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THE

NATURAL HISTORY

01'

SECESSION;

OK,

DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY AT NECESSARY,
ETERNAL, EXTERMINATING WAR.

BY
THOMAS SHEPAED GOODWIN, A.M.

** Tho Union : it muet and shall be preserved." Andrew Jacison.
"Down with the traitor, and up with the Btara," BaUle Cry,

NEW YOKK:
JOHN BKADBUEST (Successor to M. Doolady),
49 WALKEE STREET.
CmCINNATI : EICKET & CAEEOLL, 73 WEST FOUETH STEEET.
BOSTON : A. WILLIAMS & CO., 100 WASHINGTON ST.
1864.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
THO]ltA.S SHEPAED GOODWIN,
In the Clerk's Office of the Distrift Court of the District of Maine.

GEO. C. BAND b AJ^ B T ,
•TBBEOXTFEBS AND FBINTEBS, 3 COBNUliiXi, B08T0K.

PREFACE.

Some things to human view are accidents. The place
they fill in any general system of things, and the assist
ance they render in any general process of advancement,
are not discernible to human scrutiny.
To some minds almost all things, except their own in
dividual existence, interests, and whims, are accidents, at
least, not to say huisances, that ought to be abated.
They cry out with the same impetuous vehemence against
the insect that disturbs their after-dinner repose, and
against a league of traitors sworn to destroy the last rem
nant of their country's government or perish in the effort.
About an equal amount of plausible persuasion would
be required in the case of the insects or of the traitors, to
induce this class of persons to cease their opposition to
the outrage committed, and even to join in inflicting the
like annoyance on their neighbors^
Perhaps it is not an unlawful or unworthy aim to rid
this class of the company of some who properly belong
not to its number ; and to do something in the present
emergency of our country's affairs to counteract the mis
chievous action of such of that number as remain.
In ability for mischief, next superior to those who have
no general system and are capable of comprehending
none, stand the class who reason fallaciously or from false
premise on matters of practical political importance. It

rV PREFACE.
is hoped that individuals of this class will find in the pres
ent treatise a fairness, thoroughness; and reliability of ar
gument which will commend itself to their respect, and,
eventually, to their confidence, so far as they are sincere
searchers after truth that they may act on it.
The third and last class with whom the writer views
himself as dealing is composed of those of greater or less
ability of reasoning and sincerity of heart, either within
or without the boundaries of the loyal States, who have
become unconsciously but hopelessly impressed in favor
of political sentiments and doctrines inimical to the exist
ence and well-being of Popular Government. That this
class is both prominent and numerous among us, every
day's inscriptions on the page of history verify. Of them
the present writer asks no favor, no forbearance. If they
are to triumph, he consents to die ; and he does not pro
pose to himself to go down to physical, or political obliv
ion in silence or unavenged.
But Popular Government is not an accident in this
world's affairs. It entered prominently into the original
plan. Prom the dawn of Creation's morning, provision
began to be made for its advent. An ancient prophet of
God divulged the time of its coming, and declared that
"it should stand forever."
It is to be not only perpetual but universal. All the
institutions of ancient monarchy are to be "broken in
pieces and consumed " before it. It came not forth at the
war of the American Revolution, to glitter for a time
-with delusive brightness and then go out in the night of
universal despotism which prevailed before. It has not
arisen and prevailed on this continent for three-quarters
of a century, dispensing unpai-alleled benefits to those
who have been the subjects of its mild, munificent sway, to
sink irrecoverably before the first infuriate combination of

PEEFACE. Y
home-born and foreign despots that should league together
for its destruction. The world's great Governor has not
brought forth this antidote for all the ills of human tyran
ny, to bless'the nations for a little while, and then become
extinct through the absence of those qualifications for
leadership which can be acquired only in a despotic state
of society.
Such are the convictions under which the following
pages have been written ; and they are presented to the
public, not without belief that they will contribute to
impart to others a measure of the same deep-rooted and
considerate faith in the worth, the necessity, the perpetu
ity of Free Government in which they have been written,
and the same calm purpose to sustain its institutions, or
perish when they fall.
That the present century is one of unexampled advance
ment and celerity of progress in all that pertains to the
more useful arts and sciences, is, obvious to every one.
That this advancement and accelerated progress are due
to the relaxation or abridgment of dictatorial rule, is one
of those great truths which are gradually making them
selves felt and admitted without the puny aid of human
logic. Both the celerity of general movement peculiar to the
present age, — which leaves not time for tardy History to
perfect its lessons, — and also the exigencies of the new
form of civil government that has arisen to fill the place
of departing monarchy, demand and justify the present
attempt to bring the light of historical reflection to the
aid of those on whom devolves the responsibility of
defending, not only our existing government, but the
very governmental genus to which it belongs, from the
fierce and unportended perils that now assail them. And
1*

