. The President let this bill fail for want of his signa
ture, and in a proclamation explained his objections: He
was not ready to accept the " State suicide " theory ; he did

270 The Negro and the Nation
not want to rest the abolition of slavery on the fiat of Con
gress (he was looking for the adoption of the Thirteenth
Amendment) ; and he was unwilling to sacrifice the pro
visional governments already set up in Louisiana and
Arkansas. If in any other State a movement on the con
gressional plan was initiated, that might do well; but for
any hard-and-fast, all-round plan the time was not ripe.
The radicals, led by Wade and Henry Winter Davis, chafed
bitterly, but Lincoln was not an easy man to fix a quarrel
on. In the following winter, 1864-5, the new Louisiana Legis
lature, recognized and encouraged by the President, elected
two senators who applied at Washington for admission.
The judiciary committee, headed by Lyman Trumbull, re
ported in their favor, and the large majority of the Senate
took the same view. But Sumner was strongly opposed
to beginning the readmission of the rebel States to congres
sional power until the rights of the freedmen were fully and
finally established. Aided by two other radicals. Wade of
Ohio and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, he " talked
against time," and defeated action until the end of the
session. Under senatorial usage it was legitimate — but it
was exasperating. The little world of Washington, always
greatly given to tempests in a teapot, looked for a break
between the President and the foremost man of his sup
porters. What it saw instead was, at the inauguration ball,
Mr. Sumner entering in company with the President and
with Mrs. Lincoln on his arm ! No, Lincoln was not going
to quarrel with Sumner — nor with any one, if it lay with
him. Richmond was taken, and through its streets moved the
gaunt form of the President, his eyes taking grave, kind
note of all. Back to Washington, and the supreme word
comes at last. Lee has surrendered, the war is over, the

Reconstruction: Experiments and Ideals 271
victory won ! A cheering, exultant crowd beset the White
House. Lincoln came out on the balcony, said a word of
response, and invited them to come back two days later for
a fuller word. When they came again, he talked to them
and to the country. His whole theme was. What is our
next duty ? Here is the next step, the first of the " erring
sisters " to return is to be welcomed back. Louisiana has
adopted a constitution abolishing slavery, establishing pub
lic schools for black and white alike, and allowing the
Legislature at its discretion to extend suffrage to the blacks.
Under this constitution 12,000 voters have been enrolled.
The Legislature has met and ratified the Thirteenth Amend
ment. Can we do better than to accept and restore them
to the full privileges of statehood? For them would it not
also be wise to extend the suffrage to the most intelligent
negroes, and to those who have served in the Union army ?
As to all the seceded States, the question whether they have
ever been out of the Union is " a merely pernicious ab
straction." The real question is, how to get them again
into proper practical relations with the Union. " Concede
that the new government of Louisiana is to what it should
be only as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have
the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it." Let
us be flexible as to our methods, inflexible as to vital prin
ciples. These were his last words to his countrymen. Three
days later, April 14, as he sat in Ford's theatre, — ^the strain
of responsibility lightened by an hour of kindly amusement
— there fell on him, from an assassin's hand, the stroke of
unconsciousness and speedy death. For himself, how could
he have died better ! At the summit of achievement, hailed
by the world's acclaim, in the prime of manly strength,
unweakened by decay, unshadowed by fear ; a life of heroic
service crowned by a martyr's death; a place won in the

272 The Negro and the Nation
nation's heart of such love and gratitude as has been given
to no other, — how better could he have died?
But never was heavier bereavement than his death
brought to the American people. It was not sorrow only,
but lasting loss, beyond estimation and beyond repair. We
know not how in the sum of things all seeming evil may
find place, but to human eyes seldom was man taken who
could so ill be spared. By nature and capacity he was above
all else a peace-maker. Called to be captain in a great war,
his largest contribution to its success had been in holding
united to the common purpose men most widely varying
among themselves. He said, toward the end, that he did
not know that he had done better than any one else could,
except perhaps at one point, — he did think he had been
pretty successful in keeping the North united. And while
he did this, while he kept radicals and conservatives. Aboli
tionists and Unionists, New Englanders and Kentuckians,
loyal to the common cause, he also shaped that cause to
ward the highest aims that his various constituency would
admit. He could not bring them to his own highest
thought, — they would not be persuaded to try compensated
emancipation and peaceful reunion instead of war to the
extremity. But he did lift a war for the Union to a war
for freedom also, and so direct it that from the strife
should emerge not the old, but a nobler nation. And now,
the harder half was to be done! Instead of generalship,
statesmanship; instead of animal courage, justice and kind
ness toward former foes; instead of holding the North to
gether, to bring North and South together; that was the
gigantic task now to be wrought. Who so fit for it as he?
And for want of him, grievous and slow has been the
journey. From the first thrill of passionate grief, men turned to
ask anxiously what the new President was to be. He had

Reconstruction: Experiments and Ideals 273
been selected with that carelessness as to the Vice-Presi
dency which is a tradition of American politics. Had the
convention which renominated Lincoln chosen with care
the man best fitted to aid or possibly succeed him in his
work — had they for instance chosen John A. Andrew of
Massachusetts — history might have been very different.
But they took Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, with little
scrutiny of his qualities, but desiring to broaden their ticket
by including a Southern Unionist. Johnson had been bred
as a tailor, with only the meagerest schooling, with no
training in the law, going straight from his trade into
politics, and by native force rising to the senatorship. He
was regarded, and rightly, as a man of honesty, patriotism,
courage, and rough energy. He had been conspicuous in
denouncing the seceders with the heat of a border-State
Unionist, and something of the uncontrolled temper of the
" poor white." " Treason must be made odious," had been
his cry, " traitors must be punished." In that war-heated
time, there were good men who thought they read the pur
pose of the Almighty in removing the too kindly Lincoln,
that the guilty rebels might be more severely scourged.

CHAPTER XXIX
RECONSTRUCTION: THE FIRST PLAN
The new President gave at once the best possible reassur
ance as to his general course by retaining all the members
of Lincoln's Cabinet. They remained, not as a temporary
formality, but for a considerable time in full harmony with
the President. Chase having left the Cabinet for the chief-
justiceship, by far the two strongest secretaries remaining
were Seward and Stanton. Seward had been struck down
at the same time with Lincoln, and dangerously wounded,
but after a few weeks was able to resume his duties. Thus
the two foremost men, after Lincoln, of the Republican
party, Sumner and Seward, had been murderously assaulted,
yet neither of them was embittered or altered in his course.
Seward probably had great influence on President John
son's early measures. The degree of that influence is a
disputed point among historians, but the internal evidence
points strongly to his having had a large share in the Presi
dent's original plans, and materially aided their execution,
though Johnson's strong will and hot temper marred and
thwarted Seward's efforts. One of the secretary's special
powers was a genial and persuasive skill in conversation;
his historic place as the Republican premier gave him in
fiuence with the President; he had been in full sympathy
with Lincoln's late course; and his constitutional theories
and his optimism appear in the reconstruction scheme which
the President soon proposed. Responsibility had steadied
and sobered Johnson; his vindictiveness toward the South
had disappeared, — one guesses with Seward's aid; and his
274

Reconstruction: The First Plan 275
plan looked to a prompt and early return of the seceded
States. His proclamation of amnesty, indeed, issued May 29, was
more numerous in its exceptions than Lincoln's; including
almost the entire official class throughout the South, and
adding all such as held property in excess of $20,000, —
which in theory was little other than an attempt to behead
the political community of all its intelligent or wealthy
memhers. But the added clause providing for a pardon of
such by the President on special application proved in prac
tice more significant than the formal exemptions. Scarcely
an apphcation for amnesty was refused, and it is recorded
that in less than a twelvemonth 14,000 such applications
were made and granted.
On the same day. May 29, President Johnson by procla
mation appointed a provisional governor of North Carolina,
and ordered an election of delegates to a constitutional con
vention. By July 13, he had issued similar proclamations
for Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and
Florida. Texas's turn came a little later, the last embers
of the war lingering there for a while. In Virginia, the
President had recognized a shadowy loyal State government
which had kept up a nominal existence. The three other
seceded States, — Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee, — had
already the State governments established under Lincoln,
though unrepresented in Congress.
These overtures for formal reconstruction came to com
munities impoverished, forlorn, and chaotic, almost beyond
imagination. Property, industry, social order, had been
torn up by the plowshare of war. The prolongation of re
sistance until defeat was complete and overwhelming had
ended all power and all wish to contend with the inevitable.
The people, groping back toward even a bare livelihood, —
toward some settled order, some way of public and private

276 The Negro and the Nation
life, — met eagerly the advances of the President. Con
stitutional conventions were elected and met, within the
remaining months of 1865 ; they were chosen on the old
basis of suffrage, conditioned by the exceptions to amnesty
and by the oaths of allegiance ; these conventions based the
new constitutions largely on the old ; they affirmed the ordi
nances of secession to be null and void ; they repudiated the
Confederate debt, and they declared that slavery no longer
existed. Legislatures were duly elected, and proceeded to
enact laws. They all ratified the Thirteenth Amendment,
though Mississippi and Alabama affixed some qualifications
to their assent, while Texas was still unreconstructed and
could not act ; and Kentucky and Delaware gave a negative.
The President and Secretary of State, December 18, de
clared the adoption of the amendment by the vote of 31
States out of 36. Slavery was finally and forever abolished.
President Johnson used his influence to have the new
constitutions open the door to a qualified negro suffrage.
He telegraphed to the Mississippi convention, urging that
the suffrage be extended to all negroes who could read and
write, or who possessed $250 worth of real estate. Well
would it have been if that appeal had been heeded.
Thus far, reconstruction had moved with singular swift
ness and ease. Too swift and easy was the recovery to be
trusted — so thought some — where the disease had been so
desperate. But the Cabinet, including the grim and jealous
Stanton, held with the President. More, the autumn Re
publican conventions throughout the North passed resolu
tions cordially approving the President's course and its
results — all, with the ominous exceptions of Pennsylvania
and Massachusetts, controlled respectively by Thaddeus
Stevens and Sumner, the leader of the House and the fore
most man in the Senate.
Thus was initiated and begun the first of the three sue-

Reconstruction: The First Plan 277
cessive plans of reconstruction. Before seeing its fate, it
is opportune to consider the general ideal of the situation,
as presented by two of the greatest men of the North, the
two, we may say, who best comprehended the whole case;
the one standing in the Church and the other in the State,
but alike in breadth of mind and loftiness of spirit — Henry
Ward Beecher and John A. Andrew.
During the war, the Northern churches had been centers
of inspiration to the national cause, and Plymouth church
among the foremost. Beecher had made a series of speeches
in England in 1862, which did much to turn the tide of
English opinion. The disclaimers by the Federal Govern
ment of a crusade against slavery had perplexed and divided
the anti-slavery sentiment of Great Britain; the issues at
stake were little understood; the stoppage of the cotton
supply aroused a commercial opposition to the war; there
was some degree of aristocratic sympathy with the Southern
oligarchy; and a wider sympathy with the weaker of th§
two combatants that was fighting pluckily against odds.
The North had few strong friends, except a group of radical
leaders — Mill, Bright, Cobden and their allies, — and a host
of working people, including even the suffering cotton
operatives, who instinctively recognized and supported the
cause of the common people. Beecher's eloquent and lucid
orations went far to convince that the Union cause was the
cause of liberty; and no less effect was produced by the
splendid courage and self-possession with which he faced
and mastered one audience after another where the mob
tried to howl him down. After the close of the war, when
a company went down to raise the Stars and Stripes once
more over Fort Sumter, Beecher was the chosen orator,
and his speech was inspired by the spirit of fraternity and
reconciliation. In a sermon in his church, October 29,
1865, he outlined with a master's hand the principles of re-

278 The Negro and the Nation
construction. The South should be restored at the earliest
possible moment to a share in the general government.
Idle to ask them to repent of secession; enough if they
recognize that it is forever disallowed. The best guarantee
for the future is the utter destruction of slavery. Let there
be no further humbling : " I think it to be the great need of
this nation to save the self-respect of the South." What
then are the necessary conditions of reconstruction? The
Southern States should accede to the abolition of slavery by
the Constitution. They should establish the freedman's
" right to labor as he pleases, where he pleases, and for
whom he pleases," with full control of his own earnings;
he should be the equal of all men before the courts. What
about suffrage? It is the natural right of all men, says
Beecher; but, tempering as usual his intellectual radicalism
with practical conservatism, he goes on: It will be useless
to enforce negro suffrage on the South against the opposi
tion of the whites. As to the general treatment of the
freedmen, " the best intentions of the government will be
defeated, if the laws that are made touching this matter are
such as are calculated to excite the animosity and hatred of
the white people in the South toward the black people there.
I except the single decree of emancipation. That must
stand, though men dislike it." But beyond that, all meas
ures instituted under the act of emancipation for the blacks
in order to be permanently useful must have the cordial
consent of the wise and good citizens of the South. " These
men (the negroes) are scattered in fifteen States; they are
living contiguous to their old masters ; the kindness of the
white man in the South is more important to them than all
the policies of the nation put together." As to suffrage,
whatever the colored man's theoretical right, " you will
never be able to secure it and maintain it for him, except
by making him so intelligent that men cannot deny it to

Reconstruction: The First Plan 279
him. You cannot long, in this country, deny to a man any
civil right for which he is manifestly qualified." It will be
a sufficient beginning if the vote is given to such as can
read and write and have acquired a certain amount of
property. As a beginning, a stepping-stone to larger things,
it might suffice even to give the suffrage to black men who
have borne arms for the Union. And, emphatically, the
negroes should be given such education as will make them
worthy of citizenship. " You may pass laws declaring that
black men are men, and that they are our equals in social
position ; but unless you can make them thoughtful, indus
trious, self-respecting, and intelligent; unless, in short, you
can make them what you say they have a right to be, those
laws will be in vain." The work of education should be
done for black and white alike ; the South is not to be treated
as a pagan land to which missionaries are to be sent, but as
part of our common country, to which the richer and more
prosperous section ought to give aid. " I do not think it
would be wise for the North to pour ministers, colporteurs
and schoolmasters into the South, making a too marked
distinction between the black people and the white. We
ought to carry the gospel and education to the whites and
blacks alike. Our heart should be set toward our country
and all its people, without distinction of caste, class, or
color." Governor Andrew had been the fit leader of Massachu
setts through the war period. He was strong as an ad
ministrator; he inspired and voiced the patriotism of the
people; he supported the forward policy without harassing
the President; and he was the first governor to organize
negro troops. Now, on his retirement to private life, he
gave a valedictory address, January 4, 1866, which was
a worthy sequel to his inaugural of five years before. He
specially emphasized the need of a generous and inclusive

28o The Negro and the Nation
policy toward the Southern people and their recent leaders.
" I am confident we cannot reorganize political society with
any security : i. Unless we let in the people to a co-opera
tion, and not merely an arbitrarily selected portion of them.
2. Unless we give those who are by intelligence and charac
ter the natural leaders of the people, and who surely will
lead them by-and-by, an opportunity to lead them now.
. . . The truth is, the public opinion of the white race
in the South was in favor of the rebellion." The loyalists
were not in general the strongest minds and characters,
and when the revolution came they were swept off their feet.
For present purposes, there should be no discrimination.
" The capacity of leadership is a gift, not a device. They
whose courage, talents, and will, entitle them to lead, will
lead. . . . Why not try them? They are the most
hopeful subjects to deal with in the very nature of the case.
They have the brain and experience and the education to
enable them to understand the exigences of the present
situation." The ideals thus presented by Beecher and Andrew, — as
practical, we see now after forty years, as they were lofty,
— were at the time somewhat like what Catholic theologians
call " counsels of perfection " — precepts of conduct too
high to be practiced except by the saintly. They fell on the
ears of a people whose two sections had long been strug
gling in deadly opposition, and who still surveyed each other
through eyes inflamed by the bitter struggle. Could it be
hoped that the North would invite co-operation as of fel
low-patriots from those whom they had been denouncing
as arch-traitors ? And was it to be expected that the South,
which had seceded and battled on the ground that the
negro was fit only for slavery, should at once begin heartily
and practically to establish and elevate him as a freeman?

CHAPTER XXX
CONGRESS AND THE "BLACK CODES"
Congress assembled at the beginning of December, 1865,
and at the very outset declared that the work of recon
struction must pass under its hands. Before the President's
message was read, Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the
House, moved that a joint committee of fifteen on recon
struction, be appointed by the House and Senate ; and that
until that committee had reported no senator or representa
tive from the lately seceded States should be admitted. This
action was taken at once, by a large majority in both houses,
and the committee was promptly appointed, with Senator
Fessenden at its head. Then the President's message was
read, — a very able paper, broad and statesmanlike in tone,
recounting the President's action and the choice of con
ventions and Legislatures in the seceded States ; their repu
diation of secession and slavery; the inauguration of loyal
State governments; — this, with an invitation to Congress
to accept and co-operate in this policy, and a hopeful view
of the general situation. The message was favorably re
ceived, and for a moment it looked as if the President and
Congress might work in harmony.
But the claim of Congress to a paramount voice in the
settlement was well based, not only in constitutional theory,
but in the immediate facts. Congress came fresh from the
people; its members knew how the currents of popular
thought and feeling ran. The President was comparatively
out of touch with the nation; he had, so to speak, no per
sonal constituency; he was a Southern loyalist, apart from
281

282 The Negro and the Nation
the mass of both South and North. Further, this Congress
was personally a strong body of men. They represented
in an unusual degree not merely the average sentiment but
the better sentiment of the North. To glance at a few of
their leaders: Thaddeus Stevens was a Pennsylvanian, a
leader at the bar, active in anti-slavery politics, conspicuous
by his successful defense of the State's public school system ;
a man of strong convictions and strong passions, a natural
fighter ; skillful in parliamentary management ; vigorous and
often bitter in debate; not scrupulous in political methods;
loyal to his cause and his friends, and vindictive to his
enemies; an efficient party leader, but in no high sense a
statesman. Up to his death in 1868 he exercised such a
mastery over the Republican majority in the House as no
man since has approached. He is sometimes spoken of as
if he had been the ruling spirit in reconstruction, but this
seems a mistake. He was a leader in it, so far as his con
victions coincided with the strong popular current; but
his favorite ideas were often set aside. He was an early
advocate of a wide confiscation, but that policy found no
support; and at the crucial points of the reconstruction
proceedings he was often thwarted and superseded by more
moderate men.
Charles Sumner was a high-minded idealist and a scholar,
devoted to noble ends, but not well versed in human nature.
He was a lover of Man, but with men he was not much
acquainted. His oratory was elaborate and ornate, and he
unduly estimated the power of words. Sometimes, says
Senator Hoar, he seemed to think the war was to be settled
by speech-making, and was impatient of its battles as an
interruption — like a fire-engine rumbling past while he was
orating. But he had large influence, partly from his
thoroughly disinterested character, and partly because
beyond any other man in public life he represented the ele-

Congress and the "Black Codes" 283
ments of moral enthusiasm among the people. His counter
part was Henry Wilson, his colleague in the Senate. Wilson
had risen from the shoe-maker's bench, and knew the com
mon people as a cobbler knows his tools. He was genial
in temperament; public-spirited and generous in his aims;
a most skilful tactician, and not over-scrupulous. He joined
the Know-nothings, with no sympathy for their proscriptive
creed, but in the break-up of parties using them for the
anti-slavery cause, — and to secure his own election to the
United States Senate. He was a good fighter, but without
rancor; and he was an admirable interpreter of the real
democracy. Senator Hoar, in his autobiography, graphically
describes how at some crisis Wilson would travel swiftly
over the State, from Boston to Berkshire, visit forty shops
and factories in a day, talk with politicians all night, study
the main currents and the local eddies ; and after a week or
two of this — seeming meanwhile to be backing and filling
in his own mind — would " strike a blow which had in it
not only the vigor of his own arm, but the whole vigor
and strength of the public sentiment which he had gathered
and which he represented."
Prominent in the Senate was " bluff Ben Wade " of
Ohio, an old-time anti-slavery man, radical, vigorous, a
stout friend and foe. Another conspicuous radical was
Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. He was born in New
Hampshire, went West early in life, and was a chief
organizer and leader of the Republican party in Michigan.
He was a mixture of Yankee shrewdness and Western
energy; patriotic, masterful, somewhat coarse-grained and
materialistic; and, like many of his associates, better suited
for controversy and war than for conciliation and construc
tion. Of a higher type were three men who stood near the
head in the Senate, — John Sherman of Ohio, Lyman Trum
bull of Illinois, and William P. Fessenden of Maine. In the

284 The Negro and the Nation
qualities for solid work, few men of his time surpassed
Sherman. He was wise in framing legislation, and a
good administrator, — an upright, moderate, serviceable man.
Trumbull, of Connecticut birth, was well trained in the law
and eminent as a constitutional lawyer. He made his serious
entrance into public life along with Lincoln, and was his
near friend and adviser. He was an able though not a
brilliant debater; a man of independent convictions and
thorough courage. Fessenden, like Trumbull, was entitled
to rank as a real statesman. Like Trumbull he had no
popular arts, and where Trumbull was reticent and with
drawn in manner, Fessenden was austere and sometimes
irascible. In private character both were above reproach.
Fessenden had a finely-trained and richly-equipped mind.
In an emergency, after Chase's retirement, he accepted the
secretaryship of an almost bankrupt treasury, and handled
it well. His devotion to duty was unreserved; he was an
admirable debater; and he had the high power of framing
legislation. His was the most important work of the recon
struction committee, and Trumbull, as chairman of the
judiciary committee, had a chief hand in the other leading
measures. The Democrats were few and not strong in
leadership ; their ablest man was Reverdy Johnson of Mary
land, — highly educated and large-minded. With these were
other senators of repute; and in the House there were
abundant men of mark, — Colfax, Blaine, Banks, Boutwell,
Dawes, Conkling, Henry J. Raymond, Randall, Hayes,
Garfield, Bingham, Shellabarger, Voorhees, Elihu B. Wash
burn ; — space is wanting to name others, or to individually
characterize these.
In estimating the work of reconstruction we must take
account of the character of the men who shaped it. Taking
these leaders as a body, they fall into groups, — Sumner for
the uncompromising idealists; the radicals by temperament,

Congress and the "Black Codes" 285
like Stevens, Wade, and Chandler ; the men of higher train
ing, minds of the statesman's type, and a certain austerity
of temper, such as Fessenden, Trumbull, and Sherman.
Among them all there was a deficiency of that blending of
large view, close insight, and genial humanity, which
marked Lincoln. Small discredit to them that they were not
his peers, — ^but the work in hand demanded just such a
combination. It is to be remembered that all of these, like the mass
of the Northern people, had been for many years contend
ing with all their might for certain ends, and in keenest
hostility to the Southern whites. They had fought for the
Union and freedom; the South had fought for the Con
federacy and slavery. By sheer overpowering physical
force the Southern armies had been beaten down, and peace
restored, and in name at least the national authority re-estab
lished. But by conviction, habit, instinct, these opponents
yet hot from the battle-field would scrutinize with jealous
care the real success of their principles and the disposition
of their late foes.
The President's policy, as laid down in his message, was
at once challenged in Congress. Stevens opened the debate
in the House, and, without directly assailing the President,
antagonized his theory that the States, like the Union, were
indestructible, that secession had only temporarily suspended
their relation, and that they now by right recurred at once
to their normal position. Against this Stevens maintained
that by their rebellion these States had, as organizations,
committed suicide, that they now were in the position of
conquered territory, and that out of this territory Congress
was to create new States on whatever terms it judged most
expedient. The President's theory found an able supporter
in Henry J. Raymond, who had just exchanged the editor
ship of the New York Times for a seat in Congress. But

286 The Negro and the Nation
he had only a single ally among his Republican colleagues,
and the lonely couple, with four Republican senators, proved
to be the only habitual supporters of the President in the
party that had elected him. But the Democrats came to
his side with an alacrity that strengthened the Republican
opposition. Their party had as a whole leaned toward the
South during the war, and they now welcomed the easy
terms held out by the President to their old associates. The
Republican doctrine was best formulated by Shellabarger
of Ohio, who, without going to the full length of Stevens's
theory, maintained the essential right of Congress to lay
down the conditions on which the seceded States could
resume their old relation with the Federal Government. That
seemed the just and inevitable logic of the situation ; and it
was expressed in as much conformity with the Constitution
as was practicable after the rude jostle of a four years'
war. Meantime, Republican leaders in the Senate — Sumner,
Wilson and Fessenden — were announcing the same doctrine,
and were earnestly declaring that the actual conditions of
the South called for stronger remedies than the President
had provided. A joint resolution brought before Congress
a report which had been made to the President by Carl
Schurz, after a tour of several months for which he had
been specially commissioned. With this report, the Pres
ident sent also one from General Grant, whom he had asked,
during an official trip of a few days, to observe the general
disposition and temper of the Southern people. Grant stated
his conclusion to be that " the mass of thinking men of the
South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith " ;
and that they cordially acquiesce in the restoration of the
national sovereignty and the abolition of slavery; and
Grant's name carried great weight.
But Mr. Schurz's much longer and more careful study

Congress and the "Black Codes" 287
had brought him to very different conclusions. He was a
trained observer and thinker; a German refugee after the
disturbances of 1848; a leader among the emancipationists
in Missouri before the war, a general in the Union army,
and a political radical. Mr. Schurz recapitulated his obser
vations and conclusions, as he then reported them, in an
article in McClure's Magazine for January, 1904; and they
come now with increased weight after a life-time of dis
interested and sagacious public service. That he found the
Southern whites acquiescing in their defeat only as of
necessity, conquered but not convinced — is no matter of
surprise; though Mr. Schurz seems somewhat to have
shared the Northern expectation that their late foes should
take the attitude of repentant sinners. But as to their
practical attitude toward the negro, his testimony is impor
tant. He relates that he found the general assertion to be
" You cannot make the negro work without compulsion."
This conviction he encountered everywhere; all facts to the
contrary were brushed aside, and every instance of idleness
or vagabondage was cited as proof positive of the negro's
unwillingness to labor. The planter who seriously main
tained in Mr. Schurz's presence that one of his negroes was
unfit for freedom because he refused to submit to a whip
ping, went only a little further than his neighbors.
As to actual behavior of the negroes, under this sudden
and tremendous change of condition, certain facts were
noted; not a single act of vengeance was charged against
them; a great part, probably the large majority, remained
or soon went back to work for their old employers ; but a
considerable part began an aimless roaming to enjoy their
new liberty, or huddle around the stations where the agents
of the Freedmen's Bureau doled out some relief. As to their
education, popular opinion was no less unfavorable than
as to their labor. The common expressions were " learn-

288 The Negro and the Nation
ing will spoil the negro for work," " negro education would
be the ruin of the South," and even " the elevation of the
blacks would be the degradation of the whites." In practical
application of these views, negro schools were frequently
broken up and the school-houses burned; and in many
places they were only safe under the immediate protection
of the Federal troops. After many further particulars,
especially as to the oppressive laws passed by the new gov
ernments, Mr. Schurz sums up : " To recapitulate ; the
white people of the South were harassed by pressing neces
sities, and most of them in a troubled and greatly excited
state of mind. The emancipation of the slaves had
destroyed the traditional labor system upon which they had
depended. Free negro labor was still inconceivable to
them. There were exceptions, but, as a rule, their ardent,
and in a certain sense not unnatural, desire was to resist
its introduction, and to save or restore as much of the slave
labor system as possible."
It was the character of the laws and ordinances passed
under these circumstances which was to the better senti^
ment of the North the most concrete and convincing argu--
ment against restoring the Southern States by the short
and easy road proposed by President Johnson. It is to
those laws, and the condition underlying them, that we must
ascribe the refusal of Congress — backed by Northern con
viction — to confirm the early restoration which at first
seemed so promising. So those laws deserve careful con
sideration, as well as the situation which led to them.
The Southern people, blacks and whites, were in a position
of almost unexampled difficulty. To the ravages of war
and invasion, of impoverishment and bereavement — and,
as it fell out, to two successive seasons of disastrous weather
for crops, — was added at the outset a complete disarrange
ment of the principal supply of labor. The mental over-

Congress and the "Black Codes" 289
turning was as great as the material. To the negroes " free
dom " brought a vague promise of life without toil or
trouble. The hard facts soon undeceived them. But for
the indulgent Providence they at first hoped for, some
occasional and partial substitute appeared in the offices of
the Freedmen's Bureau. This had been established by Con
gress, in March, 1865, with the laudable design of helping
to adjust the freedmen to their new condition; to make
temporary provision for the extreme physical wants of
some; to aid them in arrangements for labor and educa
tion; and, as was at first contemplated, to lease to them
abandoned or confiscated lands, in plots of forty acres, for
three years. This land provision was soon abandoned, there
being no confiscation to provide the necessary land; but it
started the expectation of " forty acres and a mule," which
misled many a freedman. As chief of the Bureau was
appointed General O. O. Howard, a distinguished Union
commander, of the highest personal character, and entirely
devoted to his new work; and under him was a com
missioner with a working force in each of the States. The
Bureau accomplished considerable good; but its adminis
tration on the whole was not of the highest class; among
its subordinates were some unfit men; and a good deal of
offense and irritation attended its operations. At most, it
touched only the circumference of the problem. Three and
a half millions of newly enfranchised, ignorant men, women
and children ! What should provide for the helpless among
them, especially for the children, whom the master's care
had supported? How should order be maintained in the
lower mass, half-brutalized, whom slavery had at least
restrained from vagabondage, rapine, and crime? And
how should the whole body be induced to furnish the
dynamic, driving power of industry essential to the com
munity's needs? These questions the South essayed to

290 The Negro and the Nation
answer in part by a system of laws, of which we may take
as a fair specimen the legislation of Mississippi — ^the only
State which had enacted this class of laws before Congress
met, — as they are summarized in the thorough and impartial
book of Professor J. W. Burgess, Reconstruction and the
Constitution. The law of apprenticeship ran thus: Negro children
under eighteen, orphans or receiving no support from their
parents, to be apprenticed, by clerk of probate court, to
some suitable person, — by preference the former master
or mistress; the court to fix the terms, having the interest
of the minor particularly in view; males to be apprenticed
till end of twenty-first year, females to end of eighteenth.
No other punishment to be permitted than the common law
permits to a parent or guardian. If the apprentice runs
away, he is to be apprehended and returned, or, if he refuses
to return, to be confined or put under bonds till the next
term of the court, which shall then decide as to the cause
of his desertion, and if it appears groundless compel his
return, or if he has been ill-treated fine the master not more
than $100 for the benefit of his apprentice. This statute
seems not oppressive but beneficent.
The law of vagrancy provided that all freedmen having
no lawful employment or business, or who are found unlaw
fully assembling, and all white persons so assembling in
company with freedmen, or " usually associating with freed
men, free negroes, or mulattoes, on terms of equality," are
to be deemed vagrants, and fined, a white man not more
than $200, a negro not more than $50, and imprisoned, a
white man not more than six months, a negro not more than
ten days. If the negro does not pay his fine within five days,
he is to be hired out by the sheriff to the person who will
pay his fine and costs for the shortest term of service. The
same treatment is to be applied to any negro who fails to

Congress and the "Black Codes" 291
pay his tax. This statute meant legal servitude for any
negro not finding employment, and the same penalty for a
white man who merely consorted with negroes on equal
terms. The law of civil rights provided that all negroes are to
have the same rights with whites as to personal property,
as to suing and being sued, but they must not rent or lease
lands or tenements except in incorporated towns and cities,
and under the control of the corporate authorities. Pro
vision is made for the intermarriage of negroes, and the
legalization of previous connections; but intermarriage
between whites and negroes is to be punished with imprison
ment for life. Negroes may be witnesses in all civil cases
in which negroes are parties, and in criminal cases where
the alleged crime is by a white person against a negro.
Every negro shall have a lawful home and employment,
and hold either a public license to do job-work or a written
contract for labor. If a laborer quits his employment
before the time specified in the contract, he is to forfeit his
wages for the year up to the time of quitting. Any one
enticing a laborer to desert his work, or selling or giving
food or raiment or any other thing knowingly to a deserter
from contract labor, may be punished by fine or imprison
ment. No negro is to carry arms without a public license.
Any negro guilty of riot, affray, trespass, seditious speeches,
insulting gestures, language or acts, or committing any
other misdemeanor, to be fined and imprisoned, or if the
fine is not paid in five days to be hired out to whoever will
pay fine and costs. All penal and criminal laws against
offenses by slaves or free negroes to continue in force except
as specially repealed.
Many of these clauses speak eloquently for themselves,
and as to the law in general Professor Burgess, who cer
tainly has no anti-Southern bias, comments : " Almost every

292 The Negro and the Nation
act, word or gesture of the negro, not consonant with good
taste and good manners as well as good morals, was made
a crime or misdemeanor, for which he could first be fined
by the magistrates and then be consigned to a condition of
almost slavery for an indefinite time, if he could not pay the
bill." And Professor Burgess adds, " This is a fair sample
of the legislation subsequently passed by all the States
reconstructed under President Johnson's plan."
The case against this class of laws may be left — in the
necessary limits of space — with this careful and moderate
statement, though the temptation is strong to quote from
Mr. Schurz and other authorities further specimens of the
great body of harassing legislation, both state and local; —
the establishment of pillory and whipping-post; the impo
sition of unjust taxes, with heavy license fees for the prac
tice of mechanic arts ; requirements of certified employment
under some white man ; prohibition of preaching or religious
meetings without a special license ; sale into indefinite servi
tude for slight occasion; and so on — a long, grim chapter.
Whatever excuses may be pleaded for these laws, under the
circumstances of the South, all have this implication, — that
the negro was unfit for freedom. He was to be kept as near
to slavery as possible ; to be made, " if no longer the slave
of an individual master, the slave of society." And further,
as to the broad conditions of the time, two things are to be
noted. The physical violence was almost wholly practiced
by the whites against the negroes. Bands of armed white
men, says Mr. Schurz, patrolled the highways (as in the days
of slavery) to drive back wanderers; murder and mutilation
of colored men and women were common, — " a number of
such cases I had occasion to examine myself." In some disr
tricts there was a reign of terror among the freedmen. And
finally, the anticipation of failure of voluntary labor
speedily proved groundless. A law was at work more

Congress and the "Black Codes" 293
efficient than any on the statute-books, — Nature's primal
law, " Work or starve ! " Many, probably a majority of
the freedmen, worked on for their old masters, for wages.
The others, after some brief experience of idleness and
starvation, found work as best they could. No tropical
paradise of laziness was open to the Southern negro. The
first Christmas holidays, looked forward to with vague hope
by the freedmen and vague fear by the whites, passed with
out any visitation of angels or insurrection of fiends. In a
word, the most apparent justifications for the reactionary
legislation, — danger of rapine and outrage from emancipated
barbarians, and a failure of the essential supply of labor
— proved alike groundless.
As the facts of the situation became known, not only
by Mr. Schurz's report, but by news from the Southern
capitals and by various evidence — it was very clear that
Congress could not and would not set the seal of national
authority on any such settlement as this. Granted, and
freely, that no millennium was to be expected, that a long
and painful adjustment was necessary, — ^yet it was out of
the question that any political theory or any optimistic hopes
should induce acquiescence in the legal establishment of
semi-slavery throughout the South. It was not Stevens's
rancor, nor Sumner's unpracticability, but the serious con
viction of the North, educated and tempered by long debate
and bitter sacrifice, which ordained that the work of free
dom must not be thrown into ruins.