VI PREFACE.
yet so brief and recent is the period in which historic
Democracy is to be found, that any writing of reflections
upon it must needs approximate to the writing of current
history. The studies incident to preparing a previous and yet
unpublished volume on the Passing Away of Monarchy
conferred on the present author some preparedness to
treat the topics presented in the following pages. This
preparedness was augmented by thirty years alternate
residence in different sections, north and south, enabling
him, while familiar with the views and mental habits
peculiar to either section, so far to rid himself from the
controlling influence of these peculiarities as to be able
to speak with historic fairness of theni both.
The time occupied in the production of the following
pages was the intervals of professional business during
the first two and a half years of war for suppressing the
Secession conspiracy. The date of writing is sometimes
introduced for the purpose of referring to events then
passed, in illustration of 'views presented.
During the time which has thus elapsed, many of the
practical political positions with which the author set out,
and which were then comparatively new and strange,
have been extensively adopted by the people and put into
operation by the government. While thus much of the
novelty of the work will have been lost, this loss will
have been measurably compensated by the increased.
appreciation by the public mind of the importance of
the topics of which it treats.
Most of the time spent in the preparation of the work
has been devoted to attaining the greatest degree of con
densation, compatible with clearnesSj in order, as far as

PREFACE. VII
practicable, to bring its contents within the reach of that
large and increasing class of men among us whose habit
ual readings approximate the limits of telegram.
That the perpetuity of domestic slavery is compatible
with the perpetual coexistence of free government on the
same soil, is an opinion that has been very generally attrib
uted to the founders of this government, as generally
entertained by the people of the country, until a recent
period, and is still entertained by the great majority of
the people, if we take the whole country into consider
ation. By historical argument, and by argument drawn
from first principles, to confute an opinion that is sustained
by so sage and so universal authority, and in practical
politics to take a position antagonistic to the principles
on which the government of the country has been con
ducted from its origin, is thought to be a matter of such
gravity as to demand minute, elaborate accumulation in
the angument by which that position is sustained.
" To see ourselves as others see us," implies the posses
sion of a grace with which our na*ures are so sparingly
endowed, that producing an accurate portraiture of one's
self,, or even of our government and national peculiarities,,
is no easy task. To the difiiculty arising from this source,
add the immature and undeveloped state of that type of
government which is succeeding to the place of decrepid
and departing monarchy, a type of which our own govern
ment is perhaps the only reliable specimen, and the result
ing accumulation of difficulties may perhaps excuse any
lack of scientific clearness of arrangement that appears in
the matter of the following pages. It is no ignoble achiev-
ment to present well some features of a subject that still
remains too imperfect or obscure to be entirely grasped,
or perfectly portrayed ; leaving it for time and a subse
quent effort or author, to finish what has only been well
begun.

Viii preface.
To the unliterary character of the Southern people, or
to their modesty, it appears to be due, that the religionists
of the North have never enjoyed to any, considerable ex
tent the benefit of their criticism. The decision of one
of their superior judges, to the effect that a disbeliever in
future rewards and punishments was not competent to
testify in their civil courts, is a true index of a sentiment
almost universally prevalent among them, different from
what obtains at the North, and which has seldom been ex
pressed. In the following pages the apparent ignoring of the
minor republics of the present and former days, results,
partly from convenience in conducting the argument, and
partly from the necessity of regarding the United States
as alone responsible for maintaining the cause of civil
Liberty before confronting monarchies, and not from any
disposition to undervalue those bright but less potent
heralds of the day of universal freedom from civil despo
tism. The violently agitated current of passing events, with
the felt pressure of its enormous perils, must bring into
occasional use and justify expressions of unwonted energy;
such as would have been objectionable in times of pro
longed quiet, and used respecting events of pnly ordinary
interest, or importance. The same circumstances will be
found to induce, if they do not justify, a trifling expansion
of the English language, by sometimes making use of
words, the admissibility of which rests on but very recent
authority. That no more time is at his disposal for perfecting the
style and dictiou of the volume is matter of regret to
THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

FAQB

Introduction  15

I.
Popular goTernment succeeding monarchy — The greatness and difficul
ty of the change — Basis of each — Sketch of the latter — Terms de
fined — Antagonism of the two — A continent divinely reserved for
the development of free government, ..... 19
II.
Preparation and transfer of the people who were to inhabit the continent
reserved for free government, ....... 23

III.
Two permanent settlements on this continent — The difference of charac
ter pertaining to the people of each, and the necessary results of tliis
difference,  26
IV.
Claim of the North to being considered democratic — Its validity and
Umit, . . . _  30
V.
Claims of the South to being considered democratic examined, and found
to have been sincere at first, but now false in the extreme, . . 35
VI.
Cause of the Southern lapse from democracy back to despotism — Imper
fect light with which the national constitution was adopted, . . 40
jx

X CONTENTS. VII.
Views with wliich the constitution was adopted— What that instrument
did, and what it did not do for slavery, ...... 4S
VIII
The Constitution adopted— Slavery abolished in the Northern States
From what influences, and with what results, . • • .48
IX.
Causes which operated against the abolishing of slavery in the South —
An aristocratic class always existed there — Climate made the negroes
tiirive — Few whites had the intelligence to understand, or the energy
to assfert, their rights, ........ S3

Causes of the non-abolishment of slavery in the Southern States contin
ued — The enervation of the whites — The richness of soil — The great
number of negroes — The poor whites acquire a love of idleness — The
social influence of the negroes degrades and despotizes the whole
white community, ......... 59
XI.
The effect of slavery to countervail the progress and perfecting of the
principles of free government in the Southern States, even among
those who held their slaves at first unwillingly, , . . .66
XII.
Conditions which so modify slavery as to abate its influence in counter
acting the progress of free principles, ...... 70
XIII.
The gradual departure of those conditions which rendered African sla
very in America mild in character and slight in influence during the first
century or more of its existence, ...... 75
XIV.
The ultimate, positive, and efficient, action of slave-holding in radically
converting the sentiments of the Southern people back from democ
racy to despotism, ....... • . 80

CONTENTS. XI

XV.

Argument defined, and forces pointed out as they appear in Iiistory, which
forces have formed and stimulated our Southern brettiren to their pres
ent onslaught on all democracy, ....... 83
XVI.
The above-defined argument presented in detail — The moulding pressure
continually resting on those who feel themselves responsible for the
preservation of quiet in the Slave States — Its effect, ... 90
XVII.
Intensity of the antagonism between the principles of free government
and the principles on wliich slaves are governed — The latter analyzed
— The precept — The penalty — Checks on the latter, . . . 97
XVIII.
The above analysis concluded — Checks on severe penalties — Benevo
lence of the master — These checks limited and reversed by State ne
cessities — Eesults, ......... 102
XIX.
Eesults of above analysis recapitulated and appUed  lOS
XX.
Peculiar qualities conferred on the master of slaves by Us position —
Practical display of these qualities,  113
XXI.
other traits of character conferred by his position on the slave-master,
fitting him for war; and displayed by his class in the present contest, . 119
XXII.
The fallacy of supposing that distinctions of color can constitute any per
manent limit to the despotic exercise of authority or greed for power
on the part of slave-masters, ..... ¦ . 125
XXIII.
Eecapitulation — The several ways in which slavery acts, to reconvert
masters from democracy to despotism, and to confer on them warlike
qualities, . . .. ....... . 134