CHAPTER XXXI
RECONSTRUCTION: THE SECOND PLAN
Congress addressed itself, in the first instance, to extend
ing and prolonging that provision for the freedmen which
it had already made through the Freedmen's Bureau. A
bill was reported, having the weighty sanction of Senator
Trumbull and the judiciary committee, greatly increasing
the force of officials under the Bureau ; putting it under the
military administration of the President and so with the
direct support of the army; and broadening its functions
to include the building of school-houses and asylums for
the freedmen, and a wide jurisdiction over all civil and
criminal cases in which local laws made an unjust discrimi
nation between the races. The bill passed the Senate and
House, by the full party majority. It was sent to the Pres
ident, February lo, 1866, and nine days later he returned
it with a veto message, calmly and ably argued. He objected
to the bill as a war measure after peace had been pro
claimed. He took exception to the intrusion of military
authority upon the sphere of the civil courts, and to the
extension of Federal authority in behalf of black men be
yond what had ever been exercised in behalf of white men.
The message was strong enough to win a few of the ortho
dox Republicans, including ex-Governor Morgan of New
York, and the two-thirds vote necessary to carry the bill
over the veto could not be gained.
Up to this time there seems reason to believe that while
the Republicans in Congress were firm in claiming for that
294

Reconstruction: The Second Plan 295
body a decisive voice in reconstruction, yet a majority of
them were more favorable to the policy of President John
son than to that of Sumner and Stevens. But now, upon
the necessity of safeguarding the freedmen by exceptional
measures in a wholly exceptional time, the preponderance
of conviction turned against him in Congress and in the
country. His own acts quickly converted that first oppo
sition into hostility and alarm.
Until now President Johnson, whatever dissent he might
provoke, had appeared as a dignified statesman. But three
days after his veto, on February 22 — Washington's birth
day — a cheering crowd called the President to the balcony
of the White House. They heard a speech, — how different
from what Lincoln had spoken in the same place in the
previous April. Johnson was exhilarated by his success,
forgetful that he still faced a hostile majority in Congress,
exasperated by opposition, and roused by the shouts of the
crowd, — and his native passion and coarseness came out.
Sumner had been severe in his language; he had likened
President Johnson to President Pierce in the Kansas days,
and hinted a family resemblance to Pharaoh of Egypt.
Wendell Phillips was in his native element of denunciation.
Now the President declared to his applauding hearers that
he had against him men as much opposed to the fundamental
principles of the government, and he believed as much
laboring to pervert or destroy them, as had been the leaders
of the rebellion, — Davis, Toombs, and their associates. To
the responsive cheers, and the cry for names, he answered
by naming Stevens, Sumner and Phillips. He rehearsed
his rise from tailor to President, and declared that a ground
swell, an earthquake of popular support, was coming to
him. His speech brought surprise and dismay to the
country. It fanned into hot flame the opposition between
President and Congress. In vain did John Sherman, —

296 The Negro and the Nation
who had conferred with the President in the summer, and
thought highly of his patriotism — now hold out the olive
branch in the Senate. A keen observer at Washington,
Samuel Bowles, — who had held a friendly attitude toward
both the President and the party leaders, — now wrote, Feb
ruary 26, " Distrust, suspicion, the conceit of power, the
infirmities of temper on both sides, have brought affairs
to the very verge of disorder and ruin." He dissuaded
from taking sides in the quarrel; there was too much right
and too much wrong on both sides. He urged, March 3, —
and no doubt he represented the best sentiment of the
country : " The great point is to secure protection and
justice for the freedmen. . . . For the present the Freed
men's Bureau, military occupancy, and United States courts,
must be our reliance. . . . We want the President firm
and resolute on this point, and we want to arouse the
better class of the Southern people to do their duty in the
same regard."
The weakness of the veto message on the Freedmen's
Bureau bill had been the absence of any solicitude for the
welfare of the freedmen; constitutional theory seemed to
wholly supersede the practical necessity of the case. Now
Congress again approached the matter in the Civil Rights
bill, carefully formulated in the judiciary committee,
thoroughly debated and amended, and passed by both houses
late in March. It affirmed United States citizenship for
all persons born in the country and not subject to any for
eign power; it decfared for all citizens an equal right to
make and enforce contracts, sue, give evidence, hold and
sell property, etc. ; full equality as to security of person
and property, as to pains and penalties, — in short, complete
civil equality. Original jurisdiction was given to United
States courts, and to these could be transferred any case
involving these subjects begun in a State court. The bill

Reconstruction: The Second Plan 297
empowered the President to use the army for its enforce
ment. All this was under authority of the Thirteenth
Amendment. This, too, the President vetoed, as unnecessary, as em
ploying the military arm too freely, as extending unwisely
the power of the Federal Government, and as especially un
wise legislation while eleven States out of thirty-six were
unrepresented in Congress. But the President was now
going in the face not only of the congressional majority
but of the North at large, which was unmistakably opposed
to leaving the freedmen with no protection against their old
masters. The veto was overridden, and became a law April
9. The Freedmen's Bureau bill, somewhat amended, was
again passed, this time over a veto, and became a law
July 16.
It was after the decisive victory over the President on the
Civil Rights bill that Congress took up the comprehensive
measure which embodied its own plan of reconstruction
as a substitute for the President's. That measure was the
Fourteenth Amendment. It was drawn up by the recon
struction committee, of which Senator Fessenden was chair
man, and probably his was the leading part in framing its
provisions. The first proposition was only to make the
basis of congressional representation dependent on the ex
tension or denial of suffrage to the freedmen. This was
proposed January 22, 1866, and after some weeks' discussion
passed the House but failed in the Senate. It was replaced
by a broader measure, which was reported April 30, debated
and amended for six weeks, and finally in mid- June took
the form in which it now stands in the Constitution, and
was approved by Congress. It then went before the States
for their action, with a tacit but strong implication that
upon its acceptance and adoption the lately seceded States
would be fully restored. It was in effect the plan of recon-

298 The Negro and the Nation
struction first offered by Congress, as a substitute for the
President's. The first article of the amendment declares that all per
sons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens
of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside ;
and that all are entitled to the equal protection of the laws.
Another section guarantees the validity of the public debt,
and forbids payment of the Confederate debt or payment for
the emancipation of slaves. Both these articles appear at
this distance of time to be beyond question or criticism.
Another article apportions representation in Congress, as
heretofore, according to population; but further provides
that any State which denies the suffrage to any part of its
adult male population, except for rebellion or other crime,
shall have its congressional representation reduced in the
same proportion. It will be remembered that under the old
Constitution the basis of representation was fixed by adding
to the total of the free population a number equal to three-
fifths of the slaves. Now that the slaves had become freed
men, the representation of the old slave States would to that
extent be increased. But it seemed neither just nor expe
dient to permit such an increase of power, unless the class
on whose enumeration it was based were made bona fide
citizens, and sharers in this power. If under this amend
ment the Southern States should choose to give the vote to
the freedmen, their total representation in Congress would
be raised from sixty-one to seventy. If they did not give it,
their representation would fall to forty-five. There was
thus offered them a strong inducement to establish impartial
suffrage ; while yet they were at full liberty to withhold it at
the price of some diminution of power compared with com
munities adopting the broader principle. The reconstruc
tion committee had listened to prominent Southerners as
to the probable reception of this provision. Stephens

Reconstruction: The Second Plan 299
thought his people would consider it less than their due
and would not ratify it. But Lee thought that Virginia
would accept it, and then decide the question of suffrage
according to her preponderating interest; that at present
she would prefer the smaller representation, but would hold
herself ready to extend the suffrage if at any time the freed
men should show a capacity to vote properly and under-
standingly. So far, the Fourteenth Amendment seems now to embody
a sound statesmanship. But the remaining article must be
judged by itself. It excludes from all State and national
offices all those, who, having taken an official oath to sup
port the Constitution, have afterward taken part in insur
rection and rebellion. This was ingeniously framed with
an appearance of justice, as if debarring from office only
those who to rebellion had added perjury. But, as a matter
of ethics, the breaking of official oaths is an inevitable
incident of every revolution; and just as war is held to
suspend in a measure the command " thou shalt not kill,"
so revolution must be held to cancel the obligation of official
oaths. The opposite view would affix the full guilt of
perjury to many leaders in the American Revolution, per
haps to Washington himself. It was not really as perjurers
that the excluded class were debarred from office, but as
prominent leaders in the rebellion, so marked by having
previously held office. It shut out, and was so intended, a
class not only .very large in numbers but including the best
intelligence and social leadership of the South. To exclude
these men from all political leadership in the new regime
was in flat defiance of that statesmanship, as wise as mag
nanimous, which Andrew and Beecher had voiced. As
one New England observer put the matter, it would help
matters greatly if no man favored a government for others
that he would not like to live under himself; now how

300 The Negro and the Nation
would it work in Massachusetts to exclude from the govern
ment the whole Republican party? Yet the Democrats in
the State have ten times the knowledge, character and ability,
that are possessed in the South by the elements free from
stain of rebellion.
The disqualification, to be sure, was removable in each
case by a two-thirds vote of Congress. But it could not
be foreseen how Congress would be disposed; and in fact,
the President's pardon, so freely given, had been by Congress
expressly deprived of any political value; being held to
exempt only from legal pains and penalties. The new
exclusion, if adopted, could hardly work other than dis
astrously. And, being offered, as the entire amendment
necessarily was, for acceptance or rejection by all the States,
this provision was as well suited to repel the South as if it
had been designed for that purpose. It offended that
loyalty to their tried leaders in stress and storm which is one
of the best traits in a people's character. Compare it with
Beecher's saying of a few months earlier, " I think it to be
the great need of this nation to save the self-respect of the
South." The difference measures the degree of the mis
take under which the mass of the North were still labor
ing. They looked upon the rebellion as a moral and per
sonal crime. They had no comprehension of the Southern
standpoint; and, sure that their own cause was just, they
believed that their opponents were not only mistaken but
morally guilty. As it was hardly possible to suppose the
8,000,000 to have all gone wrong out of individual per
versity, the current view at the North was that Secession
sprang from a conspiracy; that its leaders had secretly
plotted, like Aaron Burr, and thus misled their followers.
The impulse to inflict death or imprisonment or confiscation
on anybody was infrequent or short-lived; the desire for
such punishment lingered only in an irrational wish for

Reconstruction: The Second Plan 301
vengeance on Jefferson Davis. But, if the leading class
in the society and public life of the South were morally
responsible for a great treason and rebellion, it might seem
not only just but wise to exclude them from the new political
order. The critics of the reconstruction policy are often chal
lenged by its defenders with the question, " But what better
course can you suggest, even now ? " And the immense
difficulty of the problem, even as calmly viewed today by
the closet student, may well make us charitable toward the
men who, for the most part, did the best they knew under
the immediate besetment of measureless perplexities and
contradictions. But while we may approve of their work in
the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment, with equal emphasis
we may say : The mistake was great, in the amendment and
later, of shutting out the very men who should have been
included. Better by far would it have been to take their
counsel and co-operation even beforehand in planning the
work of reconstruction. Even as to that crucial point, the
legislation oppressive to the freedmen, and the deeper diffi
culty underlying it, the ingrained Southern attitude toward
the negro as an inferior being, — even as to this, something
might have been accomplished had the Southern men, who
went to Washington in the vain hope of immediate admis
sion to Congress, been met by a President of Lincoln's or
Andrew's calibre. Even as it was, there were signs of prom
ise in Georgia, — so says Rhodes in his excellent History of
the United States. The newly elected Governor, Judge
Jenkins, a man of " universally acknowledged probity and
uprightness of character " made in his inaugural address
(December 14, 1865) a strong plea for the negroes who had
so faithfully cared for the lands and homes and families
of the soldiers in the field : " As the governing class indi-.
vidually and collectively we owe them unbounded kindness

302 The Negro and the Nation
and thorough protection. . . . Their rights of person
and property should be made perfectly secure." To like
effect spoke Alexander H. Stephens, revered by all Geor
gians, February 22, 1866 ; recalling the fidelity of the slaves
during the war and the debt of gratitude it created ; the obli
gation of honor to the poor, untutored, uninformed ; asking
for the negroes ample and full protection, with equality be
fore the law as to all rights of person, liberty and property.
And such equality the Georgia Legislature speedily ordained.
Tennessee did the like. Rhodes expresses confidence that
by gentle pressure from the President and Congress, Vir
ginia, North Carolina and Alabama could have been per
suaded to similar legislation within a twelve month, and the
other States would have followed.
The excluding article in the amendment was probably
made as a concession by the moderate Republicans to the
radicals. It replaced an article originally reported by the
committee, excluding not only from office but from the suf
frage all who had taken part in the Rebellion, until July 4,
1870. The article as adopted was disliked by Sherman and
Wilson, the latter especially declaring his willingness to
remove the disqualifications as soon as possible after a set
tlement had been made. In point of fact they were removed
piecemeal by Congress almost as freely as President John
son had done the like, and were ended except for a few
hundred by a sweeping amnesty in 1872.
Grant said to A. H. Stephens in April, 1866, " The true
policy should be to make friends of enemies." If these men,
with a few others of like temper in North and South, could
have settled the terms of the new order, a different founda
tion might have been laid. But in default of any such
happy, unlikely conjuncture of the right men in the right
place, it is the deep and wide tides of public opinion that
largely shape events. The average Southern view of the

Reconstruction: The Second Plan 303
negro, and the average Northern view of the " rebel," were
the Scylla and Charybdis between which the ship of state
steered its troubled voyage.
Returning now to the course of events, — Congress made
it plain that the acceptance of the Fourteenth Amendment
would bring the restoration of the South, not by a formal
declaration, but by its action in promptly admitting Tennes
see when within a month it ratified the amendment. So be
fore the South and the country were now the two policies, —
of Congress and the President, — and the summer and autumn
saw a general and eager discussion. The South waited
events, hoping for the President's success. In the North
there was at first a marked effort to rally conservative men
of both parties to his side. A great convention was held at
Philadelphia, promoted by the President, Seward, Weed
and Henry J. Raymond; with delegates from every State;
the first day's procession led by Massachusetts and South
Carolina representatives arm-in-arm; Southern governors
and judges heartily assenting to the declaration that not
only is slavery dead, but nobody wants it revived ; and with
cordial indorsement of the President's reconstruction
policy. There was a counter-convention at Pittsburg; there were
" soldiers' and sailors' conventions " on both sides. From
the Cabinet three members. Speed, Denison and Harlan,
resigned because their convictions were with Congress ; but
Stanton remained as Secretary of War, though he was now
a bitter opponent of the President, — a safeguard over the
army, as the radical leaders considered him, and by his atti
tude and natural temper a constant exasperation to his
nominal chief. A fierce and bloody riot in New Orleans,
of which the precise causes were obscure, but in which the
negroes were the sufferers, heightened the Northern anxiety
as to the general situation.

304 The Negro and the Nation
The popular tide evidently ran with Congress, yet John
son had the promise of very respectable support until he
threw it away. Plis extempore expressions suggested an
overweening view of his own position. To the committee
reporting to him the Philadelphia convention, he said, " We
have seen hanging upon the verge of the government, as it
were, a body called, or which assumes to be, the Congress
of the United States — ^but in fact a Congress of only a part
of the States." In September he made a tour of the North
ern States, taking in his train Secretaries Seward and
Welles, with Grant and Farragut ; — " swinging round the
circle," he called his trip. He made addresses in the prin
cipal cities, in which he denounced his opponents, sometimes
with vulgar abuse, bragged of his own rise from tailor to
President, and bandied words with the mob. He shamed
many of the men of character — Beecher among them — who
had viewed him with favor. The tide turned overwhelm
ingly against him. The November election returned a Con
gress consisting in the House of 143 Republicans to 49
Democrats, with a Senate of 42 Republicans to 11
Democrats. It was like the hand of Nemesis that the South, led to
crushing defeat by its slave-holding aristocracy, should
now have its interests sacrificed through the characteristic
faults of one of its poor whites,— his virtues overborne by
his narrow judgment, uncontrolled temper and coarse
speech. Warned by the election, the South might well have
accepted the Fourteentn Amendment as the price of its
restoration. But it failed to read the handwriting on the
wall. It could not yet brook acquiescence in the exclusion
of its old leaders, and the alternative of negro suffrage or
reduced power in Congress. The pride of race, the un-
quenched spirit of the " lost cause," prompted it to stand

Reconstruction: The Second Plan 305
out for better terms. During the autumn and winter of
1866-7 the lately seceded States, except Tennessee, rejected
the amendment. So failed the first congressional plan of
reconstruction, as the President's earlier plan had failed.
And now there was small hesitation or delay in framing and
enforcing the final plan.

CHAPTER XXXII
RECONSTRUCTION: THE FINAL PLAN
The Congress which met in December, 1866, was the same
body as in the previous winter; but the prolonged contest,
the President's misbehavior, the South's rejection of the
offered terms, and the popular verdict at the November
election, had strengthened the hands of the RepubHcans
and intensified their temper. Thaddeus Stevens brought in,
February 6, 1867, a bill which was trenchant indeed. It
superseded the governments of the ten unreconstructed
States, divided their territory into five military districts,
placed their commanders under the orders, not of the Pres
ident, but of the general of the army, and suspended the
habeas corpus. It was military rule in its barest form, and
for an indefinite period. Blaine moved an amendment,
specifying the terms on which the States might be released
from this military control and restored to their normal
status. But Stevens's despotic sway shut out the amend
ment and carried the bill through the House. In the Senate,
Sherman successfully carried a substitute, much the same
as the Blaine amendment. This went back to the House,
where a majority of Republicans favored the change, but
Stevens still opposed it, and had enough followers to make
together with the Democrats a majority that threw out the
whole measure. But success by such allies was undesired
by the radicals and alarming to the moderate Republicans.
There was reconsideration, minor concessions to Stevens,
and the bill finally passed February 20, not at all as he had
designed it, but in a form due either to Blaine or Sherman.
306

Reconstruction: The Final Plan 307
It is singular that so important a measure should be of
doubtful paternity. It seems more like a production of
Sherman, who in constructive ability was far ahead of
Blaine and of most of his congressional colleagues. In its
substance it represents apparently the judgment and pur
pose of the great majority of the Republicans in Congress.
It is remarkable that so vital and momentous a law should
have been enacted with so little discussion. It was hurried
through, in order that its passage twelve days before the
close of the session might prevent the President from " pock
eting " it — letting it fail for want of his signature, without
risking a veto. The debate, as Blaine reports it in his
Twenty Years of Congress, seems to have been mainly
for the scheme, and against the far more drastic proposal
of Stevens and Boutwell, — in opposing which Blaine him
self seems to have done service certainly as creditable as
any in his checkered career. But the radical character of
the bill as passed, its great advance on all earlier proposals,
seems to have called forth hardly any challenge among the
Republicans. In a word, the law put the whole unreconstructed South,
— all of the old Confederacy except Tennessee, — under tem
porary military government, subject to the President; and
the commanders were at once to initiate measures for new
State organizations. They were to enroll all adult males,
white and black, as voters, except only such as the Four
teenth Amendment would shut out from office ; these voters
were then to elect delegates in each State to a convention;
this body was to frame a constitution incorporating perma
nently the same conditions of suffrage ; this constitution was
then to be submitted to popular vote ; and if a majority rati
fied it, — if Congress approved it, — if the Legislature elected
under it ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, — and if and
when that amendment received enough ratifications to enact

3o8 The Negro and the Nation
it, — then, at last, each State was to be fully restored to the
Union. On this plan the States were rapidly and finally recon
structed. Its central feature was the enforcement of suf
frage for the negroes throughout the South. Of this tre
mendous measure, but small discussion appears in the de
bate over the bill. But it seems to have had behind it the
prevailing sentiment of the North. A good witness on this
point is the Springfield Republican. That paper had strongly
advocated the adoption of the Massachusetts plan, a read
ing and writing qualification for suffrage — the State's only
good legacy from the Know-nothing period. Of such a
provision it said January 9 : "It would be a most potent
stimulus to education, and once made the national rule there
would be such a studying of spelling books as never was
seen before. . . . There can be no sure reliance on the
votes of blacks any more than of whites who cannot read
their ballots." But this plan found little popular favor.
The objection to it which we now recognize, — ^that the
Southern States might probably have forborne to educate
the freedmen, and so left them disfranchised, — was not
then prominent. But there had not come to be a general
recognition at the North of the danger of ignorant suf
frage. Of the actual drift of opinion the Republican said,
March 3, that equal suffrage is "the sole condition about
which there is any approach to unanimity among our people."
To understand this opinion we must look back a little.
The belief in universal male suffrage was part of the Demo
cratic movement that swept alniosf unchallenged from Jef
ferson's time till Lincoln's. The mass of ignorant immi
grants gave some alarm, but they seemed to be successfully
digested by the body politic. Beecher, we have seen, thought
suffrage a " natural right," and that was a common doc
trine. Besides, it was assumed at the North that the negroes

Reconstruction: The Final Plan 309
were naturally the friends of the national government and
of the party that had given them freedom. There were
politicians in plenty who looked to the negro vote to keep
the Republicans in control of the national government.
Many of these doubtless valued the party organization
mainly as a means of self-advancement; while others like
Sumner devoutly believed that in the Republican party lay
the sole hope of justice and freedom. To the North gen
erally, the convincing argument for negro suffrage was that
the ballot would give the black man the necessary weapon
for self-protection. On this ground Mr. Schurz favored
it in his report of 1865, and in reviewing the situation in
1904 he holds the same opinion. The assumption in this
view was that the freedmen and the former master class
were, and were to remain, natural enemies. Looking back
to slavery, which really combined an element of oppression
with an element of protection, the North saw only the op
pression. Viewing the present, it was not merely the State
laws, but the frequent personal abuse of the negroes which
confirmed the idea that they must have the ballot for self-
protection. On broader grounds, the question was reasoned thus:
" The logical, the necessary ultimate step in the negro's ele
vation to full manhood is his possession of the vote. By far
the most desirable road to this consummation would be
a gradual and educational introduction of the body of
freedmen to the franchise. But toward such a course the
South shows no inclination. The alternative remains — in
the brief period during which the national authority can
be applied to organic reconstruction — of establishing uni
versal manhood suffrage; with the drawback of a present
admixture of a large ignorant and unfit element; with
the great disadvantage, too, of further alienating the two
races for the present ; but with the possibility and hope that

3IO The Negro and the Nation
the exercise of the ballot will in itself prove educational,
and that the Southern white man and Southern negro will
ultimately fare better than if the one is allowed to perma
nently disfranchise the other." Something like this, ap
parently, whether wise or unwise, was the predominant
judgment of the better class at the North.
With others the argument was simpler. Blaine in his
Twenty Years gives a common sentiment, himself in
1884 still concurring in it: "The North believed, and be
lieved wisely, that a poor man, an ignorant man, and a
black man, who was thoroughly loyal, was a safer and
better voter than a rich man, an educated man, and a white
man, who in his heart was disloyal to the Union." The
Republican, on the contrary, expressed the opinion : " It
is better to be governed by ex-rebels than by fools."
The Fourteenth Amendment had been put forward vir
tually as an invitation. It was rejected by the South, and
the new plan — military government, to give place to new
constitutions with universal suffrage — was issued as a
mandate. It was promptly carried out. In little more than
a twelvemonth, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Louisiana, and Arkansas had been reconstructed; their
State organizations were provisionally accepted by Con
gress in June, 1868; and as their Legislatures at once
ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and secured its adoption,
they were fully restored and their senators and representa
tives admitted in July. Virginia and Mississippi managed
to stave off final action, hoping to escape the excluding
clauses, until after Grant's election to the Presidency in
1868; and their hopes were justified when Grant gave his
influence successfully with Congress against the excluding
clauses ; so that these two States, with belated Texas, were
reorganized in the following year and admitted early in
1870. Georgia had troubles of her own, and a suspension

Reconstruction: The Final Plan 311
by Congress from full statehood for half a year; and her
final admission, on July 15, 1870, marked definitely the
end of the reconstruction process. The registration of
voters in the ten States had shown that in Alabama, Florida, '
Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, the colored
voters were in a majority; in Georgia, the two races were
about equal; and in Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas
and Texas, one-third or more were colored. The pre- '
ponderance of voting power had been given to a people
just out of slavery. The practical working of the plan, '
and the six further years of Federal supervision over the
South, belong to another chapter.
An episode in this story, though an important feature
in a general history, must be the impeachment of President
Johnson in the spring of 1868. Though the main questions
at issue were definitely settled, the bitterness between the
President and Congress lasted and increased. At the same
time with the final reconstruction measure, there was
passed the " Tenure of Office bill," which took away from
the President the power of removing his subordinates which
all his predecessors had enjoyed, and required the Senate's
concurrence in removals as in appointments. Some excep
tion was made as to Cabinet officers ; and the President, ex
asperated beyond endurance by Stanton, after vainly,
though reasonably, asking the Senate to relieve him of his
hostile secretary, assumed the right to remove him by his
own authority, and appointed Gen. Lorenzo Thomas in
his place, February 21, 1868. The House, in which the
radical temper had grown stronger than ever, in a blaze
of excitement voted the President's impeachment. He was
tried before the Senate, the House prosecutors being led
by Stevens, Boutwell, and Benjamin F. Butler, whose vin
dictive and unscrupulous personality had come to the front.
The President was defended by a group of the foremost

312 The Negro and the Nation
lawyers in the country, including Benjamin R. Curtis,
Jeremiah S. Black, and William M. Evarts. The only
weighty article in the charge was that concerning Stanton's
removal, and upon this a legal defense was made which now
seems conclusive. But it has been justly said that the Presi
dent was on trial nominally for one class of offenses, but
practically for another — namely, his persistent opposition
to the policy of Congress. Party loyalty was invoked for
his condemnation; the general temper of the North was
hot against him; wrath and tribulation were predicted for
any Republican senator who should vote for his acquittal.
In face of the storm, there were a few who quietly let it
be known or surmised that they should vote in their ca
pacity as judges sworn to follow the law and the facts,
whatever the political consequences. The decisive hour
came. May i6, and the result no one could predict; the
Democratic senators and the four administration Repub
licans all would sustain the President; seven additional
votes would prevent the decisive two-thirds condemnation.
Man after man, Fessenden, Fowler, Grimes, Henderson,
Ross, Van Winkle, and Trumbull — Republicans all — ^voted
" Not guilty " ; and, by nineteen to thirty-five. President
Johnson escaped deposition — to get rid of Stanton finally,
and finish his term ; to return to the Senate from Tennessee ;
to take his place in history as an honest and patriotic man,
beyond his proper sphere, whose limitations worked a part
in the partial failure of reconstruction. The country
escaped a dangerous dislocation of the relation of Con
gress and the executive, and the triumph of an exaggerated
radicalism. The seven independent senators sacrificed
their future careers, and deserve the perpetual gratitude
of their country.
And now it remained for the nation, through a Presi
dential election, to pass upon the completed work. In the

Reconstruction: The Final Plan 313
Democratic convention at New York, in July, 1868, the
reactionary and the progressive elements strove. A new
Democracy was growing, intent on administrative reform
and moderate Constitutionalism; Samuel J. Tilden of New
York and his allies were among the leaders; their candi
date was Chief Justice Chase. Only the incongruity with
his judicial position marred the fitness of Chase's candi
dacy. Lincoln, though he had his own troubles in dealing
with him, said, " Of all the great men I have known. Chase
is equal to about one and a half of the best of them." He
had proved eminent on the bench as in the Cabinet, and
under his lead the Supreme Court gave a series of con
servative decisions on reconstruction questions which were
a most valuable contribution to the national stability and
security — a vital, though not to the popular eye a con
spicuous service in the reconstruction period. Against him,
the candidacy of George H. Pendleton of Ohio represented
the element historically unfriendly to the war for the Union,
and intensely opposed to the reconstruction measures. He
had the support of the Southern delegates, present in full
force, and lending to the cheering the dominant note of the
well-known " rebel yell." The reactionists got their own
way with the resolutions, which declared the reconstruc
tion acts to be " unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void."
On the new question which was looming up, of shirking
the national debt by payment in promises, the platform
leaned strongly toward repudiation. Pendleton's support
ers, seeing their candidate could not win, and determined
that the other Ohio man, Chase, should not win, thwarted
their New York opponents by a clever trick, and success
fully rushed through the convention the nomination of its
presiding officer, Horatio Seymour of New York, against
his protest and to the discomfiture of his associates. An
able, accomplished man, but reckoned half-hearted in the

314 The Negro and the Nation
war, and not rising to statesmanlike proportions, he could
not outweigh the mischievous platform and the Vice-Presi-
dental candidate, the hot-headed Gen. Francis P. Blair
of Missouri, who had just proposed measures nothing short
of revolutionary to override Congress. Against this com
bination the Republicans advanced securely to victory.
Meeting in Chicago in May, they showed a temper more
moderate than that of Congress; they of course con
demned the President, but they refused to censure the
seven independent senators; and upon Carl Schurz's mo
tion passed a resolution welcoming back all former enemies
now become loyal, and favoring the early and rapid re
moval of disabilities. As to the Presidential nomination,
there was no division, — it was given unhesitatingly,
unanimously, heartily, to General Grant. His steadfastness
and success in war had been matched by his magnanimity
in victory and his prudence in the troubled times that fol
lowed. Of manly simplicity and solid worth, sagacious
and successful wherever he had been tried, he seemed at
once an embodiment of past victory and an assurance of
future safety. Of the thirty-four States that voted, all but
eight were for Grant and Colfax. Seymour had New
York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Ore
gon, Georgia, and Louisiana. The popular vote was 3,012,-
000 for Grant and Colfax to 2,703,000 for Seymour and
Blair. The Republican convention had shirked the question of
negro suffrage at the North by referring it to the individual
States. Its refusal in many of the Northern States was felt
as a discredit after it had been enforced throughout the
South. The Republicans in Congress took courage from
the election. The Fifteenth Amendment, forbidding the
States to deny the right to vote " on account of race, color
or previous condition of servitude," was brought forward

Reconstruction: The Final Plan 315
in Congress in December, and passed February 28, 1869.
It was ratified in rapid succession by thirty States out of
thirty-seven, — Tennessee not acting, and negative votes
being given by California, Delaware, Kentucky, Mary
land, New Jersey, and Oregon, — and proclaimed as adopted,
March 30, 1870.
With Grant's election, and the last touches of recon
struction sure to follow close, the North, as it were, drew
a deep breath of relief. It felt that the fundamental issues
were settled. The war had preserved the Union and de
stroyed slavery. The consummation had been fitly rounded
out by the changes in the Constitution. The Southern States
were restored to their places. Vast tides of material ad
vance were setting in. New questions were rising, new
ideas were fermenting. Good-bye to the past, — so felt the
North, — ^to its injustice and its strife. As the nation's
chieftain had said, in accepting the call to the nation's
Presidency, " Let us have peace."

CHAPTER XXXIII
RECONSTRUCTION: THE WORKING OUT
So the North turned cheerfully to its own affairs — and
very engrossing affairs they were — and the South faced
its new conditions. It was still struggling with the eco
nomic wreckage left by four years of battle, invasion and
defeat. It had borne the loss of its separate nationality and
the flag endeared by countless sacrifices. It had accepted
the sudden emancipation of its servile class by the con
queror's hand. It had been encouraged by President John
son to resume with little change its old ways of govern
ment. For two years it had gone along precariously with
State organizations of the earlier pattern, subject to oc
casional interruption by military authority or officials of
the Freedmen's Bureau. Then, in 1867, all State govern
ments were set aside, and military rule pure and simple
held the field, — in most States for about fifteen months; in
Mississippi, Texas and Virginia, by their own choice, for
as much longer. Though as it was generally administered
the military government was just, as well as economical,
yet its maintenance was a bitter ordeal for a people with
the American political habit ; a people, too, who had fought
gallantly for four years; who had, upon accepting their
defeat, been assured that the object of their conqueror was
attained in restoring them to their old position, except for
emancipation of the slaves; and who now for a year or
two longer were held under martial law.
At last — for most of them in mid-summer of 1868 — they
were again restored to self-government of the American
3i6

Reconstruction: The Working Out 317
pattern. Self-government for all, thought the North com
placently; whites and blacks were equal, not only as sub
jects of the law but as makers of the law ; and so freedom
and democracy were established. But the Southern whites
asked in dismay. What kind of fellow-lawmakers have we
got? The question answered itself. The million or so of
new voters were most of them ignorant in a sense of which
illiteracy gives but a hint. They were unversed even in
genuine family life ; skilled only in manual industry ; un-
practiced in citizenship; utterly untaught in the principles,
the facts of history, the theory and art of self-government,
which make up the proper equipment of the voter. A great
part of them, field hands on the great cotton and sugar
plantations, were rude and degraded, trained to live solely
under close and constant control.
How were the whites to deal with these new-made voters ?
From the standpoint of expediency, three courses offered, —
to conciliate and educate them ; to outvote them by massing
the whites together; or to suppress them by force or fraud.
From the standpoint of unregenerate human nature, the
whites as a body at first took none of these courses, — they
stood apart from the whole business of politics, in wrath and
scorn. Unregenerate perhaps, but most natural, most hu
man! At first, some crude policy mingled with the senti
ment that kept them aloof; there was the hope that if the
whites generally abstained from voting, at the elections
held in November, 1867, to pass on the question whether
to hold constitutional conventions, the proposal might fail
for want of the requisite majority of the registered voters.
It was a fallacious hope; suppose the conventions were to
fail, what better terms were now to be expected from Con
gress? But the conventions were all held; and as in the
same spirit most of the whites refused to vote for dele
gates, these were chosen from the negroes, their friends

5iB The Negro and the Nation
from the North, and the few Southern whites who accepted
the inevitable.
Is it not the wisest, the manliest course, to accept the
inevitable? So asked General Longstreet, in a letter to a
friend, June 3, 1867. He had just Ustened to Senator Wil
son, and had been surprised by his fairness and frankness.
For himself he says, " I will be happy to work in any har
ness that promises relief to our discomfited people, whether
bearing the mantle of Mr. Davis or Mr. Sumner." Negro
suffrage is for the present an established fact; if after a
fair trial it works disastrously, we will appeal to Congress
to repeal it. " If every one will meet the crisis with proper
appreciation of our condition and obligations, the sun will
rise to-morrow on a happy people." But his words fell on
deaf ears, and when he acted with the Republicans he was
visited with ostracism, denunciation, and attack upon his
war record. The typical attitude, at first, was that of the
planter who, after listening to a discussion of the final
reconstruction act, inquired, " Does it say anything about
raising cotton ? " " No." " Then, damn Congress and its
laws ! I'm going to raise cotton." So he and a good many
others gave themselves to raising cotton, and for a while
left the choice of State officers and legislators to " niggers,"
" carpet-baggers," and " scalawags." A " scalawag " was
any Southern white who allied himself politically with the
negroes, and a " carpet-bagger " was a Northern adven
turer, for whose worldly goods a gripsack sufficed, — or, in
general, any Northerner whatever.
For the blacks, the sudden opening of political power and
preferment, however designed, was in effect a very doubt
ful benefit. It turned their hopes and aspirations in a way
which was really " no thoroughfare." To the more prom
ising and ambitious it offered sudden and brilliant prizes,
instead of the patient apprenticeship which they needed.