ta CONTENTS.
XXIV.
Antagonism of despotism and democracy overt and tangible— Military
organization and action perfectly natural and healtliful to a despotism,
but difficult and destructive to a democracy,  138
XXV.
Same general subject continued — The poor whites of a slave-holdin-f
community equivalent to a standing army, when contrasted with the
destitution of combatants which marks a democracy, ... 143
XXVI.
View of the altered condition of affairs in 1860, compared with 1789 —
Was the present precipitation of hostilities necessary? —As viewed by
Northern men, it was not — As viewed by Southern men, it was. . . 148_
XXVII.
Leading Southerners determine to divide the Union — Thirty years spent
in maturing and preparing to execute the determination — Steps taken
to that end, .......... 152
XXVIII.
Origin and object of the pro-Southern political party under Jackson, . 158
XXIX.
The characteristic principles of Jackson's political party, . • , 163
XXX.
Some of the modes in which these principles operated, • . . 167
XXXI.
Eesults of the operation of the above-named principles, . , .175
XXXII.
The prostration resulting to a patriotic minority, from the nsurpatlon of a
despotic few, controlling a majority, ...... 180
XXXIII.
How the Jackson-Buchanan party became identified with Secession, . 185

CONTENTS. XIII
XXXIV.
Eecapitulation of the part performed by the Jackson-Buchanan party in
bringing about the present war,  I93
XXXV.
The abolitionists,  199
XXXVI.
Mischievous diversity of views as held, North and South, respecting the
abolitionists, .......... 205*
XXXVII.
The demotic class in Europe identified with the despots of America in the
existing onslaught to destroy democracy, ..... 212
XXXVIII.
The extent and efficiency of European cooperation with American trea
son,  219
XXXIX.
Some and the Eebellion, ........ 225
XL.
Rome and the Eebellion — France, Austria, and England at a game in
Mexico, .......... 241
XLI.
General E^sum^, . . ....... 247
XLII.
Sketch of events initiating the revolt, ...... 251
XLIII.
Separation of the despotic from the democratic elements in the long-
dominant party — Conditions of peace, ..... 258
XLIV.
Conditions indispensable to peace, and progress toward their attainment, 264

Xrr CONTENTS.

XLV.

The state of the Southern masses— The demonstrated aim of their
leaders — Inevitable results of separation, ..... 270
XLVI.
Concluding reflections — The contemplated cost of the Eebellion — The
aim this cost was fitted to subserve — Eight-minded men at fault —
The no-punishment class— Abuse of the term democratic — Di^oint-
ing the Southern masses from their despotic leaders, . . . 275
XLVII.
Concluding reflections — The democrat and despot diverse — Grades of
despotism — Developments of —Democracy spontaneous in its spread—
If it develops in the South, its triumph universal — Contrast of admin
istrations — Delinquency of the old wtilg statesmen — Final success, . 290

AfpekddcA, . '  . 305
Appendix B,  306
Appendix C,  • • 307
Appendix D, .  311
Appendix E,  312
Appendix F,  314
Appendix G,  325

INTRODUCTION.

A KING of ancient Babylon, during a recess in the
expeditions of his conquering armies, and with the known
world almost entirely subjected to his sway, was meditat
ing on the perpetuity of his dynasty, and disposed to
ask, " What should be thereafter ? " This inquiring dispo
sition of the king, the God of Heaven was pleased to
gratify. Lariguage is always changing to adapt itself to the
events, the minds, and modes of thought peculiar to each
varying age. Hence it is always lame in describing future
events. And as the matter to be communicated was of
importance to those who should live by several thousand
years remote from the peculiarities of the then current
age, an allegorical image was presented in a dream, to
convey the desired intelligence. "Its Tjrightness was
excellent, and the form thereof terrible. Its head was of
fine gold ; its chest and arms of silver ; its belly and
thighs of brass ; its legs of iron ; and its feet part of iron
and part of clay. A stone was cut out without hands,
which smote the image on its feet, and brake them to
pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver,
and the gold, broken in pieces together, and became like
the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, and the wind
carried them away that no place was found for them ; and
the stone that smote the image became a great mountain,
and filled the whole earth."