Reconstruction: The Working Out 319
Of those who quickly rose to office, a few were by character
and attainments really fit for their position ; many won favor
by shallow arts ; and others were thrown up like driftwood
by the tide. The negroes as a body could follow only a
personal leadership, — how many whites. North or South,
really follow any other? — could be organized in bodies,
attached to a party name and watchwords, and voted in
mass by the men who had their confidence. They under
stood that their freedom and their right to vote had been
given them by the North and by the Republican party,
and to that party they naturally turned. Their old masters
— in many cases their best friends — frankly told them they
were unfit to vote, and wanted no dealings with them in
political affairs. So they found leadership principally in
the men who had come from the North.
There was a Northern immigration which may be classi
fied as business men, teachers and adventurers. A con
siderable number sought an opportunity in reviving and
developing industry, — substantial men and good citizens.
Sometimes a patriotic motive mingled with the industrial.
Governor Andrew, on retiring to private life as a lawyer,
tried for some time to advance a company for bringing
into conjunction Southern lands and Northern enterprise
and capital. There were various projects of this kind, but
they met with little success. Private individuals, however,
added something to the industrial and civic forces of the
South. A larger class were the teachers. Men and women
by hundreds went to the South, some sent by missionary
organizations, some independently, to organize schools
and to teach the children of the freedmen. Many of them
were of the highest character, devoted, self-sacrificing,
going to the blacks simply because they supposed their need
was greatest. But Beecher's warning proved sound — ^be
cause as a whole this movement took the negroes as a

320 The Negro and the Nation
distinct field, ignoring the needs of the whites, it incurred
odium as an alien and half-hostile work. The barbaric ele
ment among the whites — and slavery had left a deep taint of
barbarism — came out at its worst in insults to the " nigger
teachers," with occasional burning of a school-house. The
better social elements looked askance at those whose pres
ence was a reminder of conquest and humiliation.
From the business and the educational immigration, a
few Northern men were drawn into public affairs, less by
choice than by necessity of the situation. With these
mingled a different class, men who had been disreputable
hangers-on of the army or the Freedmen's Bureau, or who
had come for the sole purpose of plunder. It was a very
mixed company of whites and blacks that made up the con
ventions and then filled the legislative halls and the public
offices. The constitutions were not badly framed, except
as they, for the most part, continued the exclusive clauses.
The general legislation was various in its character. There
were some excellent features, above all the institution in
every State of a genuine public school system, where before
there had been only makeshifts or make-believes. Some
other good constructive work was done, toward establish
ing society on the new basis. Certainly nothing was en
acted so bad as the " black codes " of a few years earlier,
not to speak of the legislation under slavery. There were
some unsuccessful attempts at engrafting institutions, like
the township system, which had worked well in their native
soil but could not be created out of hand. In general the
white leadership of the dominant party averted much that
might have been expected from the ignorance of its legisla
tors as a mass. But plenty of waste and mischief was
wrought. Place a crowd of hungry and untaught men
next the public treasury with the lid off, and some results
are sure. The men will not be safer guardians of the

Reconstruction: The Working Out 321
treasure for having had for most of their lives no property
rights of their own, not even the ownership of their own
souls and bodies. Yet most of the plunder seems to have
gone into the pockets of knaves of the superior race. There
was a degree of extravagance, waste and corruption, vary
ing greatly with localities and times, but sufficient to leave
a permanent discredit on the Southern Republican govern
ments as a class. To judge accurately of the merits and
demerits of these governments is perhaps as difficult a
task as historian ever undertook. So fierce is the passion
which invests these events in the memory of the present
generation, that it is almost hopeless to sift and adjudicate
the sober facts. Time has softened much; even the Civil
War begins to stand forth in some firmness of outline and
clarity of atmosphere. But when we come to reconstruc
tion — grave historians grow almost hysterical, romancers
pass the bounds of possibilities, and even official figures
contradict one another with sublime effrontery.
Yet this very passion of remembrance, which in one way
obscures, in another way illuminates the historical situation.
The grievance most profoundly felt in the reconstruction
period was not unwise laws nor waste of public money
nor oppressive taxes. It was the consciousness by the
master class of political subjection to the servile class. It
was the spectacle of rude blacks, yesterday picking cotton
or driving mules, sitting in the legislators' seats and execu
tive offices of Richmond and Columbia, holding places of
power among the people of Lee and Calhoun. Fancy the
people of Massachusetts, were the state-house on Beacon
hill suddenly occupied by Italian, Polish and Russian la
borers, — placed and kept there by a foreign conqueror.
Add to the comparison the prouder height of the slave
holder, and the lower depth of his serf. Put this as the case
of a people high-strung and sensitive, still fresh from the

322 The Negro and the Nation
passion of war, still smarting from defeat. They had
fought to exhaustion, and their banner had fallen without
disgrace. Now the victors who had won by superiority
of force had placed their late bondmen as their rulers. The
offices from which their own captains and chiefs were shut
out were filled by plantation field-hands.
It was not likely that the first attitude of scornful passiv
ity would long continue, and it did not. The warnings
vainly uttered beforehand, — that the natural leaders would
surely lead, and had best be won as allies, were proved
right when it was too late. Said the Republican, August
10, 1868, in protesting against the plan of the party man
agers in organizing the Southern wing to consist mainly
of the blacks : " The Republican party cannot long main
tain its supremacy at the South by negro votes alone.
The instincts of submission and dependence in them and
of domination in the whites, are too strong to permit such
a reversal of the familiar relations and the natural order.
The slave-holding element has learned to combine, con
spire and command, in the best school on earth, and they
will certainly come to the top. Nor is it desirable that
such a state of things should continue."
The old official class being excluded — to the number,
it was estimated, of 160,000, — and the stand-aloof policy,
or drift rather, prevailing in the political field, it was the
more lawless element that first began to conspicuously assert
the white supremacy. There grew up an organization
called " the Ku-Klux Klan," designed at first partly
as a rough sport and masquerade, partly to overawe
the negroes. There were midnight ridings in spec
tral disguises, warnings, alarms and presently whippings
and even murders. The Society, or imitations of it,
spread over most of the South. It was at its height in
1868-70, and in the latter year it gradually gave way.

Reconstruction: The Working Out 323
partly owing to vigorous measures ordered from Washing
ton, and partly perhaps as legitimate political combina
tions again occupied the whites. But it is to be noted that
throughout the decade of reconstruction, though the present
fashion is to lay exclusive stress on the wrong-doing of
the negroes and their friends, yet the physical violence, fre
quent and widespread, was almost wholly practiced by the
whites. From the political torpor, due to discouragement and
resentment, there was an early recovery. When it was
found that cotton-planting pure and simple, with ignoring
of politics, resulted in heavy taxes for the planter ; when to
the first numbness there succeeded the active smart, — the
whites betook themselves to the resource which in most
States soon proved adequate, — the ballot, and political com
bination. In several States the whites were easily in the
majority, and where they were slightly outnumbered their
superior intelligence soon gave them the advantage. In
Georgia, finally readmitted at the end of 1869, the Demo
crats — constituting the great body of the whites — carried
the election in the next year, and remained in control of
the State. Virginia, which had advisedly kept under mili
tary rule until, with President Grant's aid, she came in
without the excluding clauses, early in 1870, passed at once
under Democratic rule. In the same year North Carolina
became Democratic. Texas and Arkansas remained under
Republican sway until the majority shifted to the Demo
crats in 1874. In Alabama, the Democrats gained the
Governorship and the lower House as early as 1870; two
years later the result was disputed, the Democrats conced
ing the Governor but claiming the Legislature, while the
Republicans organized a rival Legislature; the Repub
lican Governor-elect called for United States troops,
which were promptly dispatched, and with their backing a

324 The Negro and the Nation
Republican Legislature was secured. In 1874 a Democratic
Governor and Legislature were chosen and installed without
dispute. The Federal interference in Alabama, and the
experience of others of the reconstructed States, — South
Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, — recalls us to that
phase of the history which deals with Washington and the
national government.
Through the eight years of Grant's administration, the
public life of the nation was concerned mainly with clear
ing away the wreckage left by the war. There was an
enormous debt to be handled and an inflated currency to
be reduced ; there was to be curbed administrative extrava
gance and corruption, bred of profuse expenditure ; a bitter
quarrel with England was to be guided toward war or
peace ; and the disordered South was to be composed.
These tasks were encountered by men whose habits and
sentiments had been formed in a long and desperate con
test, and in an atmosphere slowly cooling from the fiery
glow of battle. The soldier had to beat his sword into a
plowshare, and small wonder if the blacksmithing was
sometimes clumsy.
Grant was too completely a soldier to be changed into
a statesman. He could deal with a definite, limited, though
gigantic business, — the overcoming of the armies of the
Confederacy. But it was beyond his power to comprehend
and master the manifold and intricate problems that center
in the Presidency. Given a specific, well-defined question,
within the reach of his sturdy sense and loyal purpose, and
he could deal with it to good effect, as he did with the
English arbitration and the Inflation bill. But he was in
capable of far-reaching and constructive plans carefully
laid and patiently pursued. When he communicated to
Congress the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, he
urged in wise and forcible language that the new electorate

Reconstruction: The Working Out 325
could only be qualified through education, and that to pro
vide such education was a pressing duty of Congress so far
as its power extended, and of the people through all the
agencies it could command. But having once said this,
he let the subject drop. National education for the freed
men was left unnoticed, save by an occasional lonely advo
cate like Sumner. Nor did President Grant take any per
sonal and positive measures to win and hold the old South
to the new order; he failed to invite and consult its repre
sentative men, he made no journeys among the people.
In most matters of public policy, save in emergencies.
Grant let matters be shaped by the men whom he had taken
into his counsel — in his official Cabinet or the " kitchen
cabinet " — and by the Republican leaders in Congress, of
whom the controlling group, especially in the Senate, were
in close touch with the White House. His affiliations were
with men of material power, men who had strongly admin
istered civil or military affairs, stout partisans, faithful
friends and vigorous haters. His tastes did not draw him
to the idealists, the scholars, the reformers. He was access
ible to good fellowship, he was easily imposed on by men
who were seeking their own ends, and he was very slow to
abandon any one whom he had once trusted. Absolutely
honest, the thieves stole all round him. Magnanimous at
heart, the bitter partisans often made him their tool. Of the
great questions of the time, the English quarrel was brought
to an admirable healing, under the management of the
Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, in 1871, by the joint
high commission, the treaty of Washington, and the Geneva
award. In the long contest for a sound currency, the
inflation policy received its death-blow by the President's
veto in 1874, and resumption was undertaken when Sher
man carried his bill through Congress in 1875. As to
honesty of administration, the president's good intentions

326 The Negro and the Nation
were constantly baffled through his misplaced and tenacious
confidences. The vast expenditures of the war, the cheating
incident to its great contracts, the speculation favored by
a fluctuating currency, the huge enterprises invited by the
return of peace, — had infected private and public life with
a kind of fever ; the treasury was an easy mark ; and while
the people hteld to Grant for his personal honesty, and
re-elected him, an army of rogues throve under his lax
administration. The let-alone policy toward the South, to which Grant
was prompted both by his virtues and his limitations, would
not on the whole have been unacceptable to the mass of the
Southern whites. Left wholly to themselves, those States
would soon have righted themselves from the unstable
equilibrium in which they had been placed by the imposition
of an ignorant electorate. Natural forces, — just or unjust,
benignant or cruel, — would soon have reversed the order.
But the nation at large would not at once abandon its pro
tectorate over its recent wards, the freedmen. For their
greatest need, education, it assumed no responsibility. But
when stories were rife of abuse and terrorism under the
masquerade of the Ku-Klux, Congress interfered, even if
by some stretch of its constitutional power, to bring the
raiders under the arm of Federal law. When elections were
reported to be controlled by fraud and intimidation, it
seemed incumbent on the national government to protect
the ballot-box by which its own members were chosen.
When rival bodies claimed each to be the legitimate govern
ment of a State, it was necessary for the Washington
authorities to decide which they would recognize, and it was
a natural sequence to back their decision by the military
force. And in all of these cases, the maintenance of law and
order easily became confused with the support of factions
allied politically with the party in power at Washington.

Reconstruction: The Working Out 327
As the Southern Republicans were gradually outvoted or
overpowered at home, their appeals for help from the gen
eral government became more urgent, while the continuance
of such interference became more questionable to thought
ful men.
Before this state of things, there was a gradual division
of opinion among Republicans at the North, and especially
among their leaders. Against the call to protect the freed
men and bridle the slave-holding spirit in its new forms,
rose the call to return to the old respect for local rights,
and let each Southern State manage its own affairs, as did
each Northern State. To this changed attitude came some
of the staunchest of the old anti-slavery leaders, and many
of the younger generation. During the early years of
Grant's administration, the question did not present itself
in acute forms. The Ku-Klux law of 1870, though it might
strain the Constitution a little, received general acquies
cence because the abuse it aimed at was so flagrant. But
the ostracism of the entire official class of the old South
was growingly recognized as a grievance and a wrong. It
was the spirit of proscription that brought on the political
crisis of 1872. That proscriptive spirit broke up the Repub
lican party in Missouri; the liberal element, led by Carl
Schurz and B. Gratz Brown, held a State convention. Their
movement fell in with a strong rising tide of opposition
to Grant's administration within the Republican party. Its
grounds were various, — chiefly, a protest against wide and
gross maladministration, a demand for a reformed and
scientific civil-service, opposition to the high tariff, and the
desire for a more generous and reconciling policy toward
the South. The movement was especially prompted by a
group of leading independent journals conducted by very
able men, — the New York Evening Post, under William
Cullen Bryant; the Nation, edited by E. L. Godkin; the

328 The Negro and the Nation
Cincinnati Commercial of Murat Halstead; the Louisville
Courier-Journal of Henry Watterson; the Springfield
Republican of Samuel Bowles. Sympathetic in the main
was Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. In more or less
close alliance were a few of the congressional leaders, not
ably Sumner, who had quarreled bitterly with Grant over
the proposed annexation of San Domingo; Trumbull, who
was never in close touch with his old party after the im
peachment trial; and Carl Schurz, who was now in the
Senate. A national convention was held at Cincinnati, in May,
1872. The Democrats had so little hope of separate suc
cess that they stood ready to fall in with the new departure,
and this gave greater importance to its action. For its
Presidential candidate, the foremost name had been that of
the elder Charles Francis Adams. Of the most distin
guished family in the country's political annals ; one of the
founders of the Free Soil party ; a conservative but resolute
Republican ; minister to England through the war, and most
serviceable there by his firmness and wisdom; eminent by
character, experience, and mental equipment; so indifferent
to office that he almost openly scorned the proffered honor,
— he seemed to the reformers a nearly ideal candidate, how
ever much his reserved and distant manners might handi
cap him before a popular constituency.
But the spite of a disappointed aspirant, B. Gratz Brown,
and the caprice of the convention, turned its choice by a
sudden impulse to Horace Greeley. It was a choice that
from the first moment not only defeated but almost stultified
the liberal movement. It mattered not much what principles
the convention set forth. Tariff reform it had already set
aside, and Greeley was a zealous protectionist. For scien
tific civil-service reform he cared nothing, and to mistakes
in his personal choices he was at least as liable as Grant,

Reconstruction: The Working Out 329
His revolt against Grant was due partly to a dispute about
State patronage. Only in generous sentiment toward the
South did he fitly represent the original and best element
of the convention. He was dropped at once by the Evening
Post, the Nation, and a large part of the liberals. The
Democrats, despairing of any other way to success, indorsed
his nomination. But the acceptance of a candidate who
for thirty years had been showering hard words on the
Democracy was almost grotesque. The South was half
hearted in his support. A few of the faithful nominated
Charles O'Conor on an independent Democrat ticket. The
question was only of the size of the majority against
Greeley. His wisest supporters avowed as the best significance of
his candidacy : " It means that the war is really over."
Greeley had proved the sincerity of his friendliness toward
the South at a heavy cost. President Johnson held Jefferson
Davis in long imprisonment, with the aggravation not only
of close confinement and even a temporary manacling, but
of a public accusation of complicity in the murder of
Lincoln. It was treatment wholly unfit for a prisoner of
state and a man of Davis's character. Its effect on the
South may be judged by imagining how the North would
have felt had Lincoln fallen into Southern hands and been
kept in shackles and under the charge of assassination. The
imprisonment of Davis and the avowed purpose to try him
as a traitor were utterly out of keeping with the general
recognition that secession and its sequel were to be dealt
with as a political wrong and not a personal crime.
Greeley, who on the very morning after Lee's surrender
had called for a universal amnesty, showed his faith by his
works when at the opportunity in May, 1867, he offered
himself, in company with Gerrit Smith, as bondsmen for
Davis, thus obtaining his release, and incurring for himself

330 The Negro and the Nation
a storm of obloquy. The storm was short-lived, but
revived in greater fury when Greeley became a Presidential
candidate against Grant, with the support of the Democracy
and the South. The campaign was full of bitterness and
abuse. In Harper's Weekly, of which the editorial page
was conducted by the high-spirited and gentle George Will
iam Curtis, Nast assailed the liberals in savage cartoons;
in one Sumner was depicted as scattering flowers on the
grave of Preston Brooks, and another showed Greeley shak
ing hands with the shade of Wilkes Booth over the grave
of Lincoln. From the other side Grant was attacked with
equal ferocity.
Greeley went down in overwhelming defeat, and died
of exhaustion and a broken heart before the electoral votes
were counted. But something had been gained. There
had been a breaking of old lines. And one of the South's
main grievances had been almost removed. Within
a month after the Cincinnati convention, its call for amnesty
was vindicated by a bill passed in Congress removing the dis
abilities of almost all the excluded class. Out of some
160,000, only about 700 were left on the proscribed list.

CHAPTER XXXIV
THREE TROUBLED STATES
In Grant's second term, the divergence between the Repub
licans on Southern questions, though never taking permanent
form, often found marked and effective expression. In
the Senate, the controlling group, who were also the special
friends and allies of Grant, were radicals, and generally of
a more materialistic class than the earlier leaders. Fessen
den had died in 1869; Sumner was alienated, and died in
1874 ; Wilson had passed into the insignificance of the Vice-
Presidency ; Trumbull was in opposition. At the front were
Chandler, of Michigan; Oliver P. Morton, War Governor
of Illinois, powerful and partisan; Roscoe Conkling, of
New York, showy and arrogant. In the House the fore
most man was James G. Blaine, Speaker until with the
Democratic majority he became leader of the opposition;
brilliant in speech, fascinating and " magnetic " in personal
intercourse, always prominent and popular, but almost never
closely identified with any great principle or constructive
measure. Very prominent on the floor was General Butler,
a foremost radical toward the South ; always a storm-center ;
an advocate of inflation, an ally of most bad causes, an
effective mischief-maker; followed, feared, and hated with
equal ardor. The membership of the House was notable
for able men, — the Hoar brothers, Henry L. Pierce, Eugene
Hale, Dawes, Hawley, Poland, Garfield, Kasson, and others
of almost equal mark. The death of Thaddeus Stevens, in
1868, had left the House without a master. The Greeley
33^

332 The Negro and the Nation
campaign, disastrous though it was, had started a con
tagious spirit of independence. During Grant's second
administration, 1873-7, there was shown in the House, on
important questions, a degree of independence rare in
American politics. It was the growing Republican oppo
sition to Federal interference in the South that hastened
its end, and prepared the way for the consummation of that
result under President Hayes.
We now return to the individual cases of three Southern
States. To South Carolina fell the bitterest experience of
misgovernment. Its black majority was organized and
led by a group of white men of the worst character, who
were resisted for a time without success by a better element
in the party. Under four years' administration of Governor
R. K. Scott, a Northerner, and two of F. J. Moses, Jr., a
South Carolinian — who later disappeared from public view
in a penitentiary, — money was lavished in profligate expendi
ture; hundreds of thousands spent for legislative furniture
and luxuries; franchises were corruptly sold; bogus enter
prises enriched; debt piled up by millions, and thrown off
by millions. (Repudiation, be it said, always came easily
to the South, — before the war and after ; during reconstruc
tion and after ; whether the borrowed money had been spent
for railroads or squandered by thieves ; and the ghost of an
unpaid $300,000,000 still scares Southern Senators when a
general arbitration treaty is discussed.) South Carohna
went from bad to worse for six years.
When, in 1872, the honest Republicans bolted, under an
unimpeachable candidate, Reuben Tomlinson, a Philadel
phia Quaker, and gave him 35,000 votes, the Democrats
stood scornfully aloof — " better a native thief than an honest
Yankee ! " But in 1874 came a revolution in the Republi
can ranks. Honesty triumphed, under the lead of the elected
governor, Daniel H. Chamberlain, of Massachusetts birth

Three Troubled States 333
and education, — a remarkable man ; shrewd, long-headed, a
past master in political management ; with high aims ; by no
means indifferent to personal success, but generally succeed
ing in combining personal and public service. With a Legis
lature in which two-thirds were Republicans, and whites
and blacks were about equal in number, he achieved
a surprising reversal of the evil tendencies that had pre
vailed. In the Legislature the best of the Democrats backed
him, together with the best of the Republicans, and over
matched the corruptionists. Stealing was stopped; the
abuses of the pardoning power were ended; the tax laws
were amended so as to secure uniformity and equality of
assessment ; expenditure was reduced and regulated. These
were the statements of the Charleston News and Courier,
the leading paper of the State, in July, 1876, when another
election was coming on. Most of the Democratic papers
had praised and supported Governor Chamberlain. It was
now very seriously contemplated, and advocated by the
News and Courier, to let him be re-elected without opposi
tion. But the old-time pride of race and party was too
strong, and the Democrats nominated Wade Hampton. They
supported him with little scruple as to means, — with free
use of intimidation and proscription, with frequent threats
and often the reality of violence. There was a shocking
massacre at Hamburg. Governor Chamberlain called on
the President for aid, and a thousand troops were sent into
the State. When the election came, there was claimed a
majority for Chamberlain and for the Republican Presi
dential ticket. The claim was instantly and fiercely chal
lenged by Hampton's supporters. And here the story
pauses, until it joins the main current of national affairs. '
Mississippi was under Republican control until 1875. I^
one attempts to judge of the character of that control, he
plunges into a sea of contradictions almost enough to sub-

334 The Negro and the Nation
merge the hope of truth. Whether we turn to standard
historians, to the looo pages of sworn testimony before a
Congressional committee, or to individual witnesses, the per
plexity is the same. Thus, we consult Woodrow Wilson's
History of the American People, — and this book invites a
word of comment. Its author has woven together the
immense material of the national history for three centuries,
in the main with admirable judgment and skill. He has pro
duced a comprehensive, well-proportioned, graphic narrative,
which closely holds the reader's attention, and gives in
general the spirit as well as the substance of the people's
story. But upon the main theme of the crowning century,
he misses some of the vital elements. Of the wrong and
mischief of slavery he has hardly a word, waving the sub
ject aside as if beyond his province. He gives with admira
ble sympathy and intelligence the attitude of the well-mean
ing Southerner before and after the war; and this feature
has special value for those familiar only with the Northern
standpoint. But he has not the least appreciation of the
anti-slavery spirit in its heroic phase. On the wrongs of
the slave he is silent, while upon the sins of the carpet
bagger he IS eloquent. This one-sidedness robs of its sig
nificance what should be the American epic of the nineteenth
century. Of the misgovernment of Mississippi, Dr. Wilson in
stances that "before the work of the carpet-baggers was
done, 640,000 acres of land had been forfeited for taxes,
twenty per cent, of the total acreage of the State." The
nearest atlas or gazetteer is enough to check this statement.
The total acreage of the State is 29,640,000, — of which 640,-
000 is not twenty per cent., but a trifle over two per cent.
Dr. Wilson goes on to say that the State tax levy in 1874
was fourteen times as great as in 1869. This is apparently
taken from the " Taxpayers' petition " of 1875, but from

Three Troubled States 335
whatever source, it gives an utterly exaggerated impression.
Before the Congressional committee Judge H. R. Ware,
chairman of the State Republican committee, — a Kentuckian
by birth, and a life-long resident of Mississippi, — gave his
testimony ; and it included documents showing that the total
State expense during the last two years of Democratic rule,
1864 and '65, was $1,410,250 and $1,860,809; for twenty
years of Democratic administration, throwing out the extra
expenses of the war period, the average cost was $699,200 ;
under military government (always the cheapest) in 1869
it was $563,219 ; while under the Republicans in 1875 it was
$618,259; and the average for six Republican years had
been $992,920. When the Republicans came in, they had
to make payments in warrants worth only sixty-five cents
on the dollar, with proportionate increase of expense; they
had to provide for a free population doubled by the emanci
pation of the slaves, and for the last four years they had
made an annual reduction.
Yet the " Taxpayers' petition " — addressed to the Legis
lature early in 1875, and without effect, — must be taken as
evidence of at least a considerable extravagance and waste.
A reading of it gives the impression of a needless multiplica
tion of offices and excessive salaries. The public printing
seems clearly a scandal, running above $73,000 a year, as
against a cost in the sister State of Georgia of only $10,000.
The general charge seems to be of laxness and needlessly
high salaries rather than any wholesale corruption. Some
question as to the justice of the general charge occurs when
a point is encountered as to the payment of teachers in the
public schools. The petitioners claim that this should be
reduced to $25 a month for second-class schools, and $50
a month for first-class schools. In fact, when the Democrats
came into power, they reduced the rate to $40 a month, —
which, for a school year of four months only, seems like

336 The Negro and the Nation
penny-wise economy. The petition makes perhaps the
strongest impression in its statement that the boards of
supervisors, controlling local taxation, are, as a general rule,
" wholly unfit to discharge their duties, and without re
spectability or even accountability " ; that the public works
under their care are recklessly and carelessly managed, and
the county taxes are grievous. It would seem that in these
local bodies, especially in the " black counties," lay the worst
of the taxpayers' grievance.
Judge Story makes a vigorous retort, testifying after a
year of Democratic administration, 1875-6, as to the ques
tion of comparative expense. He shows that the State tax
had indeed been reduced from 9J mills to 6J mills, but this
only by cutting off outright the school tax of two mills.
Not to follow further the labyrinth of figures, it is interest
ing to note, as to the favorite term " carpet-bagger," that
of the six Republican candidates for Congress in Mississippi,
in 1876, only one was of Northern birth, and he had married
and lived in the South since the war ; one had been an old
Southern Democrat and a circuit judge ; two had been Con
federate officers; and one, John R. Lynch, was a colored
man of high intelligence and excellent character. He, as
Speaker of the House, and B. K. Bruce, United States Sena^
tor, were among the colored men who showed capacity and
character worthy of the high positions they attained. Among
the Republican leaders of Northern birth were some who
were honored and trusted in their old homes; such men as
General Eggleston, president of the Constitutional conven
tion; Colonel Warner, afterward State Treasurer of Con
necticut, and Henry W. Warren, of Massachusetts. The
first Republican governor, J. M. Alcorn, was a Southern
man, very able, but apparently not of the highest moral
standards. His successor, Adelbert Ames, was from Massa
chusetts, conceded now to have been " honest and brave,

Three Troubled States 337
but narrow and puritanical," and with the mysterious trait
of " hating the Aryan race of the South."
These last words are quoted from the story of an old
friend of the reader's, — Thomas Dabney, the " Southern
planter," whose noble character was sketched in chapter
XII. He had fought a brave fight with poverty and hard
ship since the war, and as we come again into his company
for a moment, it is with a sense of confidence which even
official documents do not inspire. He had no doubt of the
oppressiveness of Republican rule, and the need of shaking
it off by vigorous measures. It is related that the taxes on
his plantation for 1873 were over $900, while the income
was less than $800. Yet one letter tells that he is in " a
laughing humor '' because he has just paid his taxes for
1875 — only $375, — a reduction of more than half — and this
was still under Republican rule.
One other witness may be heard, the writer's life-long
friend, Henry W. Warren, now of Holden, Mass. To those
who know him his name is a synonym for integrity, efficiency
and modesty ; he is one of the men who never seek a publifi
honor and never decline a public service. From his own
words some statements are here condensed. " After gradu
ating at Yale in 1865, I was called to a position as public
school teacher at Nashville, Tenn. ; and from there, seeing
a promising opportunity, I went with two friends to work
a cotton plantation in one of the ' white ' counties of Mis
sissippi. We bought it from its old owner, who had kept
his slaves in his employ as paid laborers, and they continued
to work for us. As slaves they had not been badly treated,
except by the overseer during the master's absence. Many
of the whites of the county, owning no slaves, had been in
different to the Confederate cause, and many of them had
served in its army only when hunted by the conscription
officer, sornetimes with bloodhounds. More than a few of.

338 The Negro and the Nation
them were Republicans. I was asked to serve as registrar
of voters for the Constitutional convention, being one of the
few who could take the ' iron-clad oath ' (that is, that he had
never aided the Confederacy) and this led to my going to
the convention, and afterward to the Legislature. The
Speaker dying, I was chosen to his place for the rest of the
term. Our county going Democratic, I was not re-elected ;
but I was chosen chief clerk of the House, and served for
four years, after my two years as a member. All the Demo
crats united in signing a paper, asking me to be always
present in the House, — this was after I had induced the
Speaker to change a mistaken ruling. So I was in a posi
tion to know pretty well what was going on. From the first
there were plenty of Confederate generals and colonels in
the Legislature." (The excluding clauses were struck out
of the Mississippi constitution at the start.) " The manner
of the blacks to the whites was habitually civil, and some
thing of the slave's deference to the white man remained.
I think the legislation was generally of reasonably good
character. I knew positively of but little corruption. That
there was some corruption and more extravagance, I have
no doubt. But I have served since in the Massachusetts
Legislature, and I think the Southern State was but little
worse than the Northern. The negro members, though with
some able and honest leaders of their own, like Bruce and
Lynch, followed largely the prominent white men. Of the
Northerners whom I knew, almost all were men of substance
and had come to stay. Six out of ten owned plantations.
A ' carpet-bagger ' I hardly ever met, though no doubt there
were some, — but the name was given to all Northerners. As
to expense, you must remember that the State had to be com
pletely rehabilitated. The war had ruined everything ; public
buildings were destroyed or dilapidated ; and under military
rule things had simply been kept going. Everything had

Three Troubled States 339
to be reconstructed. The slaves had become citizens, and
that doubled the number to be provided for. There had
been practically no public schools, and they were set up
throughout the State. Taxes had fallen largely on slave
property, now they came on land. So it was inevitable that
there should be an increase of taxation. About county taxes
I have no special knowledge, though in our locality they
certainly were not burdensome. In some of the black
counties it may have been worse. The Republicans, both
blacks and whites, were drilled in the ' Loyal League of
America,' — it was a purely political organization, often meet
ing in the woods at night. In those years there was immense
progress on the part of the negroes, — political discussion
was educational. I think if the Federal government had
provided better school education, and had protected the
voters at the polls, all might have gone well. That there
was more or less of extravagance on the part of the Legisla
ture is not to be denied. So there is in Massachusetts. That
there was anything to justify the means resorted to in 1875
and 1876 to get complete control of the State government,
might safely be questioned."
What those means were, there is no serious question. The
Democrats organized a campaign of clubs, processions, en
thusiasm, and — intimidation. The better part would have
disclaimed the last feature, but they did not prevent it.
Thomas Dabney was among the leaders. He relates that
the best men were brought out for the nominations, often
against their own desire. He, in his old age, was made
president of the local club, and kept busy with marchings,
meetings, and barbecues. He quotes sympathetically the
response of a friend to his remark that the uprising was
wonderful : " Uprising ? It is no uprising. It is an insur
rection." He relates that at Clinton the Republicans got up
a riot, that they might have a pretext for asking President

340 The Negro and the Nation
Grant for troops. "They succeeded in getting up their
riot, which was put down by our own people after so
sanguinary a fashion as to strike them with a terror not
easily described." There can be no doubt as to the " san
guinary fashion " and the " terror." Testimony abounds of
the invasion of Republican meetings, enforced demands on
the Republican speakers to " divide the time," with threats
and occasional violence. Sometimes the meetings were pre
vented, sometimes they were broken up. There was a great
deal of terrorizing and now and then a murder. In some
cases the officers at the polls interposed so many hindrances
that many of the negroes were unable to vote. There was
but a handful of Federal troops in the State, and the Presi
dent declined to send more at Governor Ames's request. The
reign of terror was effective. Once again we quote Mr.
Warren : " In our part of the country there were constant
parades of the ' red-shirted cavalry,' and the negroes were
thoroughly frightened. Two rough fellows once assailed
me with threats and abuse, but drew off when I stood my
ground. When the election came on, to get our ballots
printed I had to go to New Orleans; spies dogged me in
going and coming ; and as with a friend I rode toward home,
we were beset and besieged in a planter's house, that they
might get possession of the ballots. Finally we rode away
on an unguarded road, pistol in hand, and escaped. But
they afterward captured and destroyed a part of the ballots,
and by such means they carried the local election. By such
means and more violent measures they carried the State."
The Democratic Legislature now proceeded to impeach
Governor Ames, on frivolous charges, but agreed to drop
the proceedings if he would resign, which he did, and left
the State, knowing that his trial would be a farce. In 1876
the campaign was of the same character as in 1875, and so
Mississippi was " redeemed."

Three Troubled States 341
The case of Louisiana was widely different. In that State
the corruption of the Republican managers was flagrant ; it
extended to the manipulation of election returns; and the
Federal Government interfered freely, and with notable re
sults. A knot of knavish adventurers were in control, —
Henry C. Warmoth, William P. Kellogg, F. F. Casey, and
United States Marshal S. B. Packard. Casey was the Presi
dent's brother-in-law, and General Grant was almost as
incapable of believing a relative of his to be a bad man as
he was incapable of knowingly supporting a bad man. Casey
was made collector of New Orleans, and was allowed to hold
the Republican convention in the custom-house, with
United States soldiers guarding the doors and regulating
the admissions. As he and his crew were wrecking the
finances of the State, there was in 1872 a general combina
tion against them of the better elements, — they preferred
the name " Conservatives " to " Democrats,"' — and they
claimed to have elected their candidate, John McEnery, as
governor. Warmouth, who had been governor for a four
years' term, had quarreled with his confederates over the
division of plunder, and gone over to the Conservatives. He
controlled the State returning-board, to which the laws in
trusted a very elastic and dangerous power of throwing out
returns from districts where intimidation was proved, and
undertook to declare McEnery elected. But there was a
split in the board ; then two rival boards, one awarding the
governorship to Kellogg and the other to McEnery.
The imbroglio was suddenly ended by the intervention of
a United States judge, E. H. Durell, who issued a writ at
midnight, directing the United States marshal, S. B. Pack
ard, to occupy and hold the capitol, and ordering a detach
ment of United States troops to support the Kellogg gov
ernment. This fixed the character of the State for the next
four years, by perhaps the most lawless act done under the

342 The Negro and the Nation
name of law in this whole troubled period. It was perhaps
only the overshadowing interest of the Presidential campaign
that prevented its reversal by Congress, — ^that, and the
lingering disposition of the North to pin faith on whatever
wore the label " Republican."
McEnery kept up a shadowy claim to the governorship,
with the countenance of the " respectable " element. But
Kellogg and his pals had the actual administration, and used
it to such effect that in two years the State bonds had fallen
from seventy or eighty to twenty-five, and New Orleans
city bonds from eighty or ninety to thirty or forty. In 1874
the Conservatives made a determined effort to carry the
Legislature. There was an organization called " The White
League," — a legitimate political society, said one side; — a
revival of the Ku-Klux spirit and methods in a more guarded
form, said the other side. Beyond question, there was in
Louisiana, at all stages of reconstruction, some degree of
terrorism, and occasional acts of cruelty and outrage. There
was knavery among the Radicals, and there was violence
among the Conservatives. At the 1874 election the Conserva
tives were successful at the polls; but the State returning-
board at once began to juggle with the returns so palpably
that the Conservative member protested and resigned. The
remainder of the board, after a month of diligent work,
threw out a number of districts, on the pretext of intimida
tion, and as to five seats referred the question to the House
itself. That body met, organized in a hasty and irregular
fashion, and awarded the five seats to the Democratic
claimants. But Governor Kellogg had the United States
troops at his disposal, and by his command General De
Trobriand with a file of soldiers entered the House and
ejected the five Democrats, — whereupon the Republicans
organized the House anew.
But now the whole country took alarm. The President

Three Troubled States 343
sent General Sheridan in haste to New Orleans, and his first
dispatch sustained Kellogg, and threw the blame on the
White League, to which Secretary of War Belknap tele
graphed his full approval. But the affair transcended ordi
nary politics in its importance. New York spoke through
Cooper Institute, and Boston by Faneuil Hall. Such citi
zens as Bryant, Evarts, and George T. Curtis led the pro
test. Congress rose above partisanship. A committee of
the House, including such Republicans as George F. Hoar,
William A. Wheeler, Charles Foster, William W. Phelps
and William P. Frye, with Clarkson N. Potter and Samuel
S. Marshall for the Democrats, visited New Orleans, and
after full inquiry agreed that the returning-board had
" wrongfully applied an erroneous rule of law " ; that the
five Democrats had been defrauded of their seats ; and that
the Louisiana House should be advised — ^the national House
having no compulsory power-^to " repair this great injus
tice." The two Democrats went further, and declared that
Governor Kellogg himself held by no rightful tenure. But
the Republicans backed a compromise offered by Wheeler,
which the Louisianians accepted, — the Democrats took the
Legislature, while the Republicans kept the governorship.
The returning board survived, to put in its deadly work
two years later.