XTI INTEODUCTION.
A faithful prophet of God was near, who explained the
head of gold to represent the king's own Babylonish
empire; the chest and arms of silver to represent the
Medo-Persian empire, which succeeded it ; the next section
of brass to represent the Macedonian empire which suc
ceeded the Medo-Persian ; and the legs of iron he inter
preted to represent the base military strength of the
Roman empire. Thus we have presented the whole of
historic monarchy, practically complete, and left standing
on its conglomerate feet and toes, which appear to repre
sent the modern kingdoms of Europe and Western Asia,
into which the dual Roman empire dwindled down ;
when, suddenly, a principle, antagonistic to all monarchy,
developed itself without human design or shaping, smote
the hoary structure on its feet, and the whole historic
embodiment crumbled, became coutemptible, and passed
practically out of existence.
While monarchy remains anywhere extant and domi
nant, those ancient empires, though long since passed
from the plane of physical existence, still stand, to uphold
the prestige of their kind, and send a powerfijl sanction
from the distant past, and a moulding influence, to fashioq
and sustain the latest and feeblest of their degenerate
progeny. But when the impinging force of a developed
form and principle, hostile to all monarchy, breaks in
pieces the only remaining representatives of that kind of
government, then, not only the conglomerate residuum
impinged upon, but the ancient and perfect, and yet influ
ential specimens of the order may with propriety be said
to break and crumble together ; and, as a class and kind
of government, to become powerless and contemptible as
chaff, while their newly-developed antagonist enlarges, to
fill their place. This .antagonist can be no other than our
American self-government ; and dates and numbers accom-

INTEODUCTION. XVII
panying the prophetic declai-ation of its universal spread,
as well as the marked character of recent national
changes in every part of the world, point to about the
present century as the time of its gradual establishment
and spread.*
Though the above views of prophecy suggest the
arrangement of the matter which the following pages
contain, it is only the historic verity of what is here taken
into view that is relied on in support of any of the con
clusions thought to be maintained.

* See Lectures on PropTiecy, by George Jnnkin, D. D. Carter. Phila
delphia : 1844. To these Lectures the writer listened while an undergrad
uate of Miami University, over which institution Dr. Junkin at Jliat time
presided. 2»

NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.

POPULAR GOVERNMENT SUCCEEDING MONARCHY-^ THE GREAT
NESS AND DIEFICULTY OF THE CHANGE  BASIS OP EACH
 SKETCH OF THE LATTER  TERMS DEFINED  ANTAGO
NISM OF THE TWO — -A CONTINENT DIVINELY RESERVED FOR
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREE GOVERNMENT. *
, The greatest secular event of this or of any
other age, is the transfer of the reins of civil
power to the many, from the few.
Among the strangest capabilities and habits
of man — the most versatile of created beings —
is the capability and habit of submitting to the
dictation of his fellow-man. This forms the only
foundation on which monarchy can rise or rest.
When and wherever this ceases to exist, then
and there — and then and there only — will mon
archy or despotic civil authority be known no
more. Among the great facts of human history,
nothing that was destined to decline ever dis
played more of vastness and perpetuity than
19

20 NATUEAL mSTOEY OP SECESSION.
civil monarchy. From the days of Nimrod down
to the year of grace, 1776, hardly anything
appeared to intimate that division into the two
hitherto inevitable classes ^ slave and master,
subject and sovereign — was not the normal and
necessary condition of the race. Crowned with
the Babylonish empire as its "head of gold,"
monarchy, through successive ages of universal
prevalence, had wrought itself into an august
embodiment that promised to absorb within it
self all that remained of human history. The
antagonistic civil principle had not yet germi
nated. The " little stone " that was to " become
a great mountain, and fill the earth" instead, had
not yet been "cut out without hands.* And yet
there was a progressive degeneracy in that which
constituted the peculiar richness and excellence
of monarchical power. Through the Medo-Per
sian and Macedonian ages, this degeneration pro
gressed, until the iron despotism of the Roman
empire, and its representatives and successors,
the modern kingdoms of Europe and western
Asia, displayed the once glorious and beneficent
principle of civil monarchy in forms of baseness
and cruelty unsurpassed by anything outside the
confines of the darkest barbarism.
* The reference here is to the prophet Daniel, who is Interpreted as say
ing that monarchical government must become extinct at about the present
age of the world.