CHAPTER XXXV
RECONSTRUCTION: THE LAST ACT
We turn back to the course of national politics. The Re
publican triumph of 1872 was followed by an overwhehning
reverse at the Congressional election of 1874. There was
a growing impression of maladministration at Washington.
The Credit Mobilier scandal — the easy acceptance by Con
gressmen of financial favors from the managers of the
Union Pacific Railway, followed by disingenuous denials — ¦
had especially discredited the party in power. There had
been a great financial reverse in 1873, such as is always
charged in the popular mind against the ruling powers. The
South had increased its Democratic vote. So from various
causes, in the new House the Republicans passed from a
majority of one hundred to a minority of forty ; with New
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and even Massachusetts, in the
Democratic column.
But the clique of bitter partisans and radicals, with whom
President Grant had become closely associated, if they took
warning from the election, drew the inference that they
must make good use of the brief time left them in the final
term of the old Congress. While the Louisiana imbroglio
was still seething, the President sent a message, in Febru
ary, 1875, recommending that the State government of
Arkansas he declared illegal. It had held an unquestioned
tenure for two years, and the proposal to oust it was simply
in the interest of its two Senators, Powell Clayton and
Stephen W. Dorsey, who belonged to the Grant faction. At
the same time there was brought forward a comprehensive
344

Reconstruction: The Last Act 345
measure, popularly known as the " Force bill," bringing
every form of violence or intimidation of the blacks within
the jurisdiction of the United States courts; putting elec
tions under supervision and control of the Federal officials,
and giving the President large power for the supervision of
the habeas corpus. Another long debated measure aimed at
the fuller enforcement of civil rights — a bill good in itself,
said the moderate Republicans ; better if a part of a general
pacification ; but with its present accompaniment it is " civil
rights prodded in with bayonets." In the Republican press
of the country, and in the party in Congress as well as the
opposition, the battle over these measures was hot. The
administration organ in Washington gave big type and
prominent display to the paragraph : " The passage of the
bill " — ^the Force bill—" is required to preserve to the Re
publican party the electoral vote of the Southern States."
The President's personal influence was used to its limits.
Butler's unscrupulous tactics were all employed. But the
weight, if not the numbers, of the House Republicans, rose
in opposition. Forty of them, including Garfield, Dawes,
the Hoars, Hawley, Hale, Pierce, Poland, and Kasson,
joined with the Democrats under the able leadership of
Samuel J. Randall. In the House, brains and conscience
were beaten by patronage; the bill went through. But it
went no further, — in spite of Morton and Conkling the
Senate served again the useful function of obstruction. The
Arkansas bill was beaten in the House. Only the Civil
Rights bill became a law. Independence among Republi
cans had saved the party from its most dangerous leadership.
It was perhaps this result, following the reverse of 1874,
that disinclined Grant to further interference in the South,
and held his hand when Governor Ames asked aid in Mis
sissippi. The Louisiana business had so shown the risks
of Federal intervention in local affairs, that even the best

346 The Negro and the Nation
friends of the freedmen began to recognize that the States
were most safely left to themselves. But the sectional fires
were not left to die unfanned. When the new Congress
met, 1875-6, the Democrats showed themselves conserva
tive enough. They chose two excellent Northern men as
speakers : Michael C. Kerr, of Indiana, and upon his death
Randall, of Pennsylvania; and they showed themselves
chiefly concerned to probe administrative abuses, which, in
truth, needed heroic surgery. But for these prosaic mat
ters Blaine, now leader of the opposition, substituted a far
more lively tune, when a bill for universal amnesty at the
South was brought before the House. There was no serious
Republican opposition, but Blaine saw his opportunity, — he
moved that sole exception be made of Jefferson Davis, and
on that text he roused Northern passion by the story of
Andersonville, goaded to exasperation the " Confederate
brigadiers " among his listeners, and made himself most
conspicuous for the time among the Republican leaders.
He eclipsed the foremost of the Grant clique, Morton and
Conkling, who after a little fruitless third-term talk were
both hoping to be legatees of the Grant influence in the ap
proaching Presidential convention. But at the eleventh hour
a cloud swept over Blaine's prospects, in charges of dis
creditable receipt of favors from railroads looking for
political aid. The testimony was conflicting, but Blaine's
palpable seizure of his own letters from a hostile witness
was hardly outweighed even by his spectacular vindication
of his acts before the House. A sudden illness stopped the
investigation ; and later his transference to the Senate post
poned its renewal until it frustrated his ambition in 1884.
The convention in 1876 met at Cincinnati, with Blaine the
favorite, and Morton and Conkling dividing the Grant
strength. The reform element, led by George William Cur
tis, supported Benjamin F. Bristow, of Kentucky, who

Reconstruction: The Last Act 347
had made an honorable record as Secretary of the Treasury,
by attacking powerful rings, which through their connec
tion with the President's friends succeeded in driving Bris
tow out of office. The choice of the convention fell on
Rutherford B. Hayes, Union general, governor of Ohio,
leader of a State campaign in 1875 which had been a decisive
victory for sound money, and a man highly acceptable to the
reformers. Against him the Democrats nominated Samuel
J. Tilden, of New York, a statesman in his aims and the
craftiest of politicians in his means; tolerant of Tammany
Hall while it was a necessary factor in the party, but leader
in the fierce and skilful assault which drove the Tweed ring
from power. As Governor he had attacked and routed a
formidable gang of plunderers connected with the canal
management. On the issues which to thoughtful men were
becoming paramount, — administrative reform and sound
finance, — he offered as good promise as did Governor Hayes.
The two men, and the elements supporting them, stood
for the new politics instead of the old, — the replacement of
the war issues and their sequels by the matters of clean ad
ministration, sound currency, and interests common alike
to the whole nation. But the Republican leaders found their
best campaign material in what the slang of the time called
" waving the bloody shirt,"— reviving the cry of abuse of
the freedmen, suppression of the negro vote, and the need
of national protection for the nation's wards. It was out of
keeping with Hayes's record, and with his later perform
ances, — ^but he let the campaign take its way, and the sec
tional temper that was roused provided the atmosphere in
which the next act of the drama was played.
Election day came: the returns indicated the election of
Tilden; Democrats went to bed jubilant and Republicans
regretful. Then, just before the night-editor of the New
York Times put his paper to press at 3 a.m., he noticed that

348 The Negro and the Nation
the returns from South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida
were hardly more than conjectural, and, on the chance of
making his tables more complete, he sent a neighborly
inquiry to the Republican headquarters as to whether they
had definite returns from those States. The inquiry came
to the ears of a little knot of the party managers, among
them Zachariah Chandler, chairman of the national com
mittee. He caught at it, — " the Democrats are not sure of
those States, — we have a chance." Instantly — so the story
goes — ^he sent dispatches to the party managers in the three
States, " Claim everything." So they did — and so did he.
Next morning, following the first announcement of Tilden's
election, came the assertion that the Republicans had carried
South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida — which would give
Hayes a majority of one vote in the electoral college. All
hung on the vote in those three States, — no, on the counting
of the votes I The returning-board of Louisiana, which had
before been so useful, was in full working order; Florida
was similary equiped; South Carolina was in much the
same case. The boards had authority to throw out the entire
vote of districts where there was proof that intimidation
had tainted the election. The business of merely counting
the votes might be supplemented by the operation of throw
ing out enough districts to leave the prize with the party
that did the counting. It soon appeared that the returning
boards could be trusted by their friends. With all reason
able speed, they threw out enough votes to give all the
doubtful States to Hayes. In each of these States an indig
nant and protesting opposition sent in a counter set of
returns giving the electoral vote to Tilden. And any one
of the three States would be enough to insure Tilden's
election. The controversy extended to the state governments — in
South Carolina, both Wade Hampton and Chamberlain

Reconstruction: The Last Act 349
claimed the Governorship, and each had a Legislature organ
ized to support him. The case was the same in Louisiana,
with Nichols and Packard. President Grant refused recog
nition or active support to either party; but United States
troops kept the peace, and their presence prevented the
Democratic claimants from summarily ousting their
opponents. The whole country was in a storm of excitement. The
returning-boards had done their counting, — but who was to
judge the judges ? Who was to decide which of the returns
of Presidential electors were the valid ones? They were
to be passed on by the two Houses of Congress in joint
session. But the Senate was Republican, the Representatives
were Democratic, — what if they disagreed as to the returns ?
The President of the Senate is to decide, claimed the Repub
licans, — on very slender grounds, it must be said. The
House of Representatives, said the Democrats, — with more
plausible yet doubtful argument. The deadlock was alarm
ing. Then the emergency was met with a self-control, a
resourcefulness and efficiency, worthy of the best that is
claimed for the American character. By general agreement
of the moderate men of both parties, a special tribunal was
constituted for the occasion. It consisted of five Senators,
five Representatives, and five Justices of the Supreme Court.
The Congressmen were evenly divided between the two
parties. The justices were two and two, with the fifth place
assigned to David Davis, an independent. It was an ideal
division. But at the critical moment, Davis was chosen by
the Illinois Legislature to the Senate, so that he could not
act. As a substitute. Justice Joseph Bradley, was put on
the commission. He was a Republican, but in the generous
temper which had risen to meet the emergency, there was
a general feeling that party lines would be forgotten by the
tribunal. The commission consisted of Justices Bradley,

350 The Negro and the Nation
Miller, Strong, Field and Clifford ; Senators Edmunds, Mor
ton, Frelinghuysen, Bayard and Sherman; Representatives
G. F. Hoar, Garfield, Payne, Hunton and Abbott.
The two Houses proceeded to count the electoral votes
in the usual form, and whenever the return was contested
the case was referred to the commission and debated before
it. Each side had its ablest lawyers to plead; for the one
party, Evarts, Kasson, McCrary, Stoughton and Matthews ;
for the other, O'Conor, Black, Field and Tucker. The
commission then made its decision; and the result was re
ported to the two Houses for their acceptance. In the plead
ing, the Republicans took their stand on legality and the
Democrats on equity. The Democrats claimed as the ques
tion at issue. For whom did the majority of the people
of the State give their votes? The Republicans made it.
Whom does the official authority of the State certify as
elected? When the commission came to vote, on the pre
liminary questions, it was apparent that the party line was
just as rigid among its members as between the advocates
who pled. And it was clear that the Republicans stood upon
the narrowest possible construction of the case before them.
For example, in the case of Louisiana, it was moved, first,
that evidence be admitted that the returning body was an un
constitutional body and its acts void. No, said the Repub
lican eight. Moved, next, that evidence be admitted that
the board was illegal because its acting members were all
of one party, — No. Moved, that evidence be admitted that
the board threw out votes dishonestly and fraudulently, —
No. In each case, the Republican eight refused to look a
hair's breadth beyond the governor's seal to the returning
board's certificate. In the same way they dealt with Florida
and South Carolina.
Tilden's friends had contrived an ingenious scheme to
put the commission in a dilemma. They had managed that

Reconstruction: The Last Act 351
there should be two returns from Oregon, — a Republican
State where one of the three electors chosen was claimed to
be disqualified, — the return bearing the Governor's seal
naming one Democrat along with two Republican electors.
They argued. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander ;
if the Governor's seal is taken as settling everything, we
gain the one electoral vote we need; if, confronted by the
Oregon case, the commission decide that they may go back
of the governor's seal, — that opens the three Southern States
to our rightful challenge. But the commission, or its Re
publican members, were not to be so easily posed; in the
case of Oregon, they accepted the seal of the Secretary of
State, certifying the three Republicans. As the Springfield
Republican bluntly put it, " The electoral commission de
cided that there was no way of recovering the stolen goods
in the Louisiana case ; it has found a way of restoring the
Oregon vote to its rightful owner."
That the goods were stolen, at least in Louisiana, there
can scarcely at this day be any doubt. Whether the com
mission did its duty in declining to investigate and right
the wrong may be debated, but the judgment of history will
probably say that neither equity nor statesmanship, but
partisanship guided the decision. Undoubtedly in Louisiana,
and probably in Florida, the returning board deliberately
threw out some thousands of votes for no other reason than
to change the State's vote, and the Presidency. The com
mission refused to correct or even investigate the wrong,
on the plea of scrupulous respect for State rights. A great
victory for the principle of local rights, argues Senator
Hoar in his autobiography. Possibly. But it is also open
to say, that the general government having tolerated and
supported an iniquitous local oligarchy, a special and
supreme tribunal of the nation allowed that oligarchy to
decide the Presidency by a fraud.

352 The Negro and the Nation
The popular judgment of the matter at the North was
largely affected by the belief that the frauds of the Repub
licans were offset by intimidation on the part of the Demo
crats. In various parts of the South, notably in Mississippi
and South Carolina, and probably in Louisiana, there
was a wide terrorizing of the negro Republicans. " One
side was about as bad as the other," was a common feeling.
A year or two later, the New York Tribune unearthed and
translated a number of cipher telegrams, which disclosed
that while the dispute over the result was going on, agents
high in the confidence of the Democratic leaders made efforts
to buy up a returning board or a presidential elector. So
both parties were badly smirched, and the election and its
sequel furnished one of the most desperate and disreputable
passages in American politics.
Yet the better sentiment of the country, triumphant in
the creation of the commission, but baffled by its partisan
action, shone clear again when the decision was deliberately
and calmly accepted by the beaten party. Congress had
reserved to itself the power to reverse by a concurrent vote
of both Houses the commission's decision upon any State.
But each decision was accepted by a party vote, except that
in the case of Louisiana two Massachusetts Republicans,
Julius H. Seelye and Henry L. Pierce, spoke and voted
against their party. But when the final count gave a majority
to Hayes, the formal declaration of the result was supported
by all save about eighty irreconcilables, chiefly Northern
Democrats, who were overborne in a stormy night session.
It had become simply a question between order and anarchy,
and the party of order, by a strange chance, was led for the
occasion by Fernando Wood, the " copperhead " of earlier
days. For the body of the Southern Democrats, Henry Wat
terson spoke manly words, accepting the inevitable with
resolution and dignity. But among the influences that

Reconstruction: The Last Act 353
weighed with the Southern Congressmen was the assurance
from Hayes's friends that as President he would make an
end of military interference in the South. In the giving
of the assurance there was nothing unworthy, for the with
drawal of the troops was dictated by the whole logic of re
cent events, and was in keeping with Hayes's convictions.
So, quickly following the inauguration of President Hayes
came the withdrawal of the blue-coats from South Carolina
and Louisiana and the Republican State governments
tumbled like card houses. Nicholls took the governorship
in New Orleans and Hampton in Columbia. But it was not
by this act alone that the new President inaugurated a new
regime. He called to his Cabinet as postmaster-general,
David M. Key, of Tennessee, who had fought for the Con
federacy. Schurz, liberal and reformer of the first rank,
was given the department of the interior. Evarts in the
State department; Devens, of Massachusetts, as attorney-
general ; Sherman in the treasury, to complete the work of
resumption; McCrary, of Iowa, and Thompson, of Indiana,
for the war and navy; and Blaine, Morton, Conkling,
Chandler, — ^nowhere. The administration went steadily on
its way, little loved by the old party chiefs ; under some
shadow from the character of its title ; but doing good work,
achieving resumption of specie payments; ending the ad
ministrative scandals which had grown worse to the end
of Grant's term; reforming the civil service. It was a
peaceful and beneficent revolution, and in its quiet years
the Southern turmoils subsided, and for better or for worse
South Carolina and Mississippi worked out their own way
as New York and Ohio worked out theirs.

CHAPTER XXXVI
REGENERATION
" Evil is good in the making," says the optimist philosopher.
Even the more sober view of life reveals
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
Out of the calamities and horrors of war came to the
nation a larger life. Communities had been lifted out of
pettiness, churches had half forgotten their sectarianism,
to millions of souls a sublimer meaning in life had been dis
closed. Lowell said it in two lines:
Earth's biggest country's got her soul.
And risen up earth's greatest nation.
The South had suffered far more than the North, and the
South reaped the larger profit. The fallacy of the old South
ern civilization had been the idea that labor is a curse and
is to be shirked on to somebody else. Overthrow and im
poverishment brought labor as a necessity to every one,
and slowly it was revealed as a blessing.
When General Lee, stately in figure and bearing and
splendid in dress, met in surrender the sturdy Grant, in
worn and homely service uniform, it was emblematic of
the yielding of the aristocratic order to the industrial democ
racy. There was significance in the victor's kindly words, —
" Let your soldiers keep their horses ; they will need them
when they get home for the spring plowing." That was
354

Regeneration 355
it, — ^they turned from chargers to plow-horses, and much
to their safety and gain. Their masters, too, from fighters
became toilers, and if it seemed a fall it proved a rise.
Before long on the street cars of Charleston and New
Orleans were seen young men of good family as drivers
and conductors. Anything for an honest living! Our fine
old friend, Thomas Dabney, had been ruined along with
everybody else. He and his family undauntedly set them
selves to do their own household work. General Sherman
was reported to have said, " It would be a good thing if this
sent every Southern woman to the wash-tub." " Did Sher
man say that ? " said Dabney ; " he shall not send my
daughters to the wash-tub ! " and the old hero turned
laundry-man for the family as long as the need lasted. But
the educated class soon found fitter work than as laundry-
men or car conductors. The more exacting places called
for occupants. There was a great enlistment in the ranks
of teachers. Lee took the presidency of Washington uni
versity and gave to its duties the same whole-hearted serv
ice, the same punctilious care, that he had given to the
command of the army of Northern Virginia. In peace as
in war he was an exemplar to his countrymen, — and his
countrymen now were spread from Maine to California.
But what was to be the fate of the emancipated negro?
J.efferson had believed that he must be sent back to Africa.
" Colonization " had been the watchword of Southern eman
cipators, so long as there were any. Even Lincoln appar
ently looked to that. But wholesale colonization was clearly
impossible. The freedmen neither could nor would be
transported in a body to Africa. And had it been possible
it would have stripped the land of laborers and left it a
waste. The South's assumption was that the negro was intrin
sically an inferior and must be kept subordinate to the

356 The Negro and the Nation
white man. The North, in its management of political
reconstruction, had practically assumed that the negro was
the equal of the white man and was so to be treated. There
was a third view of the matter, — that the negro was at an
inferior stage of manhood, and the necessary task was to
develop him. He is a man, but an imperfect man, — make
him a whole man. To that end some of the finest forces
of the nation were now directed. But the invigorating and
commanding spirit, who conceived the saving idea, put it
into practice, and gave guidance and inspiration to both
races, — the man who found the way out was Samuel Chap
man Armstrong.
He came of Scotch-Irish blood, and of sturdy farming
stock, bred in the fertile fields of Pennsylvania and in the best
traditions of Christianity. His father and mother gave
themselves to the missionary work, in that lofty enthusiasm
whose wave swept through the country early in the nine
teenth century. The boy was born in 1839 in the Hawaiian
Islands, and grew up in the joy-giving climate, with a happy
boy-life, swimming the sea and climbing the mountains;
trained firmly and kindly in obedience and service; im
pressed by the constant presence in the home of unselfish
and consecrated lives. As he grew older, his bright eyes
studied the native character, emotional, genial, unstable;
he saw the wholesale conversions to Christianity, speedy,
happy, and well-nigh barren of fruit. Going to America
for his education, he completed it at Williams College under
the presidency of Mark Hopkins. Garfield said that his
conception of a university was a pine bench with Mark
Hopkins at one end and a student at the other. He gave
a stimulus alike intellectual and moral; his special teaching
was in philosophy, broadly reasoned, nobly aimed, closely
applied to the daily need. Armstrong spoke of him in later
years as his spiritual father. Graduating in 1862, he enlisted

Regeneration 359
crown, and the wants of the black field-hands and their
children. Labor, education, — and what of religion? The slave
had found in Christianity, often in rude, half-barbaric
forms, a consolation, a refuge, a tenderness and hope, to
which we can scarcely do justice. Perhaps its most elo
quent expression to our imagination is those wonderful old-
time melodies, the negro " spirituals," as they have been
made familiar by the singers of the negro colleges. Their
words are mystic. Scriptural, grotesque ; the melodies have
a pathos, a charm, a moving power, born out of the heart's
depths through centuries of sorrow dimly lighted by glim
merings of a divine love and hope. The typical African
temperament, the tragedy of bondage, the tenderness and
triumph of religion, find voice in those psalms.
Religion is not to be despised because it is not altogether
or even largely ethical. The heart depressed by drudgery,
hardship, forlornness, craves not merely moral guidance
but exhilaration and ecstacy. Small wonder if it seeks it
in whisky; better surely if it finds it in hymns and prayers
and transports partly of the flesh yet touched by the spirit.
Further, by faithful masters and mistresses there was given
to the slave's religion, in many cases, a clear and strong
sense of moral obligation. Uncle Tom in his saintliness
may be an idealization, but the elements were drawn from
life. Yet the slave's and so the freedman's religion was very
one-sided and out pf all proportion emotional. Its habitual
aim was occasional transport on earth and rapture in
heaven. Of the day's task, of homely fidelities and services,
of marriage and parenthood and neighborhood and citizen
ship, it made almost no account. ,^
Face to face with these impoverished and groping souls,
what had Armstrong, in his experience, knowledge, person-

360 The Negro and the Nation
ality, with which to meet them ? " He was filled through and
through " — the quotation is from the admirable biograph
ical sketch by his daughter — " with a deep sense that by
hard work alone can any of us be saved — a sense based on
many obscure foundations of observation and deduction.
Away back in the corners of his mind were recollections
of sundry wood-choppings and milkings carried on under
protest by himself and his companions ; and knowledge, too,
of how his father and mother had spent their ambitious
youth in work, the mother spinning by the fireside, the
father doing chores at his home in Pennsylvania. It was
the boys who faced and conquered hard physical jobs that
became the men of endurance later." He had seen and
shared the devotion of the missionary spirit, and had seen,
too, how largely it failed of fruit by being spent on super
natural conversion and mystical emotion. He knew the
tropical temperament, common to Hawaiian and negro, —
how accessible to transient fervor, how deficient in per
sistence and continuity. He had watched his father's opera
tions, as minister of public instruction under the Hawaiian
king; his experiments in more practical and prosaic educa
tion and religion, half frowned on by the ecclesiastics of
America, but rich in suggestion. He knew that the Hilo
manual labor school, where the boys paid their expenses
by labor, slightly trained, was a marked success. His
intensely active nature had caught from Hopkins the phil
osophic outlook, and the human materials were before him
in rich abundance. Above all, while unspeculative in relig
ion, and content to employ its traditional forms, — " they're
imperfect enough, " he said, " but they're the best we've
got " — ^the instincts of his great and disciplined nature sent
him straight to the central realities of character, which are
the true foundations of society.
His ideal crystallized by that swift and sudden process in

Regeneration 359
crown, and the wants of the black field-hands and their
children. Labor, education, — and what of religion? The slave
had found in Christianity, often in rude, half-barbaric
forms, a consolation, a refuge, a tenderness and hope, to
which we can scarcely do justice. Perhaps its most elo
quent expression to our imagination is those wonderful old-
time melodies, the negro " spirituals," as they have been
made famiHar by the singers of the negro colleges. Their
words are mystic. Scriptural, grotesque ; the melodies have
a pathos, a charm, a moving power, born out of the heart's
depths through centuries of sorrow dimly lighted by glim
merings of a divine love and hope. The typical African
temperament, the tragedy of bondage, the tenderness and
triumph of religion, find voice in those psalms.
Religion is not to be despised because it is not altogether
or even largely ethical. The heart depressed by drudgery,
hardship, forlornness, craves not merely moral guidance
but exhilaration .and ecstacy. Small wonder if it seeks it
in whisky; better surely if it finds it in hymns and prayers
and transports partly of the flesh yet touched by the spirit.
Further, by faithful masters and mistresses there was given
to the slave's religion, in many cases, a clear and strong
sense of moral obligation. Uncle Tom in his saintliness
may be an idealization, but the elements were drawn from
life. Yet the slave's and so the freedman's religion was very
one-sided and out of all proportion emotional. Its habitual
aim was occasional transport on earth and rapture in
heaven. Of the day's task, of homely fidelities and services,
of marriage and parenthood and neighborhood and citizen
ship, it made almost no account.
Face to face with these impoverished and groping souls,
had Armstrong, in his experience, knowledge, person-

360 The Negro and the Nation
ality, with which to meet them ? " He was filled through and
through " — the quotation is from the admirable biograph
ical sketch by his daughter — " with a deep sense that by
hard work alone can any of us be saved — a sense based on
many obscure foundations of observation and deduction.
Away back in the corners of his mind were recollections
of sundry wood-choppings and milkings carried on under
protest by himself and his companions ; and knowledge, too,
of how his father and mother had spent their ambitious
youth in work, the mother spinning by the fireside, the
father doing chores at his home in Pennsylvania. It was
the boys who faced and conquered hard physical jobs that
became the men of endurance later." He had seen and
shared the devotion of the missionary spirit, and had seen,
too, how largely it failed of fruit by being spent on super
natural conversion and mystical emotion. He knew the
tropical temperament, common to Hawaiian and negro, —
how accessible to transient fervor, how deficient in per
sistence and continuity. He had watched his father's opera
tions, as minister of public instruction under the Hawaiian
king; his experiments in more practical and prosaic educa
tion and religion, half frowned on by the ecclesiastics of
America, but rich in suggestion. He knew that the Hilo
manual labor school, where the boys paid their expenses
by labor, slightly trained, was a marked success. His
intensely active nature had caught from Hopkins the phil
osophic outlook, and the human materials were before him
in rich abundance. Above all, while unspeculative in relig
ion, and content to employ its traditional forms, — " they're
imperfect enough, '' he said, " but they're the best we've
got " — ^the instincts of his great and disciplined nature sent
him straight to the central realities of character, which are
the true foundations of society.
His ideal crystallized by that swift and sudden process in

Regeneration 361
which the long subconscious growth of the mind sometimes
comes to fruitage. He said in later years that before he
entered the Bureau's service, while sailing on a troop-ship
to Texas, he saw as in a dream his school much as it after
ward became. Twice afterward the vision came to him.
Stationed at Hampton in 1866, while he was bringing order
out of the chaos around him, his mind was reaching for
ward surely and swiftly to his larger project.
This was the germ thought: Character is to get its
direction and energy in the day's work. Just as man's
physical needs drive him to toil, his spiritual necessities find
their best field and cultivation in the same toil. The freed
men's first need is to earn a living; then to acquire such a
margin as will allow some little ease and comfort and refine
ment; and along with these goes the need of good habits,
high aims, disciplined character. Teach the industrial les
son and the moral lesson together. Train them to work
intelligently and cheerfully; teach them at the same time
whatever of book knowledge best fits their need; and con
stantly inspire them with the spirit of service to their kind.
Provide in this way for some hundreds of young men and
women, who shall go out as teachers to educate and train
their people along these lines.
That was the ideal, — the germ of Hampton, of Tuskegee,
of the new education of the negro ; the suggestion and stim
ulant of the new education as it is coming to be for the
white.

CHAPTER XXXVII
ARMSTRONG
Armstrong was a man of action, and of words only as
far as they helped action. He reached the starting of his
school in 1868, within two years after he was assigned to
duty at Hampton. For external help he had first the
countenance and support of the Freedmen's Bureau. He was
in its service and pay until 1872. He had the warm and
practical friendship of General Howard, who, after invi
ting him to take charge of the new university in Washing
ton bearing his own name, skilfully gained for his Hamp
ton enterprise a moderate appropriation from Congress.
If the Freedmen's Bureau had accomplished nothing else, —
and it did accomplish much, especially in education — it
would have been justified merely by giving Armstrong his
opportunity. Next he turned to private benevolence. Of
the various organizations, church and secular, that were
devising and doing for the freedmen, perhaps the most
efficient was the American Missionary Association. From
its officers Armstrong won response, sympathy, contribu
tions. He had to face the difficulties of a pioneer. There
were precedents against him. Experiments somewhat sim
ilar had been tried and failed. At Mount Holyoke seminary
for women, created by the genius and devotion of Mary
Lyon, and at Oberlin college, where the best New England
tradition had been transplanted — there had been long and
earnest trial of giving the students work by which to par
tially pay their expenses. But it had been given up, — the
women students were taxed beyond their strength; the
362

Armstrong 363
farmers complained that the boys were thinking of their
books, and the teachers said their pupils came with half
strength to their lessons. But Armstrong knew the material
he was dealing with, and how different from the nervous,
high-strung pupils of Oberlin and Mount Holyoke was the
vigorous, sensuous material he was to mold.
He began in April, 1868, with small things, — a matron,
a teacher, fifteen pupils and buildings worth $15,000. In
a month there were thirty pupils. Things moved straight
on, — they were moved by the assiduity, the enthusiasm, the
inspiration, of Armstrong, and the answering temper which
he woke in pupils, teachers, contributors, observers. Pres
ently a special effort, an appeal to friends, solicitude,
students zealously making bricks and laying them, help
from General Howard — and so, in 1870, a noble building.
Academic Hall, and presently again, Virginia Hall, — and
the school kept growing.
Its moral success was promptly won. The subject
answered to the experiment, — ^those dark-skinned boys and
girls came eager to learn. No one had believed in them,
and they had not believed in themselves, but they speedily
learned self-respect and gained the respect of others. They
did what was asked of them, earned most of their support,
showed good workmanship and scholarship, were blameless
in morals, caught the spirit of the place, and went out to
carry light into the dark places. No holiday task was set
them. There was a working day of twelve hours, between
the class-room, the work-shop, the drill-ground and the
field, with rare and brief snatches of recreation. They met
the demand with a resource inherited from their ancestors'
long years of patient labor. The hard toil was a moral
safeguard. The African race is sensuous, and co-education
might seem perilous. The danger was completely averted
by the influence of labor, strenuous and constant, but

364 The Negro and the Nation
diversified and interesting. The essentials of character, —
industry, chastity, truth and honesty, serviceable good-will,
— were the aim and result of the Hampton training; and
all ran back to the homely root that man should be trained
to earn intelligently and faithfully his daily bread.
The story of Hampton is a theme not for a chapter but
for a volume. How its founder won favor and friendship
by his tact and large-mindedness ; how he established good
relations with the Virginians ; how the Institute became the
parent of other schools ; how Booker Washington was there
fitted for the founding of Tuskegee and the leadership of
his race; how the work was extended to the Indians; how
Armstrong's spirit and example gathered and inspired a
company of teachers perhaps unsurpassed, — mostly women,
whose refining influence on the pupils he specially valued;
how he dreamed of what he never reached, some day to
give industrial education at Hampton to the whites; how
a worthy successor took his place, efficient and self-effacing ;
how deeply the Hampton idea has permeated the education
of the Southern negro, and is coming to influence white
education North and South, — all this can here be recalled
but by a word.
But on the personality of its leader we must for a moment
linger, to note one or two of its traits. His splendid vitality
overflowed at times in frolic and extravagance. He never
lost the spirit of the boy. He would come into a group of
his serious-minded teachers and say, " Oh ! what's the good
of saving souls if you can't have any fun ? " and start a
frolic or organize an all-day picnic. In his home he intro
duced " puss in the corner " and " the Presbyterian war-
dance " among the very elect. He delighted his children
with romances. " Like Dr. Hopkins, he believed that the
class-room should be a jolly place, and used to say that no
recitation was complete without at least one good laugh.'

Armstrong 365
' Laughter makes sport of work,' he said." His teaching
sometimes came in a droll story. " Once there was a wood-
chuck. . . . Now, woodchucks can't climb trees. Well,
this woodchuck was chased by a dog and came to a tree.
He knew that if he could get up this tree the dog could not
catch him. Now, woodchucks can't climb trees, but he
had to, so he did."
His devotion to his work was so whole-souled that it was
joyous and seemed unconscious of cost. In the touching
pages he wrote when death impended, he said, " I never
gave up or sacrificed anything in my life." Yet he con
stantly made what most men count heavy sacrifices. His
work involved frequent and laborious trips to the North to
arouse interest and raise money. He did it in as gallant a
fashion as he had led a charge, or as he made appeal to
the students hanging reverently on his words. A glimpse
of him on one of these begging tours is given by Professor
Francis G. Peabody:
" I suppose that every lover of General Armstrong recalls
some special incident which seems most entirely typical of
the man's life and heart. For my part, I think oftenest of
one of those scenes in his many begging journeys to the
North. It was at a little suburban church far down a side
street on a winter night in the midst of a driving storm of
sleet. There was, as nearly as possible, no congregation
present; a score or so of humble people, showing no sign
of any means to contribute, were scattered through the
empty spaces, and a dozen restless boys kicked their heels
in the front pew. Then in the midst of this emptiness and
hopelessness up rose the worn, gaunt soldier, as bravely
and gladly as if a multitude were hanging upon his words,
and his deep-sunk eyes looked out beyond the bleakness of
the scene into the world of his ideals, and the cold little
place was aglow with the fire that was in him, and it was

366 The Negro and the Nation
like the scene on the Mount, that was not any less wonder
ful and glistening because only three undiscerning followers
were permitted to see the glory."
Those frequent and long journeys went far to break up
the happy home life in which he delighted, with the wife
whose congenial and intimate companionship was his for
nine years and the little girls to whom he was the most
delightful of fathers. Then for twelve years, until his
second marriage, he was almost a homeless man. He wore
out his wonderful constitution; he suffered from dyspepsia
and sleeplessness; a paralytic stroke crippled him; but for
a year and a half he struggled on, cheerful, self-forgetful,
— then the end.
His countrymen scarcely yet realize all that he was. He
was the successful leader in that real emancipation of the
American negro to which the legal emancipation was but
a prelude. Beyond that, it would hardly be too much to say
that he did more than any other man in either hemisphere
to rationalize and Christianize our still half-medieval sys
tem of education. The working ideals of Hampton are
to-day higher than those of Yale and Harvard. It may be
questioned whether any professed preacher has done so
much to develop the best modem type -of religion; centered
in daily work, reaching out into all human service, and
consciously inspired by the divine life. It would not be
extravagant to say that in the little group — perhaps half a
dozen in all — whom America has contributed to the world's
first rank of great men, not one stands higher in heroic
manhood and far-reaching service than Samuel Arm
strong. But any comparison seems almost unworthy of his lofty
spirit. There is no rivalry among the saints. Would that
Armstrong could here be portrayed as he appeared in life.
The outer man spoke well the inner. To look upon, he was

Armstrong 367
a thoroughbred; of soldierly bearing, alert, vivid, noble;
with the twinkle of mirth, the flash of resistless purpose, —
a man to love, to revere, to follow. As a sort of mental
portrait-sketch, we may glean a few of his sayings. It was
as true of him as of Luther that his words were half-battles.
They were flashed out like sparks struck from action. As
to his special work, these :
"The North thinks that the great thing is to free the
negro from his former owner ; the real thing is to save him
from himself."
On the dissolution of the American Anti-slavery Society,
(because nothing remained for it to do) : " It failed to see
that everything remained. Their work was just beginning
when slavery was abolished."
" I cannot understand the prevailing views of the war
among pious and intelligent Americans. It is simply bar
baric — to whip the South and go home rejoicing, to build
monuments of victory, leaving one-third of their country
men in the depths of distress."
" The reconstruction measures were a bridge of wood
over a river of fire."
(In 1878) : " Hereafter it will be seen that negro suff
rage was a boon to the race, not so much for a defense, but
as a tremendous fact that compelled its education. There
is nothing to do but attempt its education in every possible
way. In their pinching poverty the Southern States have
seized the question of negro education with a vigor that
is the outcome of danger.'-'
(In 1887) : " The political experience of the negro has
been a great education to him. In spite of his many
blunders and unintentional crimes against civilization, he
is to-day more of a man than he could have been had he
not been a voter."
" The war was the saving of the South. Defeat and ruin

368 The Negro and the Nation
brought more material prosperity to the South than to the
North, and the future has untold advantages in store. Edu
cation is part of it, but capital and enterprise, which make
men work, are the greater part. The negro and poor white,
and, more than all, the old aristocrat, are being saved by
hard work, which, next to the grace of God, saves our
souls." " We hew from the raw material, men who have come
out of deep darkness and wrong, without inheritance but
of savage nature, the best product we can, and care as
much to infuse it with a spiritual life and divine energy
as with knowledge of the saw, plane, and hoe."
And, of his broader outlook on life, these : " I am con
vinced of the necessity of organizing pleasure as well as
religion in order to sustain Christian morality."
" The chief comfort in life is babies."
" Politics and philanthropy are a grind ; only when one
is at the post of duty and knows it, there is a sensation
of being lifted and lifting {et teneo et teneor) which some
times comes gradually over one. Detail is grinding, the
whole inspiring. God's kings and priests must drudge in
seedy clothes before they can wear the purple."
" From the deep human heart to the infinite heart there
is a line along which will pass the real cry and the sympa
thetic answer — a double flash from the moral magnetism
that fills the universe. Its conditions are not found in
theological belief, but in the spirit of a little child. We can
no more understand our human brother than our Father in
heaven without bringing faith — the evidence of things
unseen, the substance of things hoped for — ^to our aid."
"All progress of strong hearts is by action and reaction.
Human life is too weak to be an incessant eagle flight
toward the Sun of Righteousness. Wings will be some
times folded because they are wings. . . . The earthly

Armstrong 369
struggle must be enduring — that is all. There must be no
surrenders ; we can't expect much of victory here."
" The longer I live, the less I think and fear about what
the world calls success; the more I tremble for true suc
cess, for the purity and sanctity of the soul, which is as a
temple." " Doing what can't be done is the glory of living."
" What are Christians put into the world for but to do
the impossible in the strength of God ? "
In the contemplation of such a spirit we rest for a little
from the turmoils of politics, the mixture of motives, the
half-successes. Here is what glorified the whole business,
— the development of souls like this; and in such is the
promise of the future. Fitly to Armstrong belongs what
Matthew Arnold has written of his father, a kindred soul : —
Servants of God ! — or sons
Shall I not call you? because
Not as servants ye knew
Your Father's innermost mind,
His, who unwillingly sees
One of his little ones lost —
Yours is the praise, if mankind
Hath not as yet in its march
Fainted, and fallen, and died!
See ! In the rocks of the world
Marches the host of mankind
A feeble, wavering line.
Where are they tending? — A God
Marshal'd them, gave them their goal^
Ah, but the way is so long!
Years they have been in the wild!
Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks.
Rising all round, overawe;
Factions divide them, their host

370 The Negro and the Nation
Threatens to break, to dissolve —
Ah, keep, keep them combined !
Else, of the myriads who fill
That army, not one shall arrive;
Sole they shall stray; on the rocks
Batter forever in vain.
Die one by one in the waste.
Then, in such hour of need
Of your fainting, dispirited race.
Ye, like angels, appear.
Radiant with ardor divine.
Beacons of hope, ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart.
Weakness is not in your word.
Weariness not on your brow.
Ye alight in our van! at your voice.
Panic, despair, flee away.
Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn.
Praise, re-inspire the brave.
Order, courage, return;
Eyes rekindling, and prayers.
Follow your steps as ye go.
Ye fill up the gaps in our files.
Strengthen the wavering line,
Stablish, continue our march.
On, to the bound of the waste»
On, to the City of God !

CHAPTER XXXVIII
EVOLUTION
The story of slavery merges in the stories of the white
man and the black man, to which there is no end. As the
main period to the present study we have taken the begin
ning of President Hayes's administration in 1877, when the
withdrawal of Federal troops from the South marked the
return of the States of the Union to their normal relations,
and also marked the disappearance of the negro problem as
the central feature in national politics. From that time
to the present we shall take but a bird's-eye view of the
fortunes and the mutual relation of the two races.
The people of the Southern States realized gradually but
at last fully that the conduct of their affairs was left in their
own hands. From this time there was no important Federal
legislation directed specially at the South. The restrictive
laws left over from the reconstruction period were in some
cases set aside by the Supreme Court and in general passed
into abeyance. There was rare and brief discussion of a
renewal of Federal supervision of elections. But the
Northern people, partly from rational conviction and partly
from absorption in new issues, were wholly indisposed to
any further interference. Without such interference there
was no slightest chance of any restoration of political
preponderance of the negroes over the whites. The specter
of " negro domination " haunted the Southern imagination
long after it had become an impossibility. Then it was used
as a bogy by small politicians. But the only serious attempt
at national legislation for the South has been of a wholly
371

372 The Negro and the Nation
different character. It was the plan of Senator Blair of
New Hampshire, long urged upon Congress, and sometimes
with good hope of success, for national assistance to local
education, on the basis of existing illiteracy, for a term of
ten years, to a total amount of $100,000,000. That is the
only kind of special legislation for the South that has had
any chance of enactment for almost thirty years.
Through the twelve years of political reconstruction,
1865-77, the Southern people were gradually adapting them
selves to the new industrial and social conditions. Then the
body of the whites, finding themselves fully restored to
political mastery, grasped the entire situation with new
clearness and vigor. They thrust the freedmen not only
out of legislative majorities and the State offices, but out of
all and any effective exercise of the suffrage. The means
were various, consisting largely of indirect and technical
hindrances, " tissue-paper ballots " and the like. The
intelligent class massed against the ignorant found fto
serious difficulty in having their own way at all points. A
considerable number of negroes still voted, and had their
votes counted, but their party was always somehow put in
the minority; almost all offices passed out of their hands;
their representatives speedily disappeared from Congress,
and before long from the Legislatures. Negro suffrage
was almost nullified, and that, too, before the legislation of
the last decade.
But, in asserting their complete political superiority, the
whites also recognized a large responsibility for the race they
controlled. A degree of civil rights was secured to them,
short of a perfect equality with the whites, but far beyond
the status intended by the " black codes " of 1865-6. The
fundamental rights, of liberty to dispose of their labor and
earnings in their own way, and protection of person and
property by the law and the courts, were substantially

Evolution 373
secured. And, very notably, the common school education
of blacks as well as whites was undertaken with fidelity,
energy and new success. This great and vital advance, in
augurated by the Southern Republican governments, was
accepted and carried on, loyally and at heavy cost, by the
succeeding Democratic governments. The figures show a
great advance from 1875 to 1880 in the number of schools
and scholars of both races throughout the South. Political
inferiority for the negroes, but civil rights, industrial free
dom, and rudimentary education, — ^that was the theory and
largely the practice of their white neighbors.
One clause they added with emphatic affirmation : " I
will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with
you, and so following ; but I will not eat with you, drink with
you, nor pray with you." Social superiority, indicated by
separation in all the familiar and courteous intercourse of
daily life, was asserted by the whites with a rigor beyond
that of the days of slavery. When humiliated and stung by
the political ascendency of their former bondmen, they
wrapped themselves in their social superiority with a new
haughtiness. The pride of race, of color, of the owner
above the serf, stripped of its old power and insignia, but
no whit weakened in root and core, set an adamantine wall
along the line of social familiarity. Let the black man have
his own place — in school and church, in street and market
and hotel; but the same place, never! Separate schools,
churches, cars. And as in a hospitable country the social
meal is the special occasion and symbol of good fellowship
and equal comradeship, right there let the line be fixed, — ¦
no black man or woman shall sit at table with whites.
The usage came down by tradition, and became only a
little more rigid under the new conditions. At the North
the general practice had always been much the same; but
there it was occasionally and growingly superseded, when

374 The Negro and the Nation
people of the two races found a common level of educa
tion and manners. The Southern whites for a while took
their own practice as a matter of course. But then, espe
cially as by degrees some black men and women acquired
mental cultivation and social polish, — then came question
and challenge from the world without and from conscience
within; why this rigid separation? An answer must be
found or made, — and presently the answer appeared: If
white and black men and women eat and drink together,
play and work together, — ^then they will intermarry, and
the white race will become mixed and degenerate. So that
became the conviction, the creed, the shibboleth, of the
Southern whites, — race purity, to be safeguarded by com
plete prohibition of all social intimacy, especially as sym
bolized by the common meal. And the prohibition was en
forced among the whites by the penalty of sure and stern
ostracism. Under these conditions, then, the two sections of the
Southern people have been working their way, for almost
thirty years. How first have the negroes fared? Of the pro
phecies for their future, made when they were in bondage
and in view of possible emancipation, one was that they
would die out, — ^but in less than half a century they have
doubled. Another was that if freed they would refuse to
work, — ^but the industrial product of the South has never
fallen off, but has steadily and vastly increased, with the
negro still as the chief laborer. Another prediction was
that they would lapse into barbarism. The Southern negroes
as a mass have a fringe of barbarism — a heavy fringe. So
has every community, white, black or yellow, the world
over. Have the Southern blacks, as a body, moved toward
barbarism or toward civilization since they were set free ?
The comparative tests between civilization and barbarism
are, broadly speaking, productive industry, intelligence and

Evolution 375
morality. If we gauge industry by results, we find that the
class which forty years ago entered into freedom with empty
hands now owns more than $300,000,000 of property by the
tax-gatherers' lists. Another estimate — ^eited by Prof.
Albert Bushnell Hart — puts their entire property holdings
at $500,000,000. Though most of them are tenants or hired
laborers, yet there are more than 173,000 who own their
farms. The total number of farms worked by them in the
South — owned, leased, or rented on shares — is figured
at 700,000. The census of 1900 shows that in almost
every profession, trade and handicraft the black race has
numeroiis representatives — ^their range of occupation and
industrial opportunity being far wider in the South than in
the North. Taking the whole country, the percentage of
adults in gainful pursuits is a trifle higher among blacks
than among whites. Allow for the more frequent employ
ment in toil of the black woman; allow, too, for the more
intermittent character of black labor, — yet the relative
showing is not unfavorable to the enfranchised race. And
this comparison touches, too, the more difficult problem of
morality, — for industry is itself a chief safeguard of
morality. As to intelligence, the statistics show that, roughly speak
ing, about half the blacks over ten years old can read and
write. That is not much below the status of the people of
England half a century ago. In the higher fields of intelli
gence, the American negroes, — there are 9,000,000 of them,
— supply to-day a large part of their own teachers, minis
ters, lawyers and doctors, and in all these professions the
standard is steadily rising.
In regard to morality, generalization is difficult. There
is undoubtedly a much larger criminal element among the
blacks than among the whites. There are proportionately
more crimes against property, crimes of sensuality, crimes

376 The Negro and the Nation
of violence. Materials are wanting for exact comparison,
either with the whites, or among the blacks at different
periods. Yet there are few or no sections at the South,
even in the worst parts of the Black Belt, as to which
the public gets the impression of any general lawlessness.
And in any comparison of the present with the time of
slavery, we must remember what Carlyle says in speaking
of the cruelties of the French Revolution as compared
with those of the tyranny which preceded it, — when the
high-born suffer the world hears of it, but the woes of the
inarticulate are unheard. Wrongs at the South which
shock us to-day, — or wrongs as great — were common
place, were unnoted and unchronicled, under slavery. It
is offenses against women that rouse the hottest resent
ment. But for centuries the black woman's chastity had
absolutely no protection under the law, and her woes were
pitiful beyond telling. For the Southern negro, true family
life was impossible until within fifty years. With so brief
experience in the best school of character, there is no
ground for doubting that he has won a vast moral advance,
and the promise of greater.
Of the negroes, as of every race or community, we may
consider the lowest stratum, the great mass, and the leaders.
Regarding not morality only, but general conditions, there
is a considerable element of the Southern blacks whose con
dition is most pitiable. Such especially are many of the
peasants of the Black Belt; barely able to support them
selves, often plundered with more or less of legality by land
lord and storekeeper, shut up to heavy, dull, almost hopeless
lives. Inheritance weighs on them as well as environment ;
when these plantations were recruited from Virginia, it
was only the worst of the slaves whom their masters would
sell, and the bad elements propagated their like. The case
of these people to-day presents one of the open sores, the

Evolution 377
unanswered questions, — we might say the impossible tasks,
did we not remember Armstrong's attitude toward things
" impossible." Yet, even as to these, — are they not better
off than when enslaved ? A part of their trouble is the bur
den of responsibility — for themselves, their wives and chil
dren. In slavery they had no responsibility beyond the
day's task; the whip and the full stomach were the two
extremes of their possibilities. Now at least they are men
— with manhood's burdens, but with its possibilities, too.
Of the great middle class, something has already been
said, as to industry, property and education. But statistics
are cold and dead, could we but see the living human reali
ties which they vainly try to express. The growth of a
slave, or a slave's child, into a free man or woman, — the
birth and development of true family life, — could we see
this in its millions of instances, or even distinctly in one
typical instance, with all its phases of struggle, mistake,
disappointment, success, the growth of character, the blos
soming of manhood and womanhood, — it would be a more
moving spectacle than any that Shakespeare has given.
Here, again, it is mostly the inarticulate class, and their
story is not told to the world. We especially fail to learn
it, because of the wall of caste by which the white man shuts
himself out from the finest sights and the most brotherly
opportunities. More than farming or carpentry, more than
school or church, and taking in the best fruits of all these,
is family life, in its fullest and best. That is where the negro
is coming to highest manhood.
A necessary test of a race is its power to furnish its own
leaders. The negro race in America is developing a leader
ship of its own, — small as yet, but choice and growing. It
was part of Armstrong's central idea to create and supply
such a leadership. Hampton has gone steadily on in the
work, and the sisters and the children of Hampton are

37^ The Negro and the Nation
multiplying their fruits. It was by an ideal fitness of things
that Armstrong attracted, inspired and started as his worthy
successor one of the negro race. At Tuskegee the black
man is doing for himself what at Hampton the white man
is doing for him. Booker Washington is the pupil and suc
cessor of Armstrong, but he has his own distinct individ
uality, his own word and work. His constant precept and
practice has been that the black man should make himself
so serviceable and valuable to the community that every
door will open as fast as he is fit to enter it. It is the gospel
of wisdom and of peace. Toward all the opportunities
denied to the race, its attitude is one of patience but of un
tiring persistence. Its constant word is. Make yourself fit
for any function, any place, and sooner or later it will be
yours. Against political exclusion Mr. Washington on due
occasion speaks his calm word, but he does not beat against
the closed gate; he knows that when the black man shows
his full capacity for citizenship it cannot long be denied him.
The social exclusion he accepts with quiet self-respect; let
time see to that, let us only do our full work, learn our full
lesson. His teaching goes far beyond the schoolroom; he
gathers in conference the heads of families, the fathers and
mothers ; he sets them to study and practice the curriculum
of the family and the neighborhood. In his intense prac
ticality he lacks something of the spiritual inspiration which
Armstrong had and gave. But his teaching is in no wise
narrow or selfish, for always it is animated by the spirit of
brotherhood and service. His personal story. Up from
Slavery, is one of the most moving of human documents;
in itself it is an answer to all pessimism. It is a typical
story ; even as these sheets are written there comes to hand
another like unto it, the story of another boy, William Holtz-
claw, who groped his way up from a negro cabin, caught
the sacred fire at Tuskegee, did battle with misfortune and

Evolution 379
adversity, and now in his turn is carrying on the good work.
And for every such story that gets told there are a hundred
that are acted.
The wider leadership of the negroes by their own men
is exemplified, — it is not measured or exhausted, — by a
pregnant little volume of essays entitled The Negro Prob
lem. Seven of its phases are discussed by Booker Wash
ington, Professor DuBois, Charles W. Chestnutt, Wilfred
H. Smith, H. T. Kealing, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and T.
Thomas Fortune. As a collection, these essays are note
worthy for their cogency and clearness, for their earnest
and self-respectful plea for full justice and opportunity,
and their calmness and candor. The race that can speak
for itself in such tones has an assured future, — if democ
racy, evolution, Christianity, are the ruling powers.
This story is concerned mainly with the slave and the
freedman, but it must also touch on his former master, now
his neighbor and fellow-citizen. The new South is far too
ample a theme for a paragraph or a chapter. But it must
be said in a word that its main trait is the substitution, for a
territorial and slave-owning aristocracy, of an industrial
democracy. It is the coming of the new man, — laborious,
enterprising, pushing his way. His development began
when the whole community was set to work its way up from
the impoverishment left by the war. It was accelerated
when new resources were found, when coal and iron mines
were started, when cotton manufacturing began where the
cotton is grown. New types of character and society are
developing, yet blending with the remnant of the old.
Politics, in all its forms, plays a smaller part in to-day's
society than in that of fifty years ago. Not only has the
South never regained its old ascendency at Washington,
but it has not stood, and does not stand, for any distinct set
of ideas or principles in the national life. It has clung

380 The Negro and the Nation
closely together, under the influence of old sentiments and
lingering apprehensions. In its fear of a recurrence of
" negro domination," it has lost touch with the living ques
tions of to-day and to-morrow. " The Solid South " has
meant a secure contingent of electoral votes for the Demo
cratic Presidential candidate, — whether he stood for a gold
or a silver currency, for revenue reform or its opposite, for
radicalism or conservatism, — and a solid array of members
in Senate and House equally without pilotage on living
issues. Until the South breaks away from its fetish of past
fears and prejudices, it cannot rise to its proper opportuni
ties of statesmanship.
Yet better than the old-time absorption in Federal politics
and the prizes of the Capitol is the more diversified life of
the South to-day. It is being swept into the current of in
dustrialism — with its energies, its prizes, its perils. In
other directions, too, the new life of the South flows free
and strong. It is creating a literature, — a branch of Amer
ican literature, — incomparably beyond any product of its
earlier days. After what may be called a literature of states
manship, — the work of Washington, Jefferson, Madison,
Marshall, — the old South was almost wholly barren of orig
inal scholarship and creative genius. Now it bears a har
vest so rich that one cannot here begin to classify or to
name. The war-time is bearing an aftermath, of less im
portance in its romances, but admirable and delightful in its
biographies and reminiscences. Of these the most notable
feature, full as they are of vivid human interest and striking
personal characteristics, — is the freedom from rancor, the
generosity toward old foes which seems even unconscious
of any necessity to forgive. And in these personal sketches
there are disclosed certain broad yet distinct types of man
hood and womanhood, the special Southern contributions to
the composite American. In general literature, too, the

Evolution 381
South is doing its full share. In its histories, the note of
provincialism still lingers, — inevitably, and not blamably.
The Southern essayist or historian naturally gravitates to
the past of his own section, — and naturally he seeks to vin
dicate his comrades or his ancestors, and to interpret the
past from their standpoint. But, compared with the provin
cialism of the South of i860, he is a cosmopolitan.
The new South is doing perhaps its best work in educa
tion. Its leaders are both raising and widening their stand
ards, — ^they are reaching out toward modern and progres
sive ways, while they are trying to amplify their systems so
as to include the whole youthful population. Their intel
ligence and enthusiasm are seen alike in the ancient univer
sities like that of Virginia, in the younger colleges such
as Roanoke and Berea, and in the leaders of the public
schools. Intelligence, enthusiasm, devotion, — all are needed,
knd all will be tasked to the utmost. For the education of
the people's children, everywhere the most pressing of com
mon concerns, and the most perplexing in the transition
from old to new ideas and methods — ^bea.'s with especial
weight p-nd importunity upon the South. Its thinly-spread
population, its still limited resources of finance, the presence
of the two races with their separate and common needs, —
all set a gigantic task to the South, and one that calls for
sympathy and aid from the nation at large.

CHAPTER XXXIX
EBB AND FLOW
Thus, in broadest outline, have the two races at the South
been faring on their way. And now in recent years, under
their separate development and with their close interming
ling, have come new compHcations and difficulties. The
tendency has been in some ways to a wider separation. The
old relations between the household servants and their em
ployers, often most kindly, and long continuing to link the
two races at numberless points, have passed away with the
old generation. Once the inmates of mansion and cabin
knew well each other's ways. Now they are almost unac
quainted. The aristocracy and its dependents had their
mutual relations of protection and loyalty, and gracious and
helpful they often were. Now comes democracy, — vigor
ous, jostling, self-assertive, — its true social ideal of brotherly
comradeship being yet far from realization. The negro is
in a doubly hard position; under democratic competition
the weaker is thrust to the wall, yet he has not even the
equality which democracy asserts, but is held in the lower
place by caste. And so there is a new or a newly apparent
aggression upon the weaker race.
Its most obvious form is the legal limitation of suffrage.
The irregular and indirect suppression of the negro vote
which had prevailed since the close of the Reconstruction
period, was not thorough and sure enough to satisfy the
white politicians. And the lawless habit which it fostered,
and whose effects could by no means be confined to one
race, alarmed the better classes. So from two directions
382

Ebb and Flow 383
there was a pressure toward some restriction of the negro
vote which should be both legal and effective. The move
ment became active about the year 1895, and accomplished
its end in the States of Virginia, the Carolinas, Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana, by constitutional amendments.
The qualifications thus prescribed are so various and so vari
ously combined that a full statement here is forbidden by
limits of space, but their general characteristics are these:
The requirement (in Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama,
Louisiana) of $300 worth of property; the payment of a
poll tax (in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Missis
sippi, Louisiana) ; the ability to read and write (in North
Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana) ; the ability, if not to read,
to understand and explain any section of the Constitution
(in Virginia, Mississippi) ; regular employment in some
lawful occupation, good character, and an understanding
of the citizen's duties and obligations ( Alabama). ^
These restrictions apply in theory alike to both races.
But exemption from them is allowed, and the suffrage is
given, to certain classes: To all who served in the Civil
War (Virginia, Alabama) ; to all who were entitled to vote
on January i, 1867, also to the sons (or descendants) of
these two classes (Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama,
Louisiana). In these States, if these requirements are impartially en
forced, the effect is to impose on the negroes a moderate
property or intelligence qualification, or the two combined;
and to give practically universal suffrage to the whites. This
1 In Maryland, an amendment prescribing a series of elaborate
and vexing inquiries, investing the registration officers with judi
cial powers, and avowedly aiming at the elimination of the negro
vote, was passed by the Legislature, at the instigation of Senator
Gorman and against the opposition of a Democratic governor, and
decisively rejected by the popular vote in November, 1905.

384 The Negro and the Nation
last feature, while essentially unfair, is a practical grievance
to the negroes so long and only so long as the two races
stand as directly opposed forces in politics. Otherwise it is
questionable whether the class who are called on to earn
the suffrage by intelligence or productive industry are not
really as well off as the class to whom it is given regardless
of merit.
But in its practical operation the system is so elastic —
and unquestionably was so designed — that it can be easily
applied for the exclusion of a great part of those who nom
inally are admitted to the suffrage. The " character " and
" understanding " tests leave virtually full power with the
registration officers. There can be no reasonable doubt that
in these six States the suffrage is virtually denied to
negroes to an extent utterly beyond any fair construction of
the law. Mr. Charles W. Chestnutt, in his paper on Dis
franchisement, cites the case of Alabama, where the census
of 1900 gave the negro males of voting age as 181,471,
while in 1903 less than 3000 were registered as voters. And
even in States like Georgia, where suffrage is by law uni
versal, ways of practical nullification are often applied, —
as for example by exclusion from the nominating primaries,
in which the results are principally determined.
Without the need of legal forms, there is a practically
universal exclusion of all negroes from public offices, filled
by local election or appointment, throughout most of the
South. Their appointment to Federal offices in that region,
though very rare, is always made the occasion of vehement
protest. The theory generally avowed among Southern whites,
that the two races must be carefully kept separate, is apt to
mean in practice that the black man must everywhere take
the lower place. At various points that disposition en
counters the natural and cultivated sentiments of justice,

Ebb and Flow 385
benevolence, and the common good, and now one and now
the other prevails. Thus, there have been efforts to re
strict the common school education of the blacks. It has
been proposed, and by prominent politicians, to spend for
this purpose only the amount raised by taxation of the blacks
themselves. There has appeared a disposition to confine
their education to the rudimentary branches and to a nar
row type of industrialism. Strong opposition has developed
to the opening either by public or private aid of what is
known as " liberal education " in the college or university
sense. A flagrant instance of injustice is the enactment in
Kentucky of a law prohibiting all co-education of the races
— a law especially designed to cripple the admirable work
of Berea College.
But the most serious obstacle to the black man, the country
over, is the threatened narrowing of his industrial oppor
tunities. Here has been his vantage-ground at the South,
because his productive power was so great — by numbers
and by his inherited and traditional skill, — that there was
no choice but to employ him. At the North, where he is in
so small a minority as to be unimportant, he has been
crowded into an ever narrowing circle of employments.
Precisely the same sentiment, though not so ingeniously
formulated, which makes the white gentleman refuse to
receive the black gentleman in his drawing-room, inclines
the white carpenter or mason to refuse to work alongside
of his negro fellow-laborer. Yet against this we have the
accomplished fact, in the South, of black and white laborers
actually working together, harmoniously and successfully,
in most industries. We see the divided and wavering atti
tude of the trade-unions ; some branches taking whites and
blacks into the same society; others allying white societies
and black societies on an equal footing ; others refusing all
affiliation; the earlier declarations of the national leaders

386 The Negro and the Nation
for the broadest human fellowship challenged and often
giving way before the imperious assertions of the caste
spirit. A race closely intermixed with another superior to it in
numbers, wealth, and intelligence, — a self-conscious and
self-assertive race, — suffers at many points. There are
abuses tolerated by law; infractions and evasions of law;
semi-slavery under the name of peonage; impositions by
the landlord and the creditor. There are unpunished out
rages, — let one typical case suffice: a negro farmer and
produce dealer, respected and esteemed by all, in place of a
rude shanty puts up a good building for his wares; the
word goes round among the roughs, "that nigger is get
ting too biggity," and his store is burned, — nobody surprised
and nobody punished. Then there is the chapter of lynch-
ings : First, the gross crime of some human brute, then a
sudden passionate vengeance by the community ; the custom
spreads; it runs into hideous torture and public exultation
in it; it extends to other crimes; it knows no geographical
boundaries but spreads like an evil infection over the
country — ^but most of its victims are of the despised
race. Against the worst outrages the best men of all sections
are arrayed in condemnation and resistance. But of its own
essential and final social superiority the white South brooks
no question. It expects its social code to be observed by
the nation's representatives. It forgets that the nation's
representatives are cognizant of the general code of the
civilized world, — ^that breeding, manners, and intelligence,
constitute the gentleman. So when President Roosevelt en
tertains as his guest the foremost man of the negro race, —
easily one of the foremost half-dozen men in the country, —
the white South indulges in a mood which to the rest of the
world can only appear as prolonged hysteria.

Ebb and Flow 387
Before this whole wide range of the unjust treatment of
the black race in America, the observer is sometimes moved
to profound discouragement. " Was it all for nothing ? " he
asks, " have all the struggle and sacrifice, the army of
heroes and martyrs, brought us to nothing better than this ? "
But such discouragement overlooks the background of his
tory, and the vital undergrowth of to-day. We see the pres
ent evils, but we forget the worse evils that preceded. Turn
back sixty years, — read, not Uncle Tom's Cabin if you
distrust fiction, but Fanny Kemble's Life on a Georgia
Plantation, or Frederick Law Olmsted's volumes of travels.
Glean from the shelves of history a few such grim facts, and
let imagination reconstruct the nether world of the cotton
and sugar plantations, the slave market, and the calaboose ;
the degradation of women; the hopeless lot to which
" 'peared like there warn't no to-morrow ", — and see how
far our world has moved into the light since those days. A
race is not developed in an hour or a decade or a
generation. In the present are facts of solid reassurance, in that the
best spirit of the South is facing the besetting ills, is com
bating them, and being thus aroused must eventually mas
ter and expel the evil spirit. The South has a burden to
carry which the North does not easily realize. There the
negro is not a remote problem of philanthropy; he is not
represented by a few stray individuals; it is a great mass,
everywhere present, in its surface manifestations often
futile, childish, exasperating; shading off into sodden de
gradation ; as a whole, a century or several centuries behind
its white neighbors. To get on with it peaceably, to rightly
apportion with it the opportunities and the burdens of the
community, to keep the common movement directed up
ward, — ^this demands measureless patience, forbearance,
wisdom, and persistence. Against the more flagrant abuses.

388 The Negro and the Nation
the leaders of Southern society are making strong head.
Governor Vardaman of Mississippi, though a reactionary
as to negro education, has struck terror to the hearts of the
lynchers. The attitude of the official class in certain
peonage cases is thus described by Carl Schurz : " These
crimes were disclosed by Southern officers of the law, the
indictments were found by Southern grand juries, verdicts
of guilty were pronounced by Southern petty juries, and sen
tence was passed by a Southern judge in language the dig
nity and moral feeling of which could hardly have been more
elevated." As to disfranchisement on grounds of race, rep
resentative Southerners are anxious to demonstrate that
the only real disqualification is for ignorance and unfitness ;
and we must look to them to give practical effect to their
professions, which can be done if the existing statutes are
applied in a spirit of justice. It is especially as to education
that the better sentiment and purpose of the South is ap
parent. The heavy cost of maintaining public schools for
the blacks has been steadily met. It is estimated by the
United States Commission of Education that for this pur
pose since the beginning $132,000,000 has been spent. The
reactionaries in education, like Governor Vardaman, seem
to be overborne by the progressives like Governor Aycock
of North Carolina. There is a notable growth of the higher
order of industrial schools, mainly as yet by private support,
but with a general outreaching of educational leaders
toward more practical and efficient training for the common
body at the common expense. In the general discussion of
race matters, in periodicals and books, the old passionate
advocacy is in a degree giving place to broader and saner
views. Such writers are coming to the front as John S.
Wise, with his frank criticism of the political Bourbons and
his forward look ; and Edgar Gardner Murphy, whose book
Th? Present South is full of the modern spirit. There

Ebb and Flow 389
are others, especially among educators, not less pronounced
and serviceable in the forward movement. It is in these
quarters, and not among politicians or party newspapers,
that we must look for the brightening day.
But it is to be recognized that a right solution of the
South's difficulties will not be reached without a sharp and
prolonged antagonism between the good and the evil ten
dencies. Mr. Schurz states the case none too strongly:
" Here is the crucial point : There will be a movement
either in the direction of reducing the negroes to a perma
nent condition of serfdom — the condition of the mere planta
tion hand, ' alongside of the mule,' practically without any
rights of citizenship — or a movement in the direction of
recognizing him as a citizen in the true sense of the term.
One or the other will prevail." And he adds, " No doubt
the most essential work will have to be done in and by the
South itself. And it can be."
When President Hayes withdrew the Federal troops from
the South, it marked the formal restoration of that local
self-government which is a vital principle of the American
Union. Of slower, deeper growth, has been the spirit of
mutual good-will and confidence, with the free concession
to each member of its individual life. Numberless delicate
cords have been reuniting the severed sections. Railways,
commerce, literature, the tides of business and pleasure
travel, the pressure of common problems, the glory of com
mon achievements, the comradeship of the blue and the
gray on Cuban battlefields, the expositions of industry, the
throb of human feeling as the telegraph tells its daily story
of heroism or tragedy — all have done their part. It is by
their nobler interests that the sections are most closely
united. Beyond the squabbles of politicians is the power of
such conferences as those of the Southern Education Com
mission, where meet the best brains and consciences, the

390 The Negro and the Nation
gifts of the liberal, the plans of the wise, and the energy of
the stout-hearted.
The education of a slave into a man, the harmonizing of
two races, the common achievement of a great national life,
— it is a long work, but it moves on.
" Say not. The struggle naught availeth.
The labor and the wounds are vain.
The enemy faints not nor faileth.
And as things have been they remain.
"For while the tired waves vainly breaking.
Seem here no painful inch to gain.
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
" And not through eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light.
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly.
But westward, look, the land is bright ! "

CHAPTER XL
LOOKING FORWARD
It is difficult to write history, but it is impossible to write
prophecy. We can no more tell what lies before us than
the Fathers of the Republic could foresee the future a cen
tury ago. They little guessed that slavery, which seemed
hastening to its end, would take new vigor from an increase
of its profits, — that, stimulated by the material gain, a
propaganda of religious and political defense would spring
up, — that a passionate denunciation and a passionate de
fense would gradually inflame the whole country, — ^that
meanwhile the absorption of the mass of citizens in private
pursuits would blind them to the evil and peril, and prevent
that disinterested, comprehensive statesmanship which ought
to have assumed as a common burden the emancipation of
the slaves, — that the situation would be exasperated by
hostility of the sections and complicated by clashing theories
of the national Union, — that only by the bitter and costly
way of war would a settlement be reached, — and that
emancipation, being wrought by force and not by persua
sion, would leave the master class " convinced against its
will," and a deep gulf between the races, whose spanning
is still an uncertain matter, — all this was hidden from the
eyes of the wisest, a century ago. So is hidden from our
eyes the outworking of the century to come.
But the essential principles of the situation, the true ideals,
the perils, — ^these were seen of old. Jefferson wrote, " I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is a God of
justice." And Washington said, " I can already foresee that
391

392 The Negro and the Nation
nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the
existence of our Union, by consolidating it in a common
bond of principle." Just so clearly can we read the basal
principles on which depends our national safety. We look
forward to-day, not to predict what will be, but to see what
ought to be, and what we purpose shall be.
We, the people of the United States, are to face and deal
with this matter. We are all in it together. Secession has
failed, colonization is impossible. Southerner and North
erner, white man and black man, we must work out our
common salvation. It is up to us, — it is up to us all !
The saving principle is as simple as the multiplication
table or the Golden Rule. Each man must do his best, each
must be allowed to do his best, and each must be helped to
do his best. Opportunity for every one, according to his
capacity and his merit, — that is democracy. Help for the
weaker, as the strong is able to give it, — that is Chris
tianity. Start from this center, and the way opens out
through each special difficulty. The situation is less a puzzle
for the intellect than a challenge to the will and heart.
First of all, it is up to the black man himself. His free
dom, won at such cost, means only opportunity, and it is
for him to improve the opportunity. As he shows himself
laborious, honest, chaste, loyal to his family and to the
community, so only can he win to his full manhood. The
decisive settlement of the whole matter is being worked out
in cotton fields and cabins, for the most part with an uncon
sciousness of the ultimate issues that is at once pathetic and
sublime, — by the upward pressure of human need and aspi
ration, by family affection, by hunger for higher things.
On the leaders of the negroes rests a great responsibility.
Their ordeal is severe, their possibilities are heroic. The
hardship of a rigid race severance acts cruelly on those
whose intelligence and refinement fit them for a companion-