MONAECHY AND DEMOCEACY. 21
Perhaps the basis of monarchical strength —
the capability and easy habit of submitting to
dictation — had been gradually ebbing out of
the popular masses, thus necessitating the as
sumption of harshness and violence on the part
of the ruling few, in order to save their inherited
or usurped preeminence from falling into hope
less desuetude.
The word monarchy, when strictly defined,
describes the condition of affairs in which one
man presides in supreme civil power over the
state or nation. In common usage, the word is
understood to apply to all those modifications of
the one-man-power which fall short of democ
racy. In democracy the majority rule, The
word despotism describes an intense, abused
form of monarchy.
As monarchy is founded on nothing but the
ability and habit of the people to submit to the
dictation of superiors, so democracy is founded
on nothing but the opposite of this, namely, the
permanent inability of the people to submit to
the dictation of any but themselves.
These two plans or principles of government
are intensely antagonistic : so much so, that
wherever they exist together, annihilating war
is inevitable, in one form or another, until the
one principle or the other is extirpated.

22 NATUEAL HISTOBY OP SECESSION.
Such bebag the state of the case, and mon
archy being already universal in the Old World,
where should a place be found, whereon to de
velop the germ of free government? This in
quiry would have been a serious, perhaps an
unanswerable one, had not the wise and gracious
Euler of the universe, from the first founding of
the world, reserved .the American continent for
this special purpose.
As the age drew near in which monarchy was
to become extinct, two great preparatory opera
tions were found to be going on. First, the con
tinent was being discovered, explored, and ren-.
dered accessible and habitable. Secondly, a race
of men, the first of the nations, were being train
ed, separated, and at last transported thither,
among whom the principle of popular self-gov
ernment was to be planted, developed, and
strengthened into unconquerable prevalence.

II.
PREPARATION AND TRANSFER OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE TO
INHABIT THE OONTIJfENT RESERVED FOR FREE GOVERN
MENT. While the continent that had been reserved
for the birthplace of civil freedom was yet an
undiscovered wilderness, roamed over only by a
few tribes of feeble savages, the race of men
that were to be its first fit occupants were being
thus prepared.
An island was selected in the temperate zone,
best fitted for the development of mental, moral,
and physical strength, remote alike from the
stinting cold and poverty of the frigid, and from
the sickening, passion-kindling, heat of torrid,
latitudes ; sufficiently near the continent to
admit the stimulating influence and intercourse
of the European society of nations ; sufficiently
isolated to remain largely uninfluenced by the
degeneracy and turmoils of those nations. Here
the aboriginal inhabitants were crossed by an
admixture of the civilized and all-conquering
Eomans, and afterward successively by four
other of the most stalwart races of middle and
2S

24 NATUEAL HISTOET OP SECESSION.
northern Europe. The result was, a people more
vigorous and controlling than any contempora
neous nation of the earth. Their vigor dis
played itself in an early separation from the
Eomish Church, and a successful defiance of
both its corruptions and its force.
The despotism that prevailed oppressively
over the rest of Christendom was soon broken
and permanently modified in England by the
turbulent exactions of the nobility. The " Magna
Charta," exacted by his nobles from King John,
is justly regarded as the first distinct germ of
modern free government.
This turbulent nobility at length destroyed
itself in its intestine wars, and left the Commons
^the elected representatives of the common
people ^ to rise into an importance which they
have never resigned, and which is as great, per
haps, as is compatible with the continued exist
ence of monarchy.
From a people thus prepared and trained — a
people of mental and moral stature, and national
strength and resources second to none of its
contemporaries ^ were selected the chosen few
who were to plant the first permanent settle-'
ments on the continent that had been reserved
to be the birthplace and heritage of popular
government. Here they hardened under un-

EAELY SETTLERS. 25
wonted trials and privation, removed by a
voyage of months from the efficient presence of
that government under whose ample protection,
and from the enlightened community in whose
affluent bosom, they had been reared. Exposed
to the rigors of a trying climate, assaults of sav
ages, the ravages of disease, and in no slight
degree to the perils of starvation, they gradually
became aware of their ability to protect them
selves, and became insensibly possessed of a
mysterious inability to submit to needless and
unreasonable dictation. Gradually reinforced in
numbers from the source from which the original
settlers sprang, there resulted a homogeneous
and unique national character, one great essen
tial of which was the yet latent but inexorable
necessity of self-government.