Looking Forward 393
ship with the best of the whites, which they needs must
crave, which would be for the good of both races, but which
is withheld or yielded in scanty measure. Self-abnegation,
patience, power alike to wait and to do, — these are the
price they are called to pay. But the prize set before them is
worth it all, — the deliverance of their people, and the har
monizing of the long alienated races. They need to beware
of jealousies and rivalries of leadership such as have made
shipwreck of many a good cause. There is room and need
for various contributions. They have a common bond in
that ideal which is the most precious possession of the
American negro. It is the old simple idea of goodness, set
in close relation to this age of productive activity. It re
quires that a man be not only good but good for something,
and sets faithful and efficient service as the gateway to all
advance. But for the right adjustment of the working relations of
the two races, the heavier responsibility rests with the
whites, because theirs is the greater power. They can pre
scribe what the blacks can hardly do other than accept.
What we are now facing is not slavery, — an institution
that may be abolished by statute — ^but its offspring. Caste —
a spirit pervasive, subtle, sophistical, tyrannic. It can be
overcome only by a spirit more pervasive, persistent and
powerful — the spirit of brotherhood.
Puzzling as the situation is at some points, its essential
elements are far simpler and easier to deal with than slavery
presented. There is no longer a vast property interest at
stake, — on the contrary, material interest points the same
way with moral considerations. There are complexities of
the social structure, but nothing half so formidable as the
aristocratic system based on slavery. The gravest dif
ficulty now is a race prejudice, deep-rooted and stubborn,
yet at bottom so irrational that civilization and Christianity

394 The Negro and the Nation
and human progress should be steadily wearing it away.
Let us take heart of grace. If our wills are true, it should
be no great puzzle for our heads to find the way in this bus
iness. Let us test the practical application of our principle
— namely, that each man should do his best, each should be
allowed to do his best, and helped to do his best — let us see
how this should work in industry, education, politics, and
social relations.
First in importance is the industrial situation. Broadly,
the negro in this country shows himself able and willing to
work. The sharp spur of necessity urges him, and his in
herited habit carries him on. But he needs a training in
youth that shall fit him to work more effectively. For that
matter, his white brother needs it, too. But here is the in
equality of their situations, — whatever the white worker is
qualified to do he is allowed to do, but how is it with the
black worker? Let the Northern reader of these pages see
at his door the palpable instance of a limitation more cruel
than can be found at the South. Let him note, as the
children stream out from the public school, the dark-
skinned boy, playing good-naturedly with his white mates,
at marbles or ball or wrestling, — just as he has been study
ing on the same bench with them, — he is as clean, as well-
dressed, as well-behaved, as they. Now, five years hence,
to what occupation can that colored boy turn? He can be
a bootblack, a servant, a barber, perhaps a teamster. He
may be a locomotive fireman, but when he is fit to be an
engineer, he is turned back. Carpentry, masonry, painting,
plumbing, the hundred mechanical trades, — these, for the
most part, are shut to him ; so are clerkships ; so are nine-
teen-twentieths of the ways by which the white boys he
plays and studies with to-day can win competence and com
fort and serve the community. It is a wrong to whose
acuteness we are blunted by familiarity. It can be changed

Looking Forward 395
only as sentiment is changed ; and for that there must be
white laboring men who will bravely go ahead and break
the cruel rule by welcoming the black laborer to their side.
In the South the negro as yet enjoys industrial freedom,
in the choice of an occupation — or a near approach to it —
because his labor is so necessary that he cannot be shut
out. But the walls are beginning to narrow. White immi
gration is coming in. The industrial training of the old
plantation is no longer given, and industrial schools are yet
very imperfectly developed. Some trades are being lost to
the negroes; they have fewer carpenters, masons, and the
like; they find no employment in cotton mills, and are en
gaged only in the least skilful parts of iron manufacture.
The trade unions, gradually spreading through the South,
begin to draw back from their early professions of the equal
ity and brotherhood of all toilers. An instance comes to
hand as these pages are being written — one instance out of a
plenty. " The convention at Detroit, Mich., of the amalga
mated association of steel and iron workers has postponed
for a year consideration of a proposition to organize the
colored iron, steel and tin workers of the South. The
white employes of the Southern mills led the opposition.
They objected to seeing the negroes placed on an equality,
and it was further argued that once a colored man ob
tained a standing in the association, there was nothing to
prevent his coming North. President Shaffer urged that
all men who are competent workers should be members of
the association." Now for next year it is up to President
Shaffer, and those of like mind ! On this question, of com
radeship between black and white laborers, there is a call
to the leaders of labor organizations to lead right. These
chiefs of labor hold a place of the highest possibilities and
obligations. In their hands largely lies the advance or re
trogression of the industrial community — and that means

396 The Negro and the Nation
our entire community. It is one of the most hopeful signs
of the times that stress of necessity is bringing to labor's
front rank men of a higher type, men often of large brain,
high purpose, and strong will. Brains, purpose, will, — all
are needed by these unofficial statesmen. They must look
many ways at once, but this way they ought not to fail to
look, — to the industrial harmonizing and equality of the two
races. Exclude the colored men from the unions, and what
can be expected but that they serve as a vast reserve for
the employers when strikes arise between the capitaHsts and
the employes? We read now and then of the introduction
of negroes as " strike-breakers," and the bitterness it causes.
But will not this be repeated on the largest scale if the mil
lions of negroes are to be systematically excluded from the
unions? There may be difficulties in including them, — dif
ficulties partly running back into other injustices, such as
the practice of different wage-rates for whites and blacks.
But it would seem to be the larger wisdom, in point of
strategy, to enroll the two great wings of the host of labor
into a united army. And apart from strategy, that char
acter of the labor movement which most deeply appeals to
the conscience and judgment of mankind, — ^the uplift of the
great multitude to better and happier things, — ^that should
rise above the barrier of race-prejudice as above all other
conventional and foolish divisions. Will the labor leaders
see and seize their opportunity at once to strengthen and
to ennoble their cause?
The education of the negroes presents a hundred special
questions, but its basal principles are not difficult to dis
cern. Here, fortunately, we have in the main an admirable
loyalty and good-will on the part of the white South. It is
proved by deeds more than by words. The sum spent by
the Southern States in the last thirty years for the schooling

Looking Forward 397
of the blacks — it is reckoned at $132,000,000, most of it, of
course, from white taxpayers — is the best evidence of its
disposition. The occasional complaints and protests seem
no more significant than the occasional grumbling at the
North against its best-rooted institutions, — everywhere and
always the children of light must keep up some warfare
with the Philistines. The main difficulties at the South are
two; limited means for so great a task, — ^three or four
months of schooling burdens Mississippi more than ten
months burdens Massachusetts ; and the grave puzzle as to
what kind of elementary education best fits the negro child.
This puzzle applies almost equally to the white child;
throughout the country and the world a reconstruction of
education is struggling forward, through great uncertain
ties but under strong pressure of necessity. It is felt that
the old-time book-education, and even its modern revision
' — all as yet come vastly short of rightly fitting the child for
manhood or womanhood. We have advanced, but we
have still far to go. To rightly educate " the hand, head
and heart," (the watchword of Tuskegee) — to develop
strong, symmetrical character and intelligence, the sound
mind in the sound body, — to train the bread-winner and
the citizen, as well as to open the gates of intellectual
freedom and spiritual power, — ^this is what we have not
quite learned. Socrates and More and Rousseau and Pes-
talozzi and Froebel and Armstrong have done much, but
they have left abundant room for their successors. The mil
lionaire's child, as well as the field-hand's, must wait awhile
yet. So it is small wonder if the Southern public school is
still a challenge to the best wits.
The combined industrial and educational need of the
South is excellently summed up by a sympathetic observer,
Ernest Hamlin Abbott:
" The chief industrial problem of the South is, therefore,

398 The Negro and the Nation
that of transforming an indolent peasantry accustomed to
dependence into an active, independent people. This in
volves an educational problem. Industrial education is
something very different from training a few hundred girls
to cook and sew for others; it is something, even, very
different from supplying a few hundreds of young men with
a trade. Industrial training is this larger undertaking,
namely, to train hundreds of thousands of young people in
habits of industry, in alertness of mind, and in strength of
will that shall enable them to turn to the nearest opportunity
for gaining the self-respect that comes with being of use
to the community."
One thing is clear. More than the system is the teacher.
Now and always the first requisite must be instructors of
devotion, intelligence, sympathy, inspiration. To train such,
and train them in multitudes, there must be institutions,
ample in intellectual resource and high in their standards.
There can be no fit common schools for the blacks unless
there are worthy normal schools and colleges. Atlanta and
its class are necessary as well as Tuskegee and its class, —
and Atlanta reinforces Tuskegee with a large proportion of
its teachers. On broader grounds, too, the need of the
higher education for the black man is imperative. It can
hardly be better stated than in the words of Professor
DuBois, in his book of irresistible appeal. The Souls of
Black Folk:
" That the present social separation and acute race-sensi
tiveness must eventually yield to the influence of culture, as
the South grows civilized, is clear. But such transforma
tion calls for singular wisdom and patience. If, while the
healing of this vast sore is progressing, the races are to live
for many years side by side, united in economic effort, obey
ing a common government, sensitive to mutual thought and
feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in many matters of

Looking Forward 399
deeper human intimacy, — if this unusual and dangerous de
velopment is to progress amid peace and order, mutual
respect and growing intelligence, it will call for social
surgery, at once the delicatest and nicest in modem history.
It will demand broad-minded, upright men, both white and
black, and in its final accomplishment American civilization
will triumph. So far as white men are concerned, this fact
is to-day being recognized in the South, and a happy re
naissance of university education seems imminent. But the
very voices that cry hail to this good work are, strange to
relate, largely silent or antagonistic to the higher education
of the negro."
It must be remembered that in the growth of a tree the
upper boughs must have space and air and sunUght, as much
as the roots must have earth and water, — and so with a race.
There is need of scholars and idealists, as well as toilers;
and for these there should be their natural atmosphere.
Again let us hear the moving words of Professor DuBois :
" I sit with Shakespeare, and he does not wince. Across
the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas,
where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded
halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between
the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I sum
mon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they
come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So,
wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil. Is this the life you
grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long
to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia?
Are you so afraid lest, peering from this high Pisgah,
between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised
Land?" Yet it is not for himself or the cultured few that he
makes the strongest plea :
" Human education is not simply a matter of schools, it

400 The Negro and the Nation
is much more a matter of family and group life, the train
ing of one's home, of one's daily companions, of one's
social class. Now the black boy of the South moves in a
black world — a world with its own leaders, its own thoughts,
its own ideals. His teachers here are the group leaders of
the negro people— the physicians, clergymen, the trained
fathers and mothers, the influential and forceful men about
him of all kinds — here it is, if anywhere, that the culture
of the surrounding world trickles through, and is handed
on by the graduates of the higher schools. Can such cul
ture training of group leaders be neglected? Can we af
ford to ignore it? Do you think that if the leaders of
thought among negroes are not trained and educated them
selves, they will have no leaders? On the contrary, a hun
dred half-trained demagogues will still hold the places they
so largely occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous busy-
bodies will multiply. We have no choice; either we must
help furnish this race from within its own ranks with
thoughtful men, of trained leadership, or suffer the conse
quences of a headless misguided rabble."
Turning now to the political status of the negro, it may
be said that the most pressing need will be substantially
met if the South will carry out in good faith the provisions
of her statute-books. By some of those statute-books,
suffrage is still equal and universal. In others, the negro
in required to own $300 worth of property, or to be able to
read and write, or to understand the Constitution when read
to him. That the white man is practicaly exempt from
these tests, by the " soldier " or " grandfather " clause, what
ever be its theoretic injustice or unwisdom, would be no
great practical grievance to the negro if only he were fairly
allowed to cast his own vote when he can meet the statutory
tests. At present, throughout the greater part of the South,
the practical attitude of the election officials, and the social

Looking Forward 401
sentiment enforced in subtle, effectual ways, debars the
negro vote almost as thoroughly as if it were disallowed by
law. That this should be so may be satisfactory enough for
those to whom the matter ends with " This is a white man's
country," or " Damn the niggers anyhow." But will the
intelligent, large-minded Southerners, — the men of light and
leading — always allow the theory of their own statute-
books to be nullified? Will they forever maintain a
suffrage-test of race rather than of property and intelli
gence ?
It is said, no doubt truly enough, that a large part of the
negroes are indifferent to the suffrage, and do not care to
vote. But is this a desirable state of things? Taking the
class to whom the law awards the suffrage, — the men of
some modest property qualification and intelligence, — is it
well for the community that they should be indifferent to
questions of taxation, of law-making, of courts and schools
and roads and bridges? Is it not in every sense desirable
that they should be encouraged to take an intelligent and
active interest in such matters? John Graham Brooks tails
of his recent observations in Gloucester county, Virginia,
where whites and blacks have been co-operating for good
local government, and the curse of liquor-selling has been
restrained by the votes of a black majority. Surely we
should all like to see that precedent widely followed. That
is a very crude idea of politics which sees in it only a
scramble for public offices. That is an obsolete idea which
construes Southern politics as a struggle for power between
whites and blacks. Politics, in a large sense, is the com
mon housekeeping of the community. It is the adminis
tration of the broadest and highest common interests. The
importance to the Southern negro of the political function
was greatly overrated when he emerged from chattelhood.
But is there any wiser course now than to educate and train

402 The Negro and the Nation
and encourage him to a living membership in the body
politic ?
In this connection we naturally recur to the relation of
the national government to the negro problem. In gen
eral, the let-alone policy of the last twenty-eight years is
likely to continue, and there is every reason why it should.
The termination of Federal interference in 1877 was not due
to criminal indifference or lassitude on the part of the
North, or to political accident. It was essentially the
gravitation of the nation to its normal position, after the
shock of war and the adjustment of the vital changes
involved in the abolition of slavery. Those changes rec
ognized in the national Constitution, and the new order set
on its feet, it was natural, inevitable, and right, that the
States should resume the control of their local affairs. The
division of governmental functions between State and nation
was one of the most fortunate circumstances of our birth-
period; it was the ripening of our historical antecedents,
felicitously grasped and molded by a group of great men.
It rests on the fitness of each local community to handle
its own affairs, while only the most general and fundamental
interests are intrusted to the central authority. When the
Southern States were left to themselves, they did some
unwise and unjust things, — and there had been something
of unwisdom and injustice in the time of Federal super
vision — but on the whole it was the re-establishment of the
normal order. The policy which naturally followed on the
part of the general government was the avoidance of special
legislation, especially of the restrictive kind.
But within its own sphere, the national government should
follow those principles which are in the best sense American.
Thus the executive, in its appointments to office, ought to
recognize an equality of race, like that which the Constitu
tion affirm as to civil rights and the suffrage, It is of vital

Looking Forward 403
moment that the American nation, — whatever local com
munities may do, — should not bar competent men from
office because of race. Here as elsewhere, — ^the tools to
him who can use them, the career open to the fit talent.
This should hold good wherever the national executive
acts, South as well as North. The principle should be
applied with reasonable regard to the sentiments of the
local community, — reasonable but not servile regard. In
a city by character and tradition a stronghold of the white
race, it seems unwise to give a principal office to a black
man. But in a community where the black element is strong
in numbers and in character, and where the dark race offers
fit incumbents for office, there should be a fair number of
such appointments. If it is said " This is offensive to the
Southern people," the answer is, Who are the Southern peo
ple ? Not the white people only, but the black people also.
As to legislation, a measure was recently proposed and
somewhat discussed, which has perhaps passed like other
bubbles, but the proposal of which caused natural agitation
and apprehension at the South. This was a scheme for ap
plying the Fourteenth Amendment to the reduction of Con
gressional representation in the South in proportion to the
negroes excluded from suffrage by the new State Consti
tutions. Some such reduction may be permissible under
the amendments, — for the later Fifteenth Amendment only
forbids the States to limit suffrage by " color, race, or
previous condition of servitude." Limitation by a property or
educational test is not forbidden ; but under the Fourteenth
Amendment it might be made the ground for reducing a
State's representation in Congress. But when it has been
said that the proposed measure of reduction is permissible
under the Constitution, there is nothing more in its favor.
From the standpoint of its proposers, it would be only half-
effective, for it could reach only those debarred by actual

404 The Negro and the Nation
want of property or education; the larger exclusion by the
unfair administration of election officers is an individual
matter, beyond the cognizance of statute-books. But the
weighty objection is that it would recognize, accept and
confirm that very exclusion of the negro vote against which
it professes to be aimed. It would only enforce a penalty,
from which the gain would accrue solely to the Republican
majority in Congress and the electoral college. The Repub
lican party, it is safe to say, has too much virtue and intelli
gence in its rank and file to accept such a gain at such a
cost. For the cost would be a bitter intensifying of race
and sectional hostility. The Southern negro, his disfran
chisement accepted and ratified by the North, would be
freshly odious to his white neighbors on whom he had
unconsciously brought this humiliation. The fast closing
breach between the North and South would have a sharp
and heavy wedge of division driven in. The peaceful for
ward movement of the nation — for forward it is, spite of
some lurches and staggers — would be set back by a return
to the old methods of sectional conflict. But indeed the
proposal hardly merits so much space as has here been
given it. It is a scheme of politicians and not of the people,
unhopeful even as a political scheme, unsupported by the
sober thought of the North, utterly unlikely to be realized
or seriously attempted.
There is another kind of legislative action which may
well be seriously considered. Would it not be wise, just,
and statesmanhke, for the nation to give financial aid to
the tremendous work of public education with which the
South is struggling? The Blair bill for this purpose, —
in a word, an appropriation of $100,000,000, running
through ten years, on the basis of illiteracy, — came very
near success in Congress. It was defeated by an ardent
championship in the North of local independence and self-

Looking Forward 405
reliance. It is questionable whether that championship was
not misdirected. Here are States burdening themselves
beyond their Northern neighbors, to give schooling for
only a third of a year, and necessarily sometimes of inferior
quality. The deficiency, compared with the standards of
wealthier States, results in a widespread ignorance detri
mental not only to the community but to the nation. The
interests at stake are common to us all. The backlying
cause of the trouble, — slavery and its accompaniments —
was in a sense our common responsibility; we all ought to
have united to get rid of it peaceably, and the North ought
to have paid its share. For the dereliction the South has
paid a terrible price. The North, too, suffered wofully, yet
in far less measure. Would it not be the part of patriotism
and statesmanship — of wisdom and good-will — that all
should now take some share in lifting the load which weighs
heaviest on the South, but hurts us all?
We are spending a hundred millions a year for a navy.
Would not some of that money be put to better use in train
ing our own citizens, who will otherwise go untaught?
Someone has said : " The cost of one battleship would
endow the higher education of the Southern negro for half
a century to come."
It is not the negro only, it is his white neighbor also, for
whom we are to provide. So to plan the provision that the
money be honestly and wisely spent ; to do it with just con
sideration of local feeling, yet on firm lines of American
democracy — this would take study and sagacity. But could
study and sagacity be better applied than to make this idea
practical? The project seems prompted by wise self-interest
and by justice. The South is carrying more than its share
of national expense, and without complaint. Our tariff
system presses far heavier on the agricultural South than
pn the manufacturing North. Of our payment of pensions,

4o6 The Negro and the Nation
• — running up to $130,000,000 a year, — the South bears its
proportion, though it is paid to men for fighting against
her, and the South makes no remonstrance. Is it not simple
justice, is it not a matter of national conscience and honor,
that the whole nation should help her in educating the future
citizens of the republic?
From this national aspect, we return to the more personal
phases of our theme. Shall we touch on that subject whose
very name seems to prohibit discussion? — ^what is called
" social equality," or as others would prefer " social inti
macy." Either phrase seems to evoke a phantom before
which consideration and composure flee. But we may, as
Epictetus suggests, say, " Appearances, wait for me a little ;
let me see who you are and what you are about, and put
you to the test." Social equality — in what sense does it
exist among white men ? People find their associates accord
ing to fitness and congeniality. Clean people prefer the
society of clean people, and the dirty must go by themselves
or change their habits. Men and women of refinement and
good manners welcome the company of the refined and well-
mannered. They do so no less if these pleasing traits are
found in a Japanese, a Chinese, or, a Hindu. This is the
custom of the civilized world. At the North, as already in
Christendom at large, the same usage is coming to extend
to the African. A gentleman, a lady, by breeding and edu
cation and behavior, is admitted to the society of other
ladies and gentlemen, whether in the business office, the
committee-room, or the home. When the Grand Army of
the Republic in Massachusetts this year chose their district
commander, the almost unanimous choice fell on a soldier,
a lawyer, and a gentleman, of African blood. When last
fall the students of the Amherst agricultural college elected
the captain of their football team, they took as their leader
a young man of the dark race. A few years since a class

Looking Forward 407
in Harvard awarded their highest honor, the class orator-
ship, to Mr. Bruce of Mississippi, of negro blood. When
a Springfield lawyer, meeting in Philadelphia an old class
mate in the law school, accepted his invitation to dinner at
his boarding-house, and there found himself among a score
of ladies and gentlemen, all dark-skinned, elegant in dress
and manners, agreeable in conversation, and meeting their
guest with entire ease and composure, — he did not feel that
the meeting had injured either him or them, or, shaken the
foundations of the social order. Such is the growing, if
not the general, practice in the Northern States; such is
the well-established custom of Christendom. If the white
people of the Southern States, for reasons peculiar to their
section, follow a different rule, they have still no occa
sion for wonder and dismay at the practice in other sections,
or for indignation when the highest official in the American
capital follows the general usage of the civilized world.
The reasons given by the Southern whites for their own
course in the matter call no less for respectful consider
ation. They say : " We are encompassed and intermingled
with a people of negro and mixed blood. If we associate
with them familiarly, the natural result will be intermar
riage. There is no drawing the line short of that. Meet at
the dining-table and in the drawing-room, — visit, study,
play, associate familiarly and intimately, — and the young
people of the two races, in many instances, will pass
through acquaintance and friendship to love and marriage.
Then springs a mixed and degenerate race; then the white
race, with its proud tradition, its high ideals, its grand
power, shades off into an inferior, mongrel breed. Our
inheritance, our civilization, our honor, bid us shut out
and forbid that degeneracy at the very threshold."
Let it be assumed that for the present the white South
resolutely maintains its attitude of social separation. But

4o8 The Negro and the Nation
let its defenders consider some of the consequences it
involves, and make account with them as best they may.
Does not this social code strongly confirm, and indeed carry
as a necessary implication, that industrial separation which
must work injuriously not only to the negro but to the com
munity? If the white gentleman will not associate with a
black gentleman in a committee on school or public affairs,
if he will not admit him to his pew or his drawing-room, is
it not to be expected that the white carpenter or mill-hand
will refuse to work side by side with the black ? What that
means where the black man is in a small minority, we see
here at the North, — it shuts him out. Where he is in
stronger force, as at the South, the refusal of industrial
fellowship means growing bitterness, and the complication
and aggravation of labor difficulties. It all goes along
together, — the social separation and the industrial.
Further, this means that each race is to be ignorant and
aloof from the other, on its best side. The best side of every
civilized people is seen in its homes. The white' and the
black homes of the South are strangers to each other. Edgar
Gardner Murphy in his admirable book. The Present South,
while he does not for a moment question the necessity of
the social barrier, laments that ignorance of each other's
best which it involves. He dwells hopefully on that develop
ment of the family life which marks the negro's best advance,
— but what, he asks, can the white people really see or know
of it? Surely it is a very grave matter to keep two inter
mingled peoples thus mutually ignorant of each other's best.
If it be asked, " What course can reasonably be considered
as a possible alternative to the jealous safeguarding of our
race integrity ? " the answer might suggest itself : " Simply
deal with every man according to his fitness, his merits, and
his needs, regardless of the color of his skin. Decide
to-day's questions on the broad principles of justice and

Looking Forward 409
humanity. Leave the ultimate relation of the races to those
sovereign powers working through Nature and mankind,
which we dimly understand, but with which we best co
operate by doing the right deed here and now."
Some things we say — and think, too, — when we are in
debate with our opponents, and some other things we think
when we quietly commune with ourselves. Any social
ordinance or usage finds its final test when we bring it into
the companionship of our highest ideal. We may here bor
row an apologue:
" The other night I fell asleep when soothed by vivid
memories of a visit to Charleston soon after the war.
The place was then new to me, and the warmth of old friends
from whom I had long been parted and the cordial hospi
tality of those now first met seemed to blend with the
delicious atmosphere which soothed and charmed my senses.
The memory prompted a dream, in which I sat again at
that hospitable board, where my host had summoned a com
pany to meet a special guest. The stranger delighted us all,
partly by his suggestive comments, but still more by some
subtle sympathy which moved us all to free and even inti
mate speech. Gradually the company enlarged; presently
entered a man, and my host whispered to me, ' That fellow
tried to ruin me, but I can't shut him out now ' — and place
was made. Then came in one with marked Jewish features,
and the company drew their chairs together and made room
for him. More intimate and sympathetic grew the talk,
— strangely we all felt ourselves in a region of thought and
feeling above our wont, and brought close together in it.
It dawned on me ' this Presence among us is the same that
once walked in Jerusalem and Galilee.' At that moment
there appeared at the door a newcomer of dark hue. A
frost fell on the company ; they seemed to stiffen and close
their ranks ; the host's face turned in trouble and uncertainty

4IO The Negro and the Nation
from the newcomer to the guest of honor. The Guest arose
and spoke to the stranger, — ' Take my place ! ' he said."
Each of us dreams his own dream, and thinks his own
thought. Differ as we may, let us unite wherever we can
in purpose and action. The perfect social ideal will be
slow in realization, but it is to-day's straightforward step
along some plain path that is bringing us nearer to it. The
black workman who every day does his best work ; the white
workman who welcomes him to his side; the trade-union
that opens its doors alike to both colors ; the teacher spend
ing heart and brain for her pupils ; the statesman planning
justice and opportunity for all; the sheriff setting his life
between his prisoner and the mob; the dark-skinned guest
cheerfully accepting a lower place than his due at life's feast ;
the white-skinned host saying, Friend, come up higher, —
it is these who are solving the race problem.
Slowly but surely we are coming together. We confront
our difficulties as a people, however we may differ among
ourselves, with a oneness of spirit which is a help and pledge
of final victory. We are one by our most sacred memories,
by our dearest possessions, and by our most solemn tasks.
Our discords are on the lower plane ; when the rich, full
voices speak, in whatever latitude and longitude, they chord
with one another. When Uncle Remus tells Miss Sally's
little boy about Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, the children from
the Gulf to the Lakes gather about his knees. Tom Sawyer
and Huck Finn are claimed as comrades by all the boys
between the Penobscot and the Rio Grande. Lanier's verse
rests on the shelf with Longfellow's. The seer of Concord
gives inspiration in Europe and India and Japan. Frances
Willard stands for the womanhood of the continent. When
Fitzhugh Lee died, it was not Virginia only but America
that mourned a son. When Mary Livermore passed away,
we all did honor to her heroic spirit. When Dunbar sings

Looking Forward 411
his songs, or DuBois speaks in the tones of scholar and poet,
we all listen. The great emancipators of the successive
generations, — Woolman, Lundy, Cbtinning, Mrs. Stowe,
Lincoln, Armstrong, Booker Washington — do we not all
claim a share in them-? Just as all Englishmen feel them
selves heirs alike of the Puritan Hampden and the Royalist
Falkland, so we Americans all pay our love and reverence
to the heroes of our war, — Grant and Lee, Jackson and
Sheridan, Johnston and Thomas, and all their peers.
And we are one by the common tasks that confront us.
This problem of the races, — it is a challenge to do our best.
" Impossible ? What are we put into the world for, but
to do the impossible in the strength of God ? " The rich man
and the poor man, the employer and the laborer, must find
some common ground of justice and harmony. The nation
must be steered away from commercial greed and military
glory, toward international arbitration, toward peace,
toward universal brotherhood. Knowledge and faith are
to join hands, and the human spirit is to reach nobler
heights. These are the tasks which we Americans are to
meet and master — together.
The hope of Lincoln is finding its late fulfillment : " The
mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field
and patriot grave " — Northern and Southern graves alike —
" to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our
nature." The pathetic melody of the negro spirituals, the
brave and rollicking strains of " Dixie," and the triumphant
harmony of " The Star Spangled Banner," blend and inter
weave in the Symphony of America.

INDEX

Abbott, Ernest Hamlin, on in
dustrial problem of South, 397.
Abolition, see Emancipation.
Abolitionists (Cf. Anti-slavery
men), in England, 38; opinions
of North and South on, 54; in-
clusiveness of term, 54 ff;
characterized, 56 flf ; conserva
tives ally themselves with Re
publicans, 130; extremists not
opposed to secession, 212; favor
disunion, 217.
Adams, Charles Francis, joins
" Free Soil " party, 81 ; nomi
nated for Vice-President, 82;
proposes compromise on slav
ery, 229; candidate for Presi
dential nomination, 328.
Adams, John Quincy, character
istics, 28; relations with Clay,
29; in Congress, 72; believes
abol. of slavery as war measure
legal, 253.
Adams, Nehemiah (Dr.), 141.
Adams, Samuel, 8.
Alabama, admitted as slave State,
23; forbids importation of
slaves, later repeals, 36;
secedes, 225; emancipation in,
260; gives qualified assent to
thirteenth amendment, 262 ; pro
visional govt, formed, 275; re
constructed, 310 ; negro voters
in majority in, 311; Federal in
terference in election (1872),
323; Democrats regain control
in, 324; legal limitation of suf
frage in, 383, 384.
Alabama Claims, the, settled,
325-
Alcorn, J. M., first Republican
governor of Missiisippi, 336.
Alcott, Amos Bronson, charac
terizes John Brown, 160; fu
tile views of on war, 242.
Allen, Charles, rtfuses to sup
port Whig p?J-i/, 81.

Amendments, consti t u t i o n a 1 ,
Thirteenth, 262; ratified, 268,
276; declared adopted, 276;
Fourteenth formulated and dis
cussed, 297 ff ; prob. reason for
mistake of exclusion art. in, 301 ;
disqualifications under removed
by Congress, 302; restoration
offered to South upon adoption
of, 303; rejected by South, 304,
310; Grant against exclusion
clauses in, 310; scheme to ap
ply to reduction of Southern
representation, 403 ff; Fifteenth
proposed, 314; adopted, 315,
4°3-.
American Missionary Asso n,
labors of for freedmen, 362.
American Party. (See Know-
nothing Party), 115, 151; death
of, 153-
"American system," 31.
Ames, Adelbert, governor of Mis
sissippi, 336; calls for Federal
troops; impeached; driven from
state, 340.
Ames, Charles G., characterizes
Stroud's Slave Laws, no.
Amherst agricultural college,
chooses negro foot ball captain,
406.
Anderson, Major, at Ft. Moul
trie, 223; Buchanan refuses aid
to; withdraws to Ft. Sumter;
supported, 224; surrenders, 235.
Andersonville, terrors of, 245.
Andrew, John A. (Gov.), de
nounces slavery, 154; on John
Brown, 165; strongly opposes
secession, 230; course as war
governor, 279; suggests princi
ples of reconstruction, 280; en
deavors to interest Northern
capital in South, 319.
"Anti-Nebraska" party, 115.
Anti-secessionists, in North and
South, 212.

413

.414

Index

Anti-slavery men (Cf. Abo
litionist), distinguished from
abolitionists, 55 ; disheartened
by " Free Soil " nomination, 82 ;
outbreaks against in South, 169,
186.
Anti-slavery movement grows, 35
ff, ZTj si, 52, 71, 91 ; women and
literary men in, 56; public
leaders keep aloof from, 57; pe
titions, 71 ; documents excluded
from Southern mails, 72, T^',
made political issue, 74; strong
growth of in North, 113 ff;
assumed by Republican party,
127; tabooed at South, 129.
Anti-slavery society, American,
founded, 44; purposes of, 45;
dissolution of, 367.
Arkansas, admitted as slave state,
23 ; postpones action on seces
sion, 227; secedes, 235; eman
cipation in, 260; provisional
govt, estab. in, 269, 275 ; recon
structed, 310; relative number
of negro voters in, 311; becomes
Democratic, 323 ; Grant recom
mends state govt, be declared
illegal, 344; bill defeated, 345.
Armstrong, Samuel Chapman
(Gen.), birth and early life of,
3S6; in Union Army; begins
labors for freedmen in Virginia ;
characterization of, 357; special
fitness for work, 359; religious
views, 360; forms ideals of
negro education, 360 ff; founds
Hampton Institute, 362 ff; per
sonality, 364 ff; labors of for
school, 36s ff; death of; sum
mary of life work; personal ap
pearance, 366; sayings of, 367;
Booker Washington, pupil and
successor to, 378.
Arnold, Matthew, poem on his
father, 369.
Atchison, Senator, of Missouri,
117.
Atlanta University, 358, 398.
Atlantic Monthly, begun, 144
Aycock, Governor, of N. C, 388.
Bacon, Leonard, 36.
Baltimore, Maryland, Mass.
troops attacked at, 237,

Banks, Nathaniel P., joins " Free
Soil " party, 81 ; speaker of
House, lis; in Republican
party, 127; refuses nomination
of " Know-nothing " seceders,
supports Fremont, 129; gover
nor of Mass., 193; in House,
284.
Baptists, champion cause of free
dom, 22.
" Barnburners," the, 82.
Barnwell, Senator, advocates se
cession, 89.
Bates, Edward, candidate for
Presidential nomination (i860),
191 ; attitude of on emancipation
proclamation, 257.
Beauregard, Gen., leads attack on
Fort Sumter, 235.
Beecher, Edward, 36.
Beecher, Henry Ward, character
ization of, 141 ff; active in
political discussion, 142; criti
cises Lincoln in Independent,
254; labors in behalf of Union,
277 ; outlines plan of reconstruc
tion, 277 ff; views on suffrage,
308.
Bell, John, nominated for Pres
ident, 189; popular vote for
(i860), 194; 214.
Bennett, James Gordon, 141.
Berea College, beginnings of, 73;
discriminated against by Ken
tucky educational law, 385.
Bernard, John, meets Washing
ton, I ff.
"Biglow Papers," Lowell attacks
slavery and war in, ^^ ; 144 ; 254.
Birney, James G., 36; incidents in
life of, 58 ff; political ideas of,
59; nominated for President,
74; views of on slavery ques
tion, 74; again nominated, 75.
Black, Jeremiah S., Attorney-
General, 222; Secretary of
State, 244; defends Johnson,
312.
"Black Codes" of 1865-6, 281 ff,
372-
Blaine, James G., in House, 284;
proposes amend, to Stevens's
reconstruction bill, 306; on de
bate of bill, 307; on negro suf
frage, 310; leader in House,

Index

415

characterized, 331 ; _ speaks
against Davis, reputation dis
credited. Presidential candidate,
346.
Blair, Francis P. (Gen.), nom
inated for Vice-Presidency; de
feated, 314.
Blair, Senator, of N. H., bill of
for aid to local education on
basis of existing illiteracy, 372,
404.
"Border Ruffians," the, 116, 118.
Border States, severity of war
greatest in, 242; Lincoln's
scheme for compensated eman
cipation in, 252; slave owners
in alienated by emancipation
proclamation, 261.
Boston Courier, denounces Re
publican party in i860 campaign,
194-
Bourne, George (Rev.), denounces
slavery, 37.
Boutwell, George S., governor of
Mass., 92; in House, 284;
House prosecutor of Johnson,
311-
Bowles, Samuel, 124; "Life and
Times of," 124 note; gives
opinion of Johnson imbroglio,
296.
Bradley, Joseph (Justice), on
Hayes-Tilden commission, 349.
Breckinridge, John C, nominated
for President, 188; scheme for
electing, 189; popular vote for
(i860), 194; declines to repudi
ate secession, 194.
Bristow, Benjamin H., Presiden
tial candidate, Sec'y of Treas
ury, 346, 347.
Brooks, John Graham, observa
tions of on Virginia politics, 401.
Brooks, Preston S., assaults Sum
ner, 122; re-elected and hon
ored, effect on North, 123.
Brown, B. Gratz, leads independ
ent _ movement in Mo., 327;
• aspirant for Presidential nomi
nation, 328.
Brown, John, sketch of, 119 ff;
leads massacre in Kansas, 120;
schemes for extinction of
slavery, 159 ff; in Springfield,
Mass., 159, 162; aided by lead

ing anti-slavery men, 160; pen
pictures of by Alcott and Emer
son, 160; characterization of,
161 ff; makes raid on Harper's
Ferry, 162; captured, 163;
hanged, 164; honored as martyr,
164 ff; eulogized by Emerson,
165, 167; characterization of his
acts and schemes, 166 ff.
Bruce, B. K., U. S. Senator, 336.
Bruce, R. C, of Miss., awarded
class oratorship at Harvard,
407.
Bryant, William Cullen, editor of
N. Y. Evening Post, 327.
Buchanan, James, 72; Democratic
Presidential candidate, charac
terized, 128; with Mason and
Soule issues Ostend manifesto,
128; administration of (1857-
61), 147; sends Gov. Walker to
Kansas, 150; supports Lecomp
ton constitution, 151 ; announces
position on secession, 222 ; re
fuses aid to Ft. Moultrie, 224;
cabinet, 224.
Burgess, J. W. (Prof.), shows ef
fects of John Brown's raid, 170 ;
comments on laws governing
negroes after war, 291.
Burns, Anthony, fugitive slave,
91.
Butler, Senator, from S. C, Sum
ner attacks in Congressional
speech, 122.
Butler, Benjamin F., joins se
ceding Democratic convention
(i860), 188; candidate for gov
ernor of Mass., 192; declares
fugitive slaves "contraband of
war," 248; House prosecutor of
Johnson, 311; in Congress, char
acterized, 331 ; labors for " force
bill" (187s), 345.
Butler, Fanny Kemble. See Kem
ble, Fanny.
Calhoun, John C, Vice-Presi
dent, relations with Jackson, 30;
defends right of nullification, 32 ;
prophesies concerning relations
between North and South, 34;
becomes leader of South, 34, 44 ;
characterization of, 47 ff; social
theories of, 50; in Senate, op-

4i6

Index

poses anti-slavery petitions,
claims State control of mails,
72; in Tyler's cabinet, leader in
Texas annexation, 75 ; returns
to Senate, 76; politically isolat
ed, 79; opposes war with Eng.,
80; claims of for nationionaliza-
tion of slavery, 80; last speech
of, 86; his opinion of struggle
bet. North and South, 87.
California, taken from Mexico,
79; admission as free State ad
vocated, 88, 90; swift settle
ment of; applies for admission
with slavery excluded, South
opposes, 84; rejects Fifteenth
amendment, 315.
Cameron, Simon, candidate for
Presidential nomination ; sup
ports Lincoln, 190.
Carolinas, the (see also North,
South), slavery foundation of
aristocracy in, 6; number of
slaves in in 1790, 9.
Carpenter, Frank, Lincoln's con
versation with, 256.
"Carpet-baggers," the, 318, 336,
338.
Casey, F. F., in government of
Louisiana, 341. _
Cass, Lewis, nominated for Pres
ident, 81 ; resigns from cabinet,
224.
Chamberlain, Daniel H., governor
of So. Carolina, 332, 348.
Chandler, Zachariah, 270; sketch
of, 283; as radical leader, 285;
party leader, 331 ; chairman
Republican national committee;
disputes Tilden's election, 348.
Channing, William Ellery, plan of
emancipation, 39; sketch of,
attitude toward anti-slavery
movement, 59 ff; treatise on
Slavery, 62.
Chase, Salmon P., in " Free Soil "
convention, 82; in Senate, 83;
against extension of slavery,
go; in Lincoln's cabinet, 249;
attitude of on emancipation
proclamation, 257 ; becomes
chief justice, 274; candidate for
Presidential nomination, Lin
coln's opinion of, services of in
supreme court, 313.

Chestnutt, Charles W., 379;
shows discrimination against
negro suffrage, 384.
Child, Lydia Maria, 56; opinion
of Channing, 63.
Church, the, early, accepts slavery,
works toward abolition, 4;
casuistical defense of slavery
by, 5 ; in America, justifies
slavery, 50; split over slavery,
53; united in South in defense
of slavery in North divided,
141 ; labors of in North in be
half of Union, 277.
Civil rights bill (1866) passed,
296; vetoed by Johnson, be
comes law, 297; of 1875,
345.
Civil war, the, causes of, 211 ff;
237 ff; views on in North and
South, 237; moral results of,
240, 244, 247; emancipation
measures discussed and adopted
during, 248 ff; disappointment
over protraction of, 254 ; negroes
in, 261, 263; courage of both
North and South in, 262; suffer
ing in, 26s; ended, 270.
"Civil War and the Constitution,
The,'' 170.
Qay, Cassius M., opposes slavery,
73; in founding of Berea Col
lege, 73; 170.
Clay, Henry, votes for slavery in
Arkansas, 23; favors Missouri
compromise, aspires to Presi
dency, dislikes but supports
slavery, 26; relations of with J.
Q. Adams, 29; advocates pro
tective tariff, 31 ; proposed tariff
compromise, 33; Whigs nomi
nate for President, 75 ; defeated,
76; opposed to annexation of
Mexico, 79; disappointed of
Presidential nomination, 81 ;
in Senate (1849-50), frames
compromise measures of 1850,
85 ; opposes extension of slavery,
denies right of secession, last
speech of, 86 ; denounces threats
of secession, 89.
Clayton, Powell, in Grant fac
tion, 344.
Cobb, Howell, 138.
Coles, Edward (Gov.), 35.

Index

417

Colfax, Schuyler, in House, 284;
Vice-President, 314.
Colonization, Jefferson's schemes
for, 18; Pennsylvania society,
22; society attacked by New
Eng. anti-slavery society, 44.
Compromise of 1820, see Mis
souri — of 1850, 8s; adopted, 90;
causes dissatisfaction in North
and South, 91.
Confederacy, the Southern (see
also South, the, etc.). Seces
sionists propose to form, 215 ;
convention to organize, 225 ;
organized, constitution of, 226;
election of officers of, 226, 227;
disregards peace overtures from
Republicans, 229; courage dis
played in, 262; Lee the chief
hero of, 263.
Conkling, Roscoe, in House, 284;
party leader, 331 ; favors " force
bill," 345; Presidential candi
date, 346.
Connecticut, passes emancipation
law, 21.
"Conscience Whigs," 82.
Constitution (See Convention of
1787), proposed convention to
revise, 229. Amendments to,
see Amendments.
" Constitutional Union " party,
153, 189.
Convention of 1787, personnel,
work, and difficulties of, 10 ff;
results of, 14 ff.
Corwin, Thomas, opposes Mex
ican war, TJ.
Cotton gin, invention of stimulates
cotton growing, 23.
Credit Mobilier, 344.
Crittenden, John J., Senator, 151,
Crittenden, compromise, pro
posed, refused by Republicans,
228.
Cuba, emancipation in, 108; an
nexation of demanded in Ostend
manifesto, 128.
Curtis, Benj. R., defends Pres
ident Johnson, 312.
Curtis, George William, editor
Harper's Weekly, 330; leads
reform element In Republican
convention of 1876, 346.

Curtis, Justice, dissents from
Dred Scott decision, 148.
Gushing, Caleb, joins seceding
Democratic convention, 188 ;
supports Breckinridge De
mocracy; bitter words of on
Mass. election, 193.
Dabney, Thomas, sketch of, 100 ff ;
experiences of after war, 337,
339, 3S5.
Davis, David, on Hayes-Tilden
commission; in Senate, 349.
Davis, Henry Winter, favors
radical reconstruction, 270.
Davis, Jefferson, in Senate, 86, 89 ;
sketch of life and principles of,
132 ff; active in politics, in
Mexican war, in Senate, Sec'y
of War, leader in secession, 134 ;
hostility toward, 135 ; final
estimate of, 136; presents ulti
matum of South In Senate
(1859), 184; residence of_ at
North, 193; defends secession,
215 ; opposes immediate seces
sion (i860), 221; with others
withdraws from Congress to or
ganize Confederacy, 225 ; elected
President of Confederacy, 226;
North's hatred of, 301 ; Im
prisoned by Pres. Johnson, 329;
attacked by Blaine, 346.
Davis, Rebecca Harding (Mrs.),
describes terrors of Civil war in
border states, 242.
Dawes, Henry L., in House, 284,
331.
Dayton, William L., Vice-Pres
idential candidate (1856), 129.
Declaration of Independence,
clause in regarding wrongs of
slave trade suppressed, 9.
DeForest, J. W., 209.
Delaware, votes against exten
sion of slave trade, 13; rejects
Thirteenth amendment, 262,
276; rejects Fifteenth amend
ment, 315.
Democratic party (see Dem
ocrats) , power of South in, 185 ;
extreme South breaks up, 187;
Alex. H. Stephens explains
move, 189; geographical lines
of in campaign of i860, 192.

4x8

Index

Democratic sentiment, growth of,
21, 29.
Democrats, opposed to strong
central gov't, 21 ; favor annex
ing Texas, 75 ; nominate Cass
for President, 81 ; combine with
Free Soilers, 92; nominate
Pierce for President, desert Free
Soilers, 93; vote for Kansas-
Nebraska bill, 114; in Republi
can party, 127; platform (1856),
campaign, Buchanan candidate
of, 128; uphold Ostend man
ifesto, 129; divided over Le
compton constitution, 151 ; con
vention of i860, 185 ff; delegates
from S. C. and Gulf States
leave, 187; adjourns, 188; regu
lar convention at re-meeting
nominates Douglas and Johnson,
seceders nominate Breckinridge
and Lane, 188; inharmonious In
North, 253 ; gain in 1862, 261 ;
nominate McClellan for Pres
idency, defeated, 265 ; in Con
gress of 1865-6, 284; hold con
vention of 1868, repudiate
reconstruction acts, favor re
pudiation, nominate Seymour,
313; regain control in many
Southern States, 323; join In
dependent Republicans, 328; in
dorse Greeley's nomination, In
dependent Democrats nominate
O'Conor, 329; organize resist
ance to Republicans in South
and begin intimidation, 339 ff;
in Congress of 1875-6, 346;
nominate Tilden for Presi
dent, 347; claim election,
348 ff.
Denison, John, Dr., characterizes
Gen. Samuel Armstrong, 357.
Devens, Charles, Attorney-Gen
eral under Hayes, 353.
Dickinson, Edward, helps organize
Republican party, 114.
Dickinson, John, opinion of slave
trade, 12.
" Disfranchisement," paper on, by
Charles W. Chestnutt, 384.
District of Columbia, slavery abol
ished in, 251.
Dix, John A. (Gen.), in Buchan
an's cabinet, 224.

Dorsey, Stephen W., in Grant
faction, 344.
Douglas, Stephen A., sketch of,
112; Introduces "Kansas-Ne
braska" bill to aid his Pres.
candidature, 112 ff; doctrine of
" popular sovereignty," 150 ; sup
ports Republicans on Lecompton
bill, 151; returns to Democrats
and becomes Senator, 153 ; fa
mous debates of with Lincoln,
180 ; elected U. S. Senator, 181 ;
struggle of, with extreme South
on Democratic platform (i860),
185; great power of in con
vention ; principles of ; follow
ers defy Southern Democracy,
186; nominated for President,
188; denounces secession; pop.
vote for, 194; assails Lincoln's
position, proposes plans to con
ciliate South, 233; supports
Lincoln, 235.
Douglass, Frederick, 96.
"Dred," anti-slavery novel, 123 ff.
Dred Scott decision, 147 ff.
DuBois, Prof., 5 ; 379 ; on need of
higher education for negroes,
398, 399.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 379.
Duncan, James, 38.
Durell, E. H. (judge). In Louisi
ana election struggle, 341.
Education, of negroes, 37; urged
by Beecher, 279 ;nat'l, of negroes
neglected, 325, 326; higher, for
negroes, 358, Z17 ff, 398 ff;
Blair bill for local aid to, on
basis of existing illiteracy, 372,
404; of negroes undertaken by
Southern whites, 373; standard
of in South being raised, 381;
efforts to restrict for negroes,
unjust Kentucky law, 385; esti
mate of amt. paid out for negro
education to date, 388 ; improved
industrial for negroes, 388; of
negro presents great difficulty,
396-7; amount spent by South
for edu. of negro in past 30
years, 397; problems of in
South, 397 ff ; need of higher for
negroes, 398-9; gov't aid to in
South advocated, 404.

Index

419

Eggleston, General, Republican
leader in Miss., 336.
Eliot, Thomas D., helps organize
Republican party, 114.
Emancipation Proclamation, Lin
coln presents to cabinet, decides
to delay promulgation of, 257;
reintroduces, 258; discussed and
approved by cabinet, issued
(1862), 259; goes into effect, im
mediate results of, 260 ff.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, In anti-
slavery movement, 56; in litera
ture, 94; influence of, 143; pen
picture of John Brown by, 160;
243-
" End of an Era, The," l6g.
English bill, the, 151.
Evarts, William M., in Republi
can convention (i860), 191, 192;
defends President Johnson, 312;
Secy, of State under Hayes, 353.
Everett, Edward, nominated for
Presidency, 189.

Federalist Party, principles of,
20.
Fee, John G., and Berea College,
73, 170.
Fessenden, William P., in Senate,
114; in Republican party, 127;
heads reconstruction com
mittee, 281 ; in U. S. Senate,
283 ; sketch of, 284, 285 ; opposes
President Johnson's plan of re
construction, 286; votes to ac
quit Pres. Johnson, 312; death
of, 331.
Fillmore, Millard, becomes Presi
dent, character of, 90 ; candidate
for Presidential nomination, 92;
nominated (1856) by "Know-
nothings," 129.
Fish, Hamilton, in Senate, 114; in
settlement of Alabama claims,
325.
Fisk University, 358.
Florida, secedes, 225; emancipa
tion in, 260; provisional gov't
of, 27s; reconstructed, 310; rel.
number of negro voters in, 311;
Presidential vote of contested
(1876), 348 ff.
"Flower de Hundred," 100.

Floyd, John B., Secy, of War, re
signs, 224.
Foot, Solomon, in Senate, 114.
Force bill, of 1833, 33 ;-;-proposed,
of 1875, defeated in Senate,
345.
Fort Moultrie, commanded by
Anderson, 223; Buchanan re
fuses to aid, 224; abandoned by
Anderson, 224; occupied by So.
Carolinians, 224.
Fort Sumter, Anderson removes
to, 224; debate over, 233; Lin
coln sends aid to, 234; Confed
erates attack and take, 235.
Fortune, T. Thomas, 379.
Fowler, Senator, votes to acquit
Pres. Johnson, 312.
Franklin, Benjamin, 8; labors
against slavery, skill of as a
leader, 19.
Freedmen's Bureau, 287, 289;
Pres. Johnson vetoes bill to in
crease powers of, 294; bill
amended, passed, 297 ; labors of,
357, 362.
"Free Soil" party, previously
"Liberty" party, gains from
Whigs, and Democrats, 81.
" Free Soilers," convention of
(1848), nominates Van Buren,
82; form alliance with Demo
crats, 92; nominate John P.
Hale for President, lose Demo
cratic allies, 93; vote against
Kansas-Nebraska bill in House,
114; unite with Whigs in Mich.
in formation of Republican
party, 115; in Republican party,
127.
Free State men, in Kansas strug
gle, 117 ff; refuse to vote in
Kansas, 150; give up separate
organization, and win, 152; tri
umph of, 153.
Fremont, John C. (Gen.), nomi
nated for President, 126; sketch
of, 126 ff; declares martial law,
and emancipation of slaves In
Missouri, 248 ; emancipation
measure of set aside by Lincoln,
results of incident, 249.
Fugitive slave law, demanded by
South, 85 ; resisted In North,
dissatisfaction over, 91.

420

Index

Galveston Bulletin, view of re
construction in, 267.
Garfield, James A., in House, 284,
331.
Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, becomes in
terested in emancipation, 39;
early experiences, founds Libe
rator, principles, 40; founds
New England Anti-Slavery So
ciety, 44; fight of against slav
ery, 51 ff; aims and methods of,
52, 53 ; followers of divided, 54 ;
personality of, 54 ; mobbed, 55 ;
scorns Republican party, 127;
propagandism of inflames
North and South, 207; declares
all war unchristian, 210; favors
disunion, 217, 228.
Geary, John W., governor of
Kansas, 117, 121.
Genius of Universal Emancipation,
founded, 38; 39.
Georgia, demands representation
in Congress based on slave
numbers, 11; refuses to join
Union If slave trade forbidden,
12 ; forbids entry of free negroes
into State, forbids circulation
of insurrectionary pamphlets,
41 ; citizens of characterized,
137; becomes pivotal point of
Southern politics, 138; consid
ers secession (i860), 221, 225;
secedes, 226; emancipation In,
260; provisional govt, formed,
27s ; signs of promise in during
reconstruction period, 301 ;
rights of negro conserved in,
302; readmitted, relative num
ber of negro voters In, 311;
Democrats regain control In,
323; discrimination against ne
gro suffrage In, 384.
Giddings, Joshua, in " Free Soil "
convention, 82.
Godkin, E. L.,_ 327.
Gold, at premium of 250, 264.
Gorman bill to limit suffrage, de
feated (1905), 383, note.
Grand Army of the Republic,
chooses negro commander in
Mass., 406.
Grant, Ulysses S. (Gen.), votes
for Buchanan, 130; refuses to
exchange prisoners, 246; report

of on conditions in South after
war, 286; on proper policy
toward South, 302; against ex
clusion clauses of 14th amend
ment, 310; nominated for Presi
dent, elected, 314; problems of
administration, displays lack of
statesmanship, 324 ff ; defeats In
flation policy, 325 ; personal
honesty of, 326; strong opposi
tion to develops, 327; promi
nent men and events of second
term, 331 ff; growth of inde
pendence of, 332; recommends
State govt, of Arkansas be de
clared Illegal, 344; favors
"Force bill," 345; disinclina
tion of to further interference
in South, 345 ; attitude of in dis
puted States In 1876, 349; re
marks of to Lee on surrender,
354-
Greeley, Horace, votes for Taylor,
82; helps prolong Whig organ
ization in N. Y., 115; sketch
of, 140; opposes Seward in Re
publican canvention (i860), 191;
criticises Lincoln, Lincoln's re
ply to, 255; supports Independ.
Repub. movement, nominated
for President, 328; nomination
of indorsed by Democrats,
weakness of as candidate, gen
erous sentiment of toward
South, 329; bitter opposition to,
defeat and death of, 330.
Grimes, Senator, votes to acquit
President Johnson, 312.

Hale, Edward Everett, in New
Eng. Emigrant Aid Society, 116.
Hale, Eugene, in House, 331.
Hale, John P., nominated for
President, 93.
Hamlin, Hannibal, nominated for
Vice-President, 192.
Hampton, Wade, nominated for
governor of So. Carolina; vio
lence of campaign, 333; claims
governorship, 348 ; governor,
353-
Hampton Institute, founded, 362;
work at begun, success and
growth of, 363 ff; work of, ^77.

Index

421

Harper's Ferry, raid on, by John
Brown, 162 ff.
Harper's Weekly, opposes Greeley,
330.
Harrison, Mrs. Burton, personal
reminiscences of Virginia be
fore the war, 100.
Harrison, William H., cam
paign of, 74.
Hart, Albert Bushnell, gives esti
mate of wealth of negroes, 375.
Harvard College, awards class
oratorship to negro (Bruce of
Miss.), 407.
Hawley, Joseph R. (Gen.), in
House, 331.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 242.
Hayes, Rutherford B., in House,
284; nominated for President,
347; election of claimed, 348 ff;
declared elected, 352; ends mili
tary interference in South, in
augurates new regime, 353.
Hayne, Robert, debate of with
Webster, 33.
Hedrick, Prof., driven from North
Carolina for anti-slavery senti
ments, 129.
Helper, Hinton R., publishes The
Impending Crisis, 109, 154;
driven from N. C, 157.
Henderson, Senator, votes to ac
quit Pres. Johnson, 312.
Henry, Patrick, 8; views of on
slavery, 19.
Herndon, William H., Lincoln's
partner and friend, 179, 180.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth,
supports John Brown, 160.
Hilo (Hawaii) Manual School,
360.
Hoar, George F., characterizes
Sumner, 282; describes polit.
methods of Henry Wilson, 283;
in House, 331 ; on Louisiana in
vestigation committee, 343.
Hoar, Samuel, driven from So.
Carolina, 73; joins "Free Soil"
party, 81.
Holt, Joseph, Secy, of War, 224.
Holtzclaw, William, story of,
378.
Hopkins, John H. (Bishop), 141.
Hopkins, Mark, as president of
Williams College, 356.

Hopkins, Samuel (Dr.), de
nounces slave trade, 9.
Howard, O. O. (Gen.), chief of
Freedmen's Bureau, 289.
Howard University, 358.
Howe, S. G. (Dr.), supports John
Brown, 160, 168.
Hunter, David (Gen.), attempts
partial emancipation as war
measure, 253.

Illinois, admitted as free State,
23 ; attempt t o introduce
slavery In, 34; anti-slavery riot
ing in, 74; Abolitionists in, ally
themselves with Republicans ;
Lincoln the central figure at
first State convention, 179.
Impending Crisis, The, 109; re
sume of, 154 ff; effects of, 157.
Independent, The, criticises Lin
coln, 254.
Indiana, admitted as free State,
23-
Indians, unfitness of for slavery,
5-

Jackson, Andrew, characteristics,
administration, 29 ; denounces
nullification, 33 ; opposes cir
culation of anti-slavery litera
ture through U. S. mails, 72.
Jackson, Stonewall, 135.
Jefferson, Thomas, 8; denounces
slave trade in first draft of Decl.
of Independ. ; plans of for grad
ual emancipation, 9, 17-18, and
for exclusion of slavery from
unorganized territory, 9; polit.
ideals, views on slavery, 17;
unskillful as President, 21 ; fears
of for Union; sympathies with
slave States, jealous of State
rights, 25, 250; on dangers of
slavery, 391.
Jenkins, Charles J. (Gov.), pleads
for negro rights in inaugural,
301.
Jerry, fugitive slave, rescued, 91.
Johnson, Andrew, in Senate, 214;
early life and character of, be
comes President, 273; retains
Lincoln's cabinet; Seward's in-

4221

Index

fluence on, 274; issues procla
mation of amnesty; appoints
provisional governors in South,
27s; favors qualified negro suf
frage, 276; message (1865), 281;
policy of reconstruction of op
posed in Congress, 285 ff; sup
ported b y Democrats, 286 ;
vetoes Freedmen's Bureau bill,
294, 296 ; loses support of party ;
undignified speech of strengfth-
ens opposition to, 295 ; vetoes
Civil Rights bill, 297; strong
opposition t o reconstruction
policy of, 303; undignified con
duct of during tour of North,
304; impeachment and trial of,
311 ff; acquitted; in Senate;
place of in history, 312.
Johnson, Herschel V., nominated
for Vice-President, 188; op
poses immediate secession, 225.
Johnson, Oliver, 44.
Johnson, Reverdy, in U. S. Senate,
284.
Jones, C. C. (Rev.), on condition
of slaves, 49.
Kansas, struggle for, 116 ff;
stringent slavery laws in, 117;
forms issue of Repub. party's
first campaign, 127; Walker ap
pointed governor of; struggle
in, 150 ff; admitted to Union,
152.
Kansas-Nebraska bill, 112; effects
of on election (1854), 115; re
sults of, 116.
Kealing, H. T., 379.
Keitt, Lawrence, with Brooks in
assault on Sumner, 122.
Kellogg, William P., in govern
ment of Louisiana, 341.
Kemble, Fanny, describes slavery
in " A Residence on a Georgia
Plantation," 103 ff.
Kendall, Amos, 72.
Kentucky, attempt to establish as
free State, 22; refuses to con
sider secession, but promises to
aid South if invaded, 227; re
mains in Union, 235; Lincoln
tries to bind faster to Union,
252; rejects 13th amendment,
262, 276; rejects isth amend

ment, 31s; law in to prohibit
coeducation of races, 385.
Kerr, Michael C, speaker of
House, 346.
Key, David M., Postmaster-Gen
eral under Hayes, 353.
" Kitchen Cabinet " of Gen. Grant,
325- ^ .
Knapp, Isaac, partner of Garrison,
40.
"Know-nothings," 115; nominate
ex-President Fillmore (1856) ;
platform; seceders from nomi
nate Banks, 129.
Ku Klux Klan, 322, 326, 327.
Lane, Joseph, nominated for Vice-
President, 188.
Lane Seminary, trouble at, over
anti-slavery movement, 37.
Lanier, Sidney, 410.
Lawrence, Kansas, founded, 116;
attack on, 119.
Leavitt, Joshua, 44.
Lecompton constituton framed,
scouted by free State men, 150;
urged by Buchanan administra
tion, 151; defeated, 152.
LeConte, Joseph, reminiscences of
slavery, 49.
Lee, Fitzhugh, 410.
Lee, Robert E. (Gen.), 95, 13s ;
captures John Brown, 163; op
poses secession, 227; chief hero
of Confederacy, 263 ; surrenders,
270, 354; becomes president of
Washington Univ., 355.
Liberator, The, founded, 40.
Liberia, colony estab., 22.
Liberty, Washington's conception
of, 3.
Liberty party, 75 ff; becomes
"Free Soil" party, 81.
Lincoln, Abraham, views on Dred
Scott decision, 149; nominated
for Senator, defeated, 153; on
endurance of Union, 153; early
life and characteristics of, 172
ff; political career begins, 177;
attitude of on slavery, 178, 181;
central figure in Ills. Republican
convention, 179; debates with
Douglas, 180; Cooper Inst, ad
dress of; proves right of Con
gress to control slavery in the

Index

423

Territories; shows stand Re
publicans must take, 182 ;
schemes of friends for in Re
pub. convention (i860), 190;
states principles, 191 ; nomi
nated for President, 192 ;
elected, 194; answers secessionist
arguments, 215; personal in
terest of in slavery, 217; im
mediate results of election of,
221 ; pronounces Inaugural, 231 ;
forms cabinet, difficulties, 233;
sends aid to Ft. Sumter, 234;
Issues call for militia, 235; atti
tude of toward emancipation,
249, 252, 253, 255; tact and
shrewdness of, 249, 256, 257; in
close touch with people,_ 249;
his conception of his mission,
249; difficulties of administra
tion, 249, 251; his detestation
of slavery, 250; scheme of for
compensated emancipation, 252;
announces his power as Com
mander-in-chief to emancipate
slaves as war measure, 253;
criticism of, 253 ff; replies to
Greeley's criticisms, 255; lays
emancipation proclamation be
fore cabinet, 256 ; adopts
Seward's advice to delay pro
mulgation of, 257; reintroduces
to cabinet after McClellan's
victory, 258; issues prelim, pro
clamation; embodies views on
emancipation In message to
Congress, 259; _ administration
of repudiated in election of
1862, 261; re-elected, 262, 265;
delivers second inaugural, 266;
offers amnesty to Confederates,
268; invites return of seceded
States ; leaves reconstruction
bill (1864) unslgrned, 269; plans
of opposed in Congress, 270;
makes public statement of views
on reconstruction, 271 ; assassi
nation of, 271; summary of po
litical achievements of, 272.
Literature, growth of Southern,
380 ff.
Longfellow, Henry W., work of,
T '45-
Longstreet, Gen., advises accept
ance of inevitable, acts with

Republicans, denounced and os
tracized, 318.
Louisiana, admitted as free State,
23; secedes, 226; emancipation
in, 260; new Constitution and
State govt, in, 271 ; provisional
govt, established in, 269, 275 ;
applies for admission of U. S.
Senators (1864-5), 270; recon
structed, 310; negro votes in
majority In, 311; Presidential
vote of contested (1876), 348
ff; State vote of contested, 349;
"carpet-bag" rule In, 341 ff;
" Conservatives " organize op
position in, struggle over gov
ernorship in, 341 ; cruelty and
corruption in, 342; Federal in
tervention in, 343; legal limita
tion of suffrage in, ',83.
Louisiana purchase, 2i . 24.
Lovejoy, Elijah P., 74,
Lowell, attacks slavery and war in
" Biglow Papers," 77 ; labors of
for freedom; edits Atlantic, 144;
upbraids Lincoln in " Biglow
Papers," 254; war poems of,
265.
Lundy, Benjamin, sketch of, 38 ff.
Lynch, John R., speaker of the
House, 336.
Lyon, Mary, founds Mt. Holyoke
Seminary, 362.
McClellan, George B. (Gen.),
leader of Conservatives, warns
Lincoln not to move against
slavery, 255 ; success of against
Lee, 258; Democrats nominate
for President.
McCrary, George W., Secy, of
War under Hayes, 353.
McEnery, John, claims governor
ship of Louisiana, 341, 342.
McLean, Justice, dissents from
Dred Scott decision, 148.
Madison, James, against strength
ening slave power, 11 ; as Presi
dent, 21.
Mails, U. S., circulation of anti-
slavery documents through, 72.
Marcy, William L., Secretary of
State, 128.
Maryland, forbids importation of
slaves, 9; stops importation, 20;

424

Index

elects anti-slavery members to
House of Delegates, 36; ir
regular secession convention in,
227 ; remains in Union, 235 ;
Lincoln tries to bind faster to
Union, 252; rejects amendment
against negro suffrage (1905),
383 note; rejects 15th amend
ment, 385.
Mason, George, opposes strength
ening of slave power, 11, 12.
Mason, James M., 89; with Bu
chanan and Soule issues Ostend
manifesto, 128.
Massachusetts, slaves freed in, 9;
negroes granted suffrage in,
number of negroes In, 1780;
in slave trade, 9; aids extreme
South to prolong slave trade,
13; indifferent to slave trade,
20 ; " Know-nothings " carry
election of 1854 in, 115; leads
North in opposing secession,
229; Republicans in fail to in
dorse Pres. Johnson, 276.
May, Samuel J. (Rev.), 44; con
versation with Dr. Channing on
anti-slavery, 61 ff.
Mexico, war with, 76 ff; ends, 79;
proposal to annex, Calif, taken
from, 79.
Middle States, in slave trade, 9;
slavery abolished in, 20.
Mississippi, admitted as slave
State, 23 ; considers secession
(i860), 221; secedes, 225;
emancipation in, 260; gives
qualified assent to 13th amend
ment, 262; provisional gov't
formed in, 275 ; delays her re
turn to Union, 310; negro voters
outnumber white in, 311; under
martial law, 316; "carpet-bag"
rule in, 333 ff; statistics on mis
government in, 334 ff; misgovt.
and corruption in exaggerated,
338; Democrats organize oppo
sition and practice intimidation
in, 339 ff; legal limitation of
suffrage in, 383.
Missouri, bill to organize as State,
23 ; geographical relation of to
free States, 24; debate on ad
mission, 24 ff; Compromise, 25
ff; admitted as slave State, 27;

mobs form in struggle for
Kansas, 116; votes not to secede,
227; remains in Union, 235;
Lincoln tries to bind faster to
Union; Republican party breaks
up in, 327.
Morgan, Edwin P. (ex-Gov.), sup
ports Pres. Johnson, 294.
Morton, Oliver P., party leader,
331 ; favors " Force bill " in
Senate, 345; Presidential candi
date, 346.
Moses, F. J., Jr., governor of So.
Carolina, 332.
Mott, Lucretia, 56.
Mount Holyoke Seminary, found
ed, plan for students to earn
expenses fails at, 362.
Murphy, Edgar G., "The Present
South," 388; on negro problem,
408.
Nashville convention, to pro
mote interests of South, 90, 13S.
Nation, The, supports Independent
Republicans, 327; refuses to
support Greeley, 329.
Nat Turner insurrection, 41.
Nebraska, 112.
Negroes (see also Slaves,
Slavery, Education), superior
ity of over Indians as slaves, 5 ;
advantages and disadvantages
of slavery to, 5 ; granted suf
frage In Mass. and other States,
9; number of in Mass. in 1780,
9; number of in other States,
see Slaves; condition of in
North before the war, 37; (for
condition of in South, see Slav
ery, Slaves) ; proposed college
for, 37; violence against in
North, 74 ; status of in America
defined by Dred Scott decision,
147, 148; citizenship rights of
declared in New York, 149; U.
S. army and navy opened to en
listment of, 260; enlist in Union
armies, martial qualities of, 261 ;
good qualities of displayed in
war, 263; Pres. Johnson favors
qualified suffrage for, 276;
Henry Ward Beecher's views on
suffrage for, 278; education of
urged by Beecher, 279; South's

Index

425

estimate of after war, 280, 287;
behavior of after emancipation,
287; repressive laws against, fol
lowing war, 287, 288; their mis
conception of freedom, 289;
laws governing labor of after
war, 290 ff ; law against associa
tion of whites with, 290; abuse
of by Southern whites, 292;
their necessities force them to
labor, 293; leaders in Georgia
plead for rights of, 301; suf
frage for in South the central
feature of Reconstruction bill,
308; suffrage for favored by
North, 308, 309; broad concep
tion of, 309; number of voters
among in Southern States com
pared to white voters, 311;
many Northern States refuse
suffrage to, 314; unfitness of In
South for suffrage, choose
delegates to const, conventions,
317; sudden political power of
doubtful benefit to, 318; as a
body lack independence; affiliate
with Republican party; become
estranged from old masters,
319; in high political offices, 321,
333, 336; not guilty of physical
violence, 323 ; national education
of neglected, 325, 326 ; manner of
toward whites, 338; organized
resistance to voting of in South,
340; intimidated at polls, 352;
problem of disposition of, 355 ;
views on in North and South,
356; condition and needs of
after war, 357, 358; beginnings
of higher education for, 358;
religion of, 359; Gen. Arm
strong's labors in behalf of, see
Armstrong, Samuel; problem of
disappears as central feature In
national politics, 371 ; polit. pre
ponderance of in South ended,
371; suffrage of practically
nullified in South, but large de
gree of civil rights secured to,
372; Southern whites under
take education of with energy
and success, 373 ; refused social
equality at South, and often at
North, 373 ff; improved social
conditions, and increased num

bers of, 374 ff; present wealth,
skill, intelligence, and moral
status of, 375 ff; development
of leadership among, 376 ff., 379 ;
legal limitation of suffrage of
in South, 382 ff; practical dis
franchisement of, 384, 388;
threatened narrowing of indus
trial opportunities the greatest
danger to, 385 ; unfortunate
social position of, 386; hopes of
future betterment, 387; esti
mated amt. paid out for educa
tion of to date; better industrial
education for, 388; neces
sity for all to face the problem
of; great responsibility on lead
ers of, 392 ff; present phase of
problem, necessity of abolishing
caste spirit, 393 ; industrial posi
tion of, 394 ff; attitude of trade
unions toward, 385, 395 ; dangers
consequent upon exclusion from
unions, 396; need of higher edu
cation for, 398; present polit.
status of, 400; attitude of
toward suffrage, 401 ; should
have fair share of public offices,
403 ; government aid in educa
tion advocated, 404; growing
recognition of in North, 406 ff;
results of social ostracism on,
suggested means to avoid, 408.
Negro Problem, The, by Book
er Washington and others, 379.
New England (See also North,
Massachusetts,) Washington's
opinion of, 2 ; slave labor tin-
profitable in; industries in, 6;
negroes granted suffrage in, 9;
aids extreme South In exten
sion of slave trade, 13.
New England Anti-slavery Soci
ety, founded, 44.
New England Emigrant Aid Soci
ety, formed, 116.
New Hampshire, number of slaves
in in 1790, 9; slavery abolished
in, 21.
New Haven, labors in for negroes,
36.
New Jersey, votes against exten
sion of slave trade, 13 ; passes
emancipation law, 22; counted
as free State, 23; declares for

426

Index

emancipation, 35; rejects iSth
amendment, 315.
New Mexico, South demands per
mission of slavery In, 84.
New Orleans, riot in, 303.
New York Evening Post, supports
Independent Republicans, 327 ;
refuses support to Greeley, 329.
New York Herald, 141, 164, 193.
New York Times, 141, 347.
New York Tribune, Influence of,
140, 141 ; against forcible re
pression of secession movement,
228 ; criticises Lincoln, 255 ;
supports Independent Republi
cans, 328; unearths Hayes-
Tilden telegrams, 352.
New York State, number of
slaves in in 1790, 9; passes
emancipation law, 22; counted
as free State, 23; delegation of
to " Free Soil " convention
(1848), 82; declares right of
citizenship for negroes, 149.
Nicholls, Francis T., claims gov
ernorship of Louisiana, 349; be
comes governor, 353.
North, the (see also New Eng
land), slavery unprofitable in,
5 ; aids extreme South In extend
ing slave trade, 13 ; slavery abol
ished In, 20 ; surpasses South in
population and wealth ; increased
representation in House, 24;
its economic advantages over
South, 69 ff; violence against
negroes in, 74; disputes with
South over new territory, 80;
dissatisfaction In over Compro
mise measures of 1850; passes
" Personal Liberty Laws," 91 ;
outstrips South in industrial,
literary, and religious growth,
advantages of South over, 94;
growth of anti-slavery feeling
in, 113 ff; best intelligence of in
early Republican party, 127; re
sents polit. aggression of South
more than slavery, 128; leaders
of (1850-60), 132; leaders of,
140 ff; attitude of clergy in to
ward slavery, 141 ; economic con
ditions in compared with those
of South, 156; John Brown's
raid intensifies conviction

against slavery in, 167 ; growing
distrust of South in, 169; posi
tion of on secession, etc., 200 ff;
underlying divergences from
South in sentiment and char
acter of, 205 ff; religious life
in, 206; Inflamed against South;
sources o f misunderstanding,
207; varied occupations in, 208;
secession movement causes con
sternation in, 209; strongly in
clined to peace; disbelieves in
Southern courage, 210; grounds
for resistance of secession in;
impatient of Southern political
dominance, 212; reasons for
failure of disunion movement
in, 218 ff; disinclination in to
use force against secession
movement, 228; Mass. becomes
leader in, 229; united in resist
ance to secession, 235 ; views on
Civil war in, 237; bitter feeling
against South In, 241 ; moral
effect of war on, 244; Unionism
the absorbing issue in, 248;
party divisions in, 253; growing
sentiment in against slavery,
254; courage of in war, 262;
advantages of over South, 264;
joy In over prospect of success,
268; opposes Johnson's recon
struction plans, 288; current
opinion in on cause of secession,
300; hatred of Jefferson Davis
in, 301 ; general temper In hos
tile to Pres. Johnson, 312; feel
ing of relief in after Grant's
election, 315; resumption of
business in, 316; immigration
from into South, 319; growing
tendency in to accord social
equality to negroes, 373 ff,
406.
North Carolina, emancipation
favored in, 36; right of free
speech vindicated in, 129; votes
against secession convention,
229; secedes, 235; emancipation
in, 260 ; provisional govt, formed
in, 275; reconstructed, 310; rela
tive number of negro voters in,
311; Democrats regain,- 323;
legal limitation of suffrage in,
383.