III.
TWO PERMANENT SETTLEMENTS ON THIS COKTINENT  THE
DIFFERENCE OP CHARACTER PERTAINING TO THE PEOPLE
OF EACH, AND THE NECESSARY RESULTS OP THIS DIFFER
ENCE. Two permanent settlements were made in
North America at about the same period, and a
few hundred miles apart. One at Plymouth,
Massachusetts, by a religious community, brought
out from its former home by the pressure of
religious restrictions, to find more perfect reli
gious freedom. The other at Jamestown, Vir
ginia, by a secular community, moved by the
motives which ordinarily prompt to the colo
nizing of new countries, — a desire to promote
national enlargement, and to better the condi
tion of the individuals concerned. Each colony
drew to itself kindred material from the mother
land, and spread. Other • settlements, less dis
tinct in character, came to the intervening and
adjacent space, amalgamated with either of the
first two settlements, and the country, for hun
dreds of miles in every direction, became com
pactly filled. The originally secular community
2S

THE TWO COLONIES. 27
became more religious, and the originally reli
gious community gradually became substantially
secular, until, to the eye of the common ob
server, no lineament of the original diversity
of germ was discernible in the homogeneous
product of the two primal settlements. Whether
a century of amalgamated existence and united
governmental activity has or has not eradicated
original incongruities of character from the ofi^
spring of these separate germs, is a question
that has been clothed with momentous impor
tance by the events of 1861-2.
The original religious difference between the
Northern and Southern colonies, though dimin
ished, has never become extinct. The activity
of Northern minds still takes a religious turn.
What there is among them of real faith in God
and in his revealed Word assumes a more posi
tive, aggressive, and fruitful type than elsewhere ;
and what there is among them of ungodliness
and infidelity assumes, to a very remarkable
extent, a sanctimonious aspect and a religious
form. Whole denominations of churches keep
up the costly rites and ceremonies of religious
worship, merely to clothe themselves with the
external decorum of believers, to give expres
sion and exercise to those religious faculties and
feelings common to the race, to emphasize

28 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
their rejection of revealed truth, and to retain
their followers from being drawn under the
dominion of an evangelical faith. While in the
South, real religion is more silent and retiring,
and ungodliness prides itself on the frank and
open bearing of the undisguisedly profligate.
Diversity of climate and other accidents have
induced more or less difference of character and
habit between the descendants of the Northern
and Southern colonists, in addition to any diver
sity that originally marked their ancestors. All
these, with the original and continued religious
difference that existed and still exists, may serve
to induce diversity of social tastes, and even a
degree of antipathy between the dwellers in
the Northern and Southern portions of the
Union ; but all this sinks into utter non-impor
tance in the presence of the one great charac
teristic feature of the age. Despotism and
Democracy have for years been mustering their
adherents for deadly and final conflict ; and by
the all-absorbing power and importance of this
struggle, where it is present, any other shade or
ground of difference between two civil commu
nities is merged at once in oblivious insignifi
cance. The question, then, whether, between the
people of the Northern and Southern portions

CONDITIONS OP UNION. 29
of the Union there exists such radical divergence
of character as necessitates the sundering of the
civil ties that hitherto united them, becomes
simply the question whether the people of these
two sections have become arrayed on different
sides in the great strife that is going on through
out the civilized world between the friends and
the enemies of popular self-government.
If both are on the same side in this one great,
all-important, all-absorbing, conflict of the age,
then any present or partial difference that may
separate them on minor points will of necessity
soon subside and disappear, and leave them
naturally and substantially united. If, on the
contrary, the people of these two sections are
fairly and permanently fixed on different sides
in the great conflict of the age, then, no act of
separation, no peace-treaty or covenant, no guar
anty or mediation, can prevent their warring
with deadly animosity, until one or the other
party to the strife is converted or consumed.
8*

lY.
CLAIM OF THE NORTH TO BEING CONSIDERED DEMOCRATIC —
ITS VALIDITY AND LIMIT.
With regard to the position of the Northern
States, on the great question of the day, there
is, and can be no difference of opinion. If their
own profession, and the admission of all foreign
nations, that they are the peculiar possessors,
advocates, and champions, of free government,
were not. satisfactory proof on this point, their pe
culiar follies and weaknesses, as displayed in the
conduct of the present war, their apparent
utter inability to have a governing policy, or an
efficient head, should establish beyond a cavil
that they are anything else but monarchists.
The fact of the Northern States having abolished
slavery within their borders is some proof of the
depth and genuineness of their professed democ
racy, inasmuch as the causes which induced this
line of action, and the action itself, would have
tended somewhat strongly to induce and to con
firm the democratic element. The fact that the
people of the Northern States have never exacted
from their several States, nor from the general