Index

427

Northwestern Territory, slavery
prohibited in, 10.
Nullification, So. Carolina claims
right of, 32 ; denounced by Jack
son, 33 ; opposed in " Force bill "
of 1833, 33; question dropped,
34; 214.
Oberlin College, becomes anti-
slavery stronghold, 37; plan for
students to earn expenses fails
at, 362.
O'Conor, Charles, nominated for
President, 329.
Ohio, admitted as free State, 23;
declares for emancipation, 35.
Olmsted, Frederic Law, on con
dition of slaves in South be
fore the war, 49; volumes
of travels in the slave States,
107 ff.
Ordinance of 1784, fails to limit
slave territory, 10.
Ordinance of 1787, limits slave
territory, 10.
Oregon, boundary dispute, 80:
rejects iSth amendment, 315 ;
double returns from in Hayes-
Tilden election, 351.
Ostend manifesto, 128.
Packard, S. B., in govt, of Louisi
ana, 341; claims governorship,
349.
Paine, Thomas, 8.
Parker, Theodore, influence of in
church and state, 143 ; supports
John Brown, 160, 168.
Peace Congress, proposed, to find
means to preserve the Union,
228.
Pendleton, George H., candidate
for Presidential nomination, 313.
Pennsylvania, number of slaves in
In 1790, 9; votes against ex
tension of slave trade, 13;
passes emancipation law, 21 ;
counted as free State, 23; de
clares for emancipation, 35 ;
Republicans fail to indorse
Pres. Johnson, 276.
Peonage cases, prosecution of,
388.
Personal Liberty Laws, passed in
North, 91,

Petigru, James L., 223.
Petitions to Congress, anti-slavery,
71 ff.
Pettus, Gov., of Mississippi, 221.
Philadelphia, convention in behalf
of Pres. Johnson at, 303.
Phillips, Wendell, becomes ally of
Garrison, 54; scorns Republican
party, 127; declares all war un
christian, 210; favors disunion,
217, 228; abuses Lincoln, 254.
Pierce, Franklin, nominated for,
and elected President, 93 ; recog
nizes usurpers in Kansas strug
gle, 117.
Pierce, Henry L., in House, 331 ;
vote of in Hayes-Tilden contest,
352.
Pinckneys, Charles and Thomas,
demand freedom of slave
trade, 12 ff.
Pittsburg, counter convention at,
303.
Platte country, the, 112.
Polk, James K., nominated for
President, 75 ; elected ; declares
war with Mexico, 76.
Poor whites, evil effects of slav
ery on, no.
" Present South, The," by E. G.
Murphy, 388, 408.
Pottawatomie massacre, 120; re
sults of, 121.
Presbyterian church, condemns
slavery, 35.
Prisons, military, terrors of, 245 ff.
Protection. See Tariff, Pro
tective.
Quakers, relation of to slavery, 7.
Randall, Samuel J., in House,
284; speaker, 346.
Randolph, John, his opinion of
slavery, 47.
Randolph, Thos. Jefferson, his
scheme of emancipation, 43.
Rankin, John, 38.
Rantoul, Robert, joins "Free
Soil " party, 81.
Raymond, Henry J., 141 ; in
House, 284; supports Pres.
Johnson's plan of reconstruction,
28s, 303- . , ,
Reconstruction, 267 ff ; Lincoln s
plans for and views on, 268 ff j

428

Index

271; congressional bill (1864),
rejected by Lincoln, 269; Lin
coln's plans for opposed by Con
gress, 270; first Congressional
plan of, 274 ff; President
Johnson's plan of, 275; Henry
Ward Beecher's plan of,
277 ff; John A. Andrew's plan
of, 280; both latter plans too
advanced for the time, 280;
action taken on by Congress
(1865-6), 281 ff ; Pres. Johnson's
plan of opposed in Congress,
285 ; second Congressional plan
of, 294 ff; difficulties of question
increased by lack of statesmen
to handle, 302; two policies of
before the country. South In
dorses Pres. Johnson's plan of,
303; final plan of, 306 ff; bill
passed, 306; results of bill, 307,
310; verdict of country on work
of, 312 ff; the working out of,
316 ff; the last act, 344 ff.
" Reconstruction and the Con
stitution," by Prof. J. W. Bur
gess, 290.
Reeder, Governor, of Kansas, 117.
Republican party (see also Re
publicans), beginnings of, 114
ff; components of, 115; first
Presidential convention of, 124
ff; principles, leaders, constitu
ency, successes, and failures of
in first ( 1856) campaign of, 127 ;
opposition to in first campaign,
128; weakness of in South, 129;
composition of opposition to,
and causes of defeat of in first
campaign, 130; stand of on
negro question (i860), 186;
origin of protectionist character
of, 190; geographical lines of
in i860 campaign, 192; de
nounced In i860 campaign, 193
ff; restriction of slavery the
supreme principle of, 212; Sum
ner's belief in, 319; freedmen
instinctively turn to, 319;
leaders of in Grant's second
term, 331.
Republicans, hold first (1856)
Presidential convention, 124 ff;
nominate John C. Fremont for
President, 126; Wm. L. Dayton

for Vice-President, 129; plat
form, 126; denounce Ostend
manifesto, 129; dissent from
Dred Scott decision, 148, 149;
gain in numbers, name Lincoln
for U. S. Senator, 153 ; first Illi
nois convention of, 179; cam
paign, 180 ff; not in John
Brown's raid, 183; hold conven
tion (i860), 189 ff; platform,
190; struggle bet. Seward and
Lincoln men in, 190, 191 ;
nominate Lincoln and Hamlin,
192; elect candidates (i860),
194 ; results of success of, 221 ;
oppose secession, 223, 224, 225;
oppose schemes for extension of
slavery, 228; vainly concede
many points to South, 229; di
vide over war questions, 253;
reaction against in elections of
1862, 261 ; success of In 1864,
262, 265; indorse President
Johnson, 276; assert right of
Congress to direct reconstruc
tion, leaders oppose Pres. John
son's plan of, 286; opinion of
turns against Johnson, 294; in
creased strength of in Congress
(1866-7), 306; in Senate vote to
acquit Pres. Johnson, 312;
adopt moderate platform, nomi
nate and elect Grant (1868),
314; in temporary control of
South, 323, 327; change attitude
tword South, independent move
ment among, 327; Independents
hold convention (1872), 328; in
gov't of South, 332 ff; lose
heavily in Congressional elec
tions of 1874, suspected of mal
administration, 344; many op
pose Force bill of 1875, 345;
hold convention (1876), 346;
nominate Hayes, campaign, 347;
claim election of Hayes, 348 ff.
"Residence on a Georgia Plan
tation, A." 103.
Rhett, Senator, proposes secession,
89.
Rhode Island, in slave trade, 9;
passes emancipation law, 21.
Rhodes, "History of the U. S.,"
quoted, 301, 302.
Robinson, Chas. S,, gov. of

Index

429

Kansas, 117 ff ; his house burned,
119.
Roosevelt, President, South criti
cises for entertainment of
Booker Washington, 386.
Ross, Senator, votes to acquit
Pres. Johnson, 312.
Sanborn, Franklin B., supports
John Brown, 160.
San Domingo, proposed annex
ation of, 328.
" Scalawags," the, 318. . .
Schurz, Carl, on conditions in
South after war, 286 ff; 292;
favors negro suffrage, 309; in
Republican convention (1868),
314; leads Independent Republi
cans in Missouri, 327; in U. S.
Senate, 328; Sec'y of Interior
under Hayes, 353; on peonage
cases in South, 388; on future
of negro question, 389.
Scott, R. K., governor of S. Caro
lina, 332.
Scott. Winfield (Gen.), nominated
for President, 92 ; against armed
repression of secession, 228.
Secession, Clay denies right of,
86; Webster declares impossible
with peace, 87; threats of in
Congress denounced by Taylor
and Clay, 89; open threats of In
South, 193; not taken seriously
at North, 194; denounced by
Douglas, 194; Southern position
on defined, 197 ff; Northern
position on defined, 200 ff;
slavery question the real basis
of 211; grounds for resistance
of at North, 212; extreme abo
litionists not opposed to, 212;
arguments for and against, 212
ff, 226; reasons for success of
movement in South and failure
of in North, 218 ff; sources of
movement in South, 219; action
of Southern States_ on follow
ing Lincoln's election, 221 ff;
discussed in Congress (i860),
223 ; advised by Southern leaders
in Congress, 225 ; triumph of
movement, 226 ; movement haltSj
227; various Southern States
take action on; general senti

ment in South against armed
repression of, 227; disinclina
tion in North to use force
against, 228; West strongly
against movement, 228; Mass.
takes strong stand against, 229
ff; plea of Lincoln against, 232;
current Northern opinion of
causes of, 300.
Secessionists (see Secession),
propose disunion, and for
mation of Southern Confed
eracy, 215.
Seelye, Julius H., vote of in
Hayes-Tilden contest, 352.
Senate, State representation in de
termined, 11; South strives to
keep up numbers in, 24; strong
hold of South, 81.
Sewall, Samuel, protests against
slavery, 7.
Seward, William H., votes for
Taylor, 82; influence and
strength of, 82; his plan of
emancipation, 83; speaks in
Senate against extension of
slavery, 89 ff; helps prolong
Whig organization in New
York, 115; in Republican party,
127; opinion of on Dred Scott
decision, 149; opinion of on
future labor conditions in Union,
154; logical candidate for Presi
dency (i860), 190; in Lincoln's
cabinet, 233, 249 ; Lincoln adopts
advice of to delay issuance of
emancipation proclamation, 257;
in Johnson's cabinet, his in
fluence on the President, 274;
supports Pres. Johnson, 303.
Seymour, Horatio, nominated for
President, characterized, 313;
defeated. States carried by, 314.
Shadrach, fugitive slave, rescued,
91. , .
Shaffer, President, urges admis
sion of capable negroes to trade
unions, 395.
Shannon, Wilson, gov. of Kansas,
117.
Shaw, Robert Gould, 264.
Shellabarger, Samuel, in House,
284, 286.
Sheridan, Gen'l, sent to investigate
Louisiana election scandals, 343.

430

Index

Sherman, John, in U. S. Senate,
283, 285; endeavors to stem
tide against Pres. Johnson, 296;
defeats Stevens's reconstruction
bill, 306; superiority of over
Blaine, 307; Sec'y of Treasury
under Hayes, 353.
Sherman, William T. (Gen.), his
opinion of war, 244, 245.
Slaveholders, numbers of. char
acteristics, 95.
Slave Laws, compiled and pub
lished by Stroud, no.
Slavery. (See also Slaves, Slave
Trade.) Washmgton's opinion
of, 3; origin, growth, regulation
and defense of, 3 ff; legally
recognized in Judea, Greece, and
Rome, by Jesus and the early
church, 4; supplants free peas
antry in Italy, 4; influence of
Christianity on, 4; absolute,
abolished throughout Christen
dom, supplanted by serfdom, 4;
recrudescence of in 17th and
i8th centuries, 4; economic
conditions determine location of
in America, 5; unprofitable in
North, 5, 6; need of in South,
S; casuistical defense of by
church, 5; advantages and dis
advantages of to negro, 5 ; re
sponsibility for denied by North
and South, 6; commercial de
mand for overrides humanity, 6;
vmprofitable in New England, 6;
social conscience unawakened to
enormity of, 7; Sewall and
Woolman protest against, 7;
relation of Quakers to, 7;
awakening to wrongs of, 8;
abolished In Mass., 9; Jefferson
strives to limit territory of, 9;
limited, 10; impossible for con
vention of 1787 to prohibit, 14;
compromised, 14 ff; views of
Washington and other leaders
on, is; Patrick Henry's views
on, Franklin labors against, 19;
early anti-slavery sentiment, 20;
abol. in Northern and Middle
States, 20; question temporarily
eclipsed, 21 ; estab. in Kentucky,
abol. in Spanish America, 22;
question again to the front

(1819), 23; defended in Con
gress, all ideas of abolishing
dropped in South, growth of
sentiment against in North, 24;
Jefferson supports, 25 ; Clay sup
ports, 26; growth of question
from 1832, 28; South fully ac
cepts and defends, 46 ff; views
of Jos. LeConte, Frederic Law
Olmsted, and C. C. Jones on,
49; theory of adopted by slave
holders, 50; abolished in West
Indies, 51; Garrison's fight
against, 51 ff; defense of
strengthened in South, 54; un
derlying principles of; tide of
public opinion sets against, 70;
question grows in prominence,
71 ff; freedom of speech on
denied in South, 73; Calhoun's
claim for nationalization of, 80;
excluded from new territory ac
quired by purchase, 80; opposi
tion of Seward and Cliase to,
83; as it was, depicted by Mrs.
Burton Harrison, 100; depicted
in biography of Thomas Dab
ney, 100 ff; described by Fanny
Kemble, 103 ff; pictured by
Frederic Law Olmsted, 107 ff;
Harriet Beecher Stowe's opinion
of embodied in "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," 109; general view of in
South, 133; attitude of clergy
toward, 141 ; hostility toward in
South, 170; the great cause of
difference between North and
South, 207, 211; restriction of
the supreme principle of Repub
lican party, 212; measures upon
during Civil war, 249, 250;
Lincoln's attitude toward, 250;
abolished In Dist. of Columbia,
251 ; finally and forever abol
ished in U. S., 276.
Slaves (See also Negroes, Sla
very, South, Slave Trade) , Af
rica source of, 5 ; indolence and
unthrlft of, 5 ; Virginia taxes, 6 ;
foundation of aristocracy in
Virginia and Carolinas, 6; un
profitable as laborers in New
Eng., 6; Virginia and Mary
land forbid importation of, 9;
Jefferson proposes plan for

Index

431

gradual emancipation of, g;
Virginia passes law regulating
manumission of, 9; numbers of
in various States in 1790, 9;
counted in determining repre
sentation in Congress, 11, 12;
Jefferson's schemes for emanci
pation and disposition of, 17 ff;
value of increased by invention
of cotton gin, 23 ; fugitive, over
tures made to England for
treaty on, 28; instruction of
denied in Virginia, 44; physical
and moral condition of, 48.
Slave States, 23.
Slave trade, begun by Europe,
brutality of, 5 ; maintained by
Eng. trading companies, colon
ists attempt to check, 5; New
Eng. in, 6; Virginia remon
strates against, 8; clause in
Declaration of Independence de
nouncing, suppressed; Mass., R.
I., and Middle States in; de
nounced by Dr. Hopkins, 9;
Congress refused power to for
bid until 1808; North aids ex
treme South in fight to pro
long; champions of defend only
as necessary evil, 13 ; stopped in
Virginia and Maryland, 20;
made piracy by Congress (1800),
22; "revival of between Africa
and Cuba, 158; checked, 159.
Slave-trading companies, Eng
lish, 5 ; oppose tax on slaves, 6.
Smith, Caleb B., supports Lincoln,
191.
Smith, Gerritt, characterized by
Andrew D. White, 55 ff; sup
ports John Brown, 160, 168.
Smith, Wilfred H., 379.
Soule, Pierre, in Congress, 89;
with Buchanan and Mason issues
Ostend manifesto, 128.
"Souls of Black Folk, The," an
appeal for higher education of
negro, 398.
S??ith. (See also Virginia, etc.,
.Slavery, etc.) Economic con-
iditions in favor slavery, s; de
mands Congress be refused right
to forbid slave trade, 12; all
¦ideas of abolishing slave trade
dropped in, 24; aggrieved by

protective tariff, 32; leadership
of passes to So. Carolina, 44, 229 ;
fully accepts slavery as estab.
institution, 46 ff; strengthens
defense of slavery, 54; eco
nomic disadvantages of, 69 ff;
disputes new territory with
North, attempts to nationalize
slavery, 80; opposes admission
of Calif, as free State, demands
allowance of slavery in Utah
and New Mexico, 84; demands
fugitive slave law, 85 ; leaders of
in Congress (1850), threatens
disunion, 8g ; denounces " Per
sonal Liberty Laws," 91 ; North
outstrips in industrial growth;
advantages of over North, 94;
master class in analyzed by
Fanny Kemble, 105 ff ; surprised
by Kansas-Nebraska bill, 113;
anti-slavery sentiment com
pletely ostracized in, 129; sup
pression of free speech in, 130;
leaders of (1850-60), 132; mag
nifies State rights; general view
of slavery in, 133; apprehensive
of growing hostility In North,
134; clergy in united in defense
of slavery, 141 ; economic con
ditions in compared with North
in Impending Crisis, 156; hostil
ity in toward North increased
by Brown's raid, 167, 169-70;
misconceived by abolitionists,
168 _; renewed outbreaks in
against anti-slavery men, 169;
antagonism toward slave power
in, 170; solidarity against North
created by Brown's raid, 170;
presents ultimatum in Senate
(1859), 184; demands protec
tion of slave-holding right In all
territories, 185 ; power of in de
mocracy and state, 185 ; growing
hostility In, expulsion of anti-
slavery men, 186; extreme,
breaks up Democratic party,
conjectural reasons for move,
187; Alex. H. Stephens explains
move, 189; open threats of
secession in, 193 ; position of on
secession, etc., defined, 197 ff;
underlying divergences from
North in sentiment and char-

432

Index

acter, 205 ff; ideal of society in,
205; religious life and literature
in, 206; inflamed against North,
sources of misunderstanding,
207; plantation life in at best,
208; concentration of interest in
on national politics, 208; con
centrates on secession move
ment, 209; duelling and street
affrays common in, 209; men
of in Texas, in Mexican war,
and as "filibusters," 209-10;
believes all war-spirit extinct in
North, 210; causes of united
action in, 211; North impatient
of political dominance of, 212;
patriotic sentiment still power
ful in, 214; disunion sentiment
strongest in Gulf and Cotton
States, 214; reasons for suc
cess of secession movement
in, 218 ff; leaders of resign
from Buchanan's cabinet, 224;
leaders of in Congress favor
secession, last formal pre
sentation of ultimatum of in
Senate, 225 ; general sentiment
in against armed repression of
secession, 227; So. Carolina
leader of, 229 ; views on Civil
war in, 237; bitterness against
North in, 241 ; moral effect of
war on, 244; courage of in war,
262; advantages of North over,
264; social conditions in after
war, 27s; State legislatures and
conventions resumed in, 275,
276; 13th amendment ratified
in 276; Senators from refused
admission to Congress, 218; re
ports of Gen. Grant and Carl
Schurz on conditions in after
war, 286 ff; views of on negro
labor, 287 ; laws governing negro
labor in after war, association of
whites and negroes forbidden
in, 290; Congressional represent.
of conditioned on negro suffrage
by 14th amendment, 298; pro
posed to refuse suffrage to
leaders of, 299; mistake of such
course, 301 ; excepting Tennes
see, rejects 14th amendment,
304; reconstruction of, see Re

construction ; government _ of
under reconstruction bill begins,
307, 310; number of negro
voters in various States of, 311;
trials and struggles of under
new conditions, under martial
law, restored to self-government,
316; unfitness of negroes in for
suffrage, whites refuse to vote,
constitutional conventions held
and negro delegates chosen, 317;
typical attitude of whites in;
under "carpet bag" rule, 318,
332; Northern immigration into,
319; Northern teachers insulted
or disdained in; Northerners in
politics in; legislation in during
reconstruction, 320 ; extrava
gance, waste and corruption in
under Republican governments;
exaggeration of, 321 ; negro rule
in, 319, 321 ; resumption of
white leadership in, 322 ff; con
tinued interference of Congress
in, 326; growth of Republican
opposition to Federal interfer
ence in; repudiation in, 332;
Democrats organize resistance
to Republican rule in and prac
tice intimidation, 339 ff; Federal
troops withdrawn from, 353;
regeneration of, 354; whites in
driven to labor, 355; end of
Federal interference in, 371, 402 ;
negro suffrage practically nulli
fied in, civil rights secured to
negroes, 372, 382, 388; refuses
social equality to negro, 373,
407-8; fear of race mixture in,
374, 407; development of in
dustrial democracy in, 379 ; pres
ent condition of politics in, 379
ff ; why " solid," 380 ; life in di
versifying, growth of literature
in, 380; growth of standard of
education in, 381 ; widening gulf
between the races in, 382; legal
and practical limitation of suf
frage in, 382 ff, 388; efforts in
to restrict negro education, 385;
negro still has industrial free
dom in, 38s, 395 ; pronounced at
titude of on social inferiority of
negro, 386; hopes for bet|ter

Index

433

conditions, growth of goodwill
and confidence in, 389; amount
spent by for negro education,
397; educational and industrial
problems of, 397 ff; suffrage
laws in, 400; politics in, no
longer a struggle between
whites and blacks, 401; scheme
to reduce representation of
under 14th amendment, 403;
government aid to education in
advocated, 404 ; disproportion
ate share of national expense
borne by, 405 ; problem of social
equal, of races In, 406 ff.
South Carolina (see also Caroli
nas, The), demands representa
tion based on slave numbers, 11 ;
refuses to join Union If slave
trade forbidden, 12 ; revolts over
tariff, claims right of nullifica
tion, 32; passes law against
negro seamen, 73; considers
secession, 221 ; passes ordinance
of secession, 223; occupies Ft.
Moultrie and Castle Pinckney,
224; leads South, 229; emanci
pation in, 260; provisional gov
ernment formed in, 275; recon
structed, 310; negro voters in
majority in, 311 ; under "carpet
bag," rule, 332 ff; Presidential
and State vote of contested
(1876), 348 ff; legal limitation
of suffrage in, 383.
Southern Democracy, asserts uni
versal right of slave-holding,
186.
" Southern Planter, A," 100.
" Southern Statesmen of the Old
Regime," 137.
Speed, Joshua F., 178; resigns
from cabinet, 303.
Springfield Republican, 124 and
note, 127; its opinion of John
Brown, 162; state's issue be
tween Democrats and Republi
cans in 1864, 26s ; favors educa
tional test for suffrage, 308, 310;
i| prophesies slave-holding class
' will regain power, 322; sup-
,1 ports Independent Republicans,
I 328; on Hayes-Tilden contest,
351.

Stanton, Edwin M., Attorney-
General, 224; in Lincoln's cabi
net, 249; attitude of on eman
cipation proclamation, 257; In
Johnson's cabinet, 274; sup
ports Johnson in reconstruction
plans, 276; becomes bitterly
opposed to Johnson, 303; re
moved by Johnson, 311.
"Star of the West," sent with
supplies to Anderson, driven
from Charleston harbor, 224.
State rights, theory of, 133.
States, relative power of in Con
gress determined, 11.
Stearns, George L., supports
John Brown, 160.
Stephens, Alexander H., sketch
of his life and views, 137 ff ;
political activity of, 138; in
Congress, and Vice-President of
Confederacy, 139, 227; explains
defection of Southern Demo
crats, 189; supports Douglas in
i860 campaign, 193 ; opposes
secession, 211, 215; labors
against secession, 219, 221, 225;
Vice-President of Southern
Confederacy, 227; pleads for
negro rights, 302.
Stevens, Thaddeus, Republican
leader in Penn., 276; leader of
House, 281; sketch of, 282; op
poses Pres. Johnson's recon
struction plan, 285; his drastic
reconstruction bill defeated, 306 ;
House prosecutor of Johnson,
311; death of, 331.
Story, Judge, on taxes in Miss.,
336.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, publishes
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," 97; her
views of slavery as pictured
therein, 109; publishes "Dred,"
123.
Suffrage, manhood, adopted, 21 ;
equal, without test passed in
North, 308; negro, representa
tion of South conditioned on,
298; proposal to refuse to
leaders of South, 299 — see also
Amendments, Constitutional ;
Springfield Republican favors
educational test for, 308, 310;

434

Index

unfitness of negroes in South
for after war, 317; of negroes
practically nullified in South,
372; legal limitation of in
South, 382 ff; 388.
Sumner, Charles, opinion of aboli
tionists, 54; joins "Free Soil"
party, 81 ; in Senate, 92 ; de
nounces slavery in Congress, as
saulted by Brooks, 122; in Re
publican party, 127; opposes
admission of Senators from
Confederate States, 270; Lin
coln refuses to quarrel with,
270; Republican leader In
Mass., 276; sketch of, 282; In
Senate, 284; opposes Pres.
Johnson's reconstruction plan,
286; belief of in Republican
party, 309; quarrels with Grant,
328; death of, 331.
Sumner, Colonel, in Kansas, 118.
Taney, Chief Justice, in Dred
Scott case, 147.
Tappan, Arthur, 40, 44.
Tappan, Lewis, 44.
Tariff, of abominations, 32; pro
tective, 31 ff; compromise on,
33 ff; supported in Georgia,
211 ; adopted by Republican
party, 190; burden of to South,
405.
Taylor, Zachary (Gen.), 76; nomi
nated by Whigs, 81 ; elected, 82 ;
denounces threats of disunion
as treason, 89; favors admission
of Calif, as -free State, 90;
death of, 90; in North, 208.
Tennessee, added as slave State,
23; votes against holding seces
sion convention, 227 ; secedes,
235 ; provisional govt, estab. in,
267, 27s; rights of negro con
served in, 302; readmitted un
der 14th amendment, 303.
Tenure of office law, passed;
Pres. Johnson accused of vio
lating, 311.
Territories, power of Congress
over, 149.
Texas, annexation of, 74 ff; slav
ery re-estab. in, 75; becomes a
state, 76; emancipation in, 260;
silent on 13th aroendinent, 362;

provisional govt, of, 275; re
constructed, 310; relative num
ber of negro voters In, 311; un
der martial law, 316; becomes
Democratic, 323.
Thayer, EH, originates New Eng.
Emigrant Aid Society, 116.
Thomas, Lorenzo (Gen.), Sec'y
of War, 311.
Thompson, George, aids Garrison,
SI.
Thompson, Richard W., Sec'y of
Navy under Hayes, 353.
Tilden, Samuel J., leader of
Democrats, 313; nominated for
President; characterized; appar
ently elected, 347; election con
tested, 348 ff.
Tomlinson, Reuben, Repub. candi
date for governor of S. Caro
lina, 332.
Toombs, Robert, sketch of, 136 ff;
political activity of, 138; gives
moral support to Preston
Brooks, 138; in Confederate
cabinet and army, 139, 227; sup
ports Breckinridge in i860 cam
paign, 193; advocates secession
in Georgia legislature, 211;
supports secession movement,
221 ; states South's ultimatum
in Congress, 225 ; in Confederate
cabinet, 227.
Trade unions, attitude of toward
negroes, 385, 395; danger of
excluding negroes from, 396.
Trumbull, Lyman, elected Sena
tor, 177; favors admission of
Senators from Louisiana, 270;
in Senate, 283, 284, 285 ; favors
Freedmen's Bureau bill, 294;
votes to acquit Pres. Johnson,
312; in opposition to adminis
tration, 331.
Tuskegee Institute, 378; function
of, 398.
Truth, Sojourner, 96.
" Twenty Years of Congress,"
Blaine's, quoted, 307, 310.
Tyler, John, becomes President,
71.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin,'' g7 ff; re
ception, 98; "Key to," 99;
criticism of, 99.

Index

435

Underground railroad, the, 85.
Unionism, spirit of strong in
white laboring class of South,
214; strength of at North, 218,
248. _
Unitarians, 143.
"Up from Slavery," Booker
Washington's personal story
told in, 378.
Utah, South demands permission
of slavery In, 84.

Van Buren, Martin, 30; becomes
President, 71 ; receives " Free
Soil" nomination, 82.
Van Winkle, Senator, votes to
acquit Pres. Johnson, 312.
Vardaman, Gov., of Mississippi,
388- .
Virginia, tries to discourage slave
trade by tax; slave labor foun
dation of aristocracy in, 6 ; re
monstrates against continuance
of slave trade, 8; forbids im
portation of slaves, passes law
regarding manumission of
slaves, number of slaves In 1790,
9; against strengthening the
slave power, 11; protests against
restraint of Congress to forbid
slave trade, 12; consents (1778)
to abolish slave trade, 18; stops
importing slaves, 20; conven
tion for revis. of constitution,
41 ; general emancipation de
bated, 42 ff; plans for fail, 43;
passes severe laws against in
citement to rebel, instruction of
slaves, etc., loses leadership
of South, 44; Mrs. Burton Har
rison's personal reminiscences
of before the war, 100; calls
convention to consider seces
sion, 222; calls peace congress,
228 ; secedes, 235 ; emancipation
in, 260; loyal State govt. In-
recognized, 27s ; delays her final
restoration to Union, 310; rela
tive number of negro voters in,
311; under martial law, 316;
Democrats regain, 323; legal
limitation of suffrage in, 383;
co-operation of whites and
negroes for good govt, in, 401,

Wade, Benjamin, in Senate, 114;
in Republican party, 127; favors
radical reconstruction, 270; in
U. S. Senate, 283, 285.
Walker, Boston negro, issues
Appeal, 41.
Walker, Robert J., 117; appointed
governor of Kansas, 150; de
feats fraud In ballot, and is de
serted by Buchanan, 152.
War, terrors of. See Civil War,
237 ff.
"War Between the States," by
Alex. H. Stephens, 189.
" War Democrats," 194, 253.
Warmouth, Henry C, in govt, of
Louisiana, 341.
Warner, Col., in govt, of Miss.,
336.
Warren, Henry W., in govt, of
Miss., 336, 337; on conditions
and experiences in Miss, during
reconstruction, 337 ff.
Washburn, Israel, Jr., helps or
ganize Republican party, 114.
Washington, city of, threatened
by Confederates, 237.
Washington, George, 2; opinion
of New Englanders, 2; concep
tion of liberty and of slavery,
3; favors Revolution, 8; against
strengthening slave power, 11;
views of on slavery, 15 ; private
life and character of, 15 ff; his
treatment of his slaves, frees
them, 16; on necessity of abol
ishing slavery, 391.
Washington, Booker T., pupil of
and successor to Gen. Arm
strong ; his aims and methods ;
personal story of, 378; enter
tained by Pres. Roosevelt,
386.
Watterson, Henry, in Hayes-Til
den contest, 352.
Webster, Daniel, defends protec
tive tariff, 32; debate with
Hayne, 33; his public life char
acterized, 64 ff; 7th of March
speech on slavery questions, 87 ;
defects of speech, 88; political
and moral characteristics of,
88; in Fillmore's cabinet, 90;
allied with upper classes, 92; as
Pres, candidate cjefeated in

436

Index

Whig convention (1852), 92;
death of, 93.
Weed, Thurlow, votes for Tay
lor, 82; helps prolong Whig or
ganization in N. Y., lis; sup
ports Pres. Johnson, 303.
Weld, Theodore D., 37.
Whig party (see also Whigs), be
ginnings of, 31 ; on verge of
dissolution, 93; end of, 153.
Whigs, nominate Qay, 75; gain
majority in House, 79; nominate
Taylor, 81 ; nominate Gen.
Winfield Scott; defeated by
combined Democrats and " Free
Soilers," 92; vote against Kan
sas-Nebraska bill, 114; unite
with " Free Soilers " to form
Republican party; organization
prolonged in N. Y., 115; in Re
publican party, 127.
Whitman, Walt, volunteer nurse,
pen picture of war, 247.
Whitney, Eli, 23.
Whittier, John G., joins anti-slav
ery movement, 44, 56; criticises
Webster in poem " Ichabod,"

88; poem on settlement of
West, 116; In first Republican
campaign, 130; his labors for
freedom, 144.
Wilmot proviso, 80.
Wilson, Henry, joins " Free Soil "
party, 81 ; elected Senator, 115 ;
sketch of, 283; opposes Pres.
Johnson's plan of reconstruc
tion, 286; against exclusion
clauses in 14th amendment, 302.
Wilson, Woodrow, " History of
the American People," criti
cised, 334.
Wise, Henry A., opinion of John
Brown, 164.
Wise, John S., shows effects of
John Brown's raid in South,
169; criticises Bourbonism in
Southern politics, 388.
Women's rights, 56; cause ad
vanced, 94.
Wood, Fernando, 352.
Woolman, John, protests against
slavery, 7.
Woolsey, Theodore D., 36.
Wright, Elizur, 44.

the end

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