LIMITS OF NORTHERN FREEDOM. 31
government, distinct admission of the citizenship
of their colored population, limits, though per
haps it does not go far to countervail, the depth
and sincerity of their claims to being considered
democratic. A still more serious limit to the genuineness
of these claims is found in the history of the
tame submissiveness with which the people and
statesmen of the North, have almost unresistingly
accorded a vast predominance of political influ
ence to the Southern minority in the national
councils.* This is an error, not of design, but
of unconscious feebleness in what forms the
basis of all reliable self-government, — an inabil
ity to submit to dictation.
Perhaps, on the other hand, some- allowance is
justly to be made on account of the unorganized,
unsuspecting nature of all democratic communi
ties. Only in the presence of a recognized

* Out of the seventy-two years of the existence of our government from
its organization to the close of Buchanan's admLuistration, Southern men
have held the seat of chief executive forty-eight years — just two-thu-ds
of the time. Add to this, that Pierce and Buchanan, two of the Northern
Presidents were notoriously mere tools of the South, and owe their elections
to that fact, which the history of their administrations never contradicted, —
then allow that aU offices of emolument and trust under the general gov
ernment, domestic and foreign, civil, military, and naval, have been distrib
uted to Southerners in approximately the same ratio in which they have
held the post of chief executive, — and the result will be a somewhat seri
ous drawback on the validity of the profession of Northerners to being a
democratic people.

32 NATURAL HISTOET OP SECESSION.
antagonist is there anything to inspire them
with suspicion, to force on them that organiza
tion, or train them to that reconnoitring alert
ness, from which they naturally lapse in time of
peace, and without which they are defenceless
as sheep.
A monarchical government so readily assumes
the attitude and armament of war that war may
almost be said to be its normal state. Its single
or naturally united head, always necessarily
vigilant, and alert to maintain its own preemi
nence in its own community, undergoes but
trifling change of state or activity when it turns
its attention to foes without, or taxes the resour
ces of its realm to resist invasion or to become
itself the invader.
On the other hand, in the democratic com
munity, the law that reduces all preeminence to
the common level — the practical efficiency of
which law is the first condition of democracy —
neutralizes the intelligence and paralyzes the
activity of any one who might be able to warn
of danger, or to direct efforts to forestall disaster,
until such time as the constant aggravation of
prolonged oppression, or some sudden violation
of every sense of justice, rouses the universal
populace with one common purpose to resist

TJMTTS OP NORTHERN PEEEDOM, 33
This natural disposition and tendency of a
democratic community to be remiss and ineffi
cient in preserving its rights, and resisting aggres
sion, will account in part for the undue ascend
ency of Southern influence in our national coun
cils, but it will not wholly account for or excuse
this. The historic fact that such notoriously
imbecile tools as Frank ' Pierce and James
Buchanan had strong, organized, and in some
instances ruling, parties in the North to advocate
their elecrtion and to sustain their administra
tions, — is a fact that admits of explanation only
on the admission that said parties had become
depraved to a great extent of the first essential
of democrac}'^, — an inabilit^'^ to submit to usurped
dictation. To extenuate their conduct, it may be said
that many of the men who voted to raise these
two men to the chief magistracy did so without
understanding the import of their deeds. They
were practised on by party deceptions ; they
had been drilled for years to blind submission to
party leaders ! As much as this can be said in
defence of the most grovelling set of slaves that
ever fixed upon themselves the shackles of a
despot. The simple truth is, that with more light and

34 NATURAL HISTOET OP SECESSION.
knowledge than ever before illuminated the path
of a people similarly situated, they did what in
them lay, to sell themselves and their country
into the hands of as fierce a set of tyrants as
ever endeavored to usurp the rights of a people
they had purposed to enslave.

V.

CLAIMS OP THE SOUTH TO BEING CONSIDERED DEMOCRATIC
EXAMINED, AND POUND TO HAVE BEEN SINCERE AT FIRST,
BUT NOW FALSE IN THE EXTREME.
The people of the Southern States profess also
to advocate, possess, and exemplify the principles
of popular self-government. And it is only by
separating wjiat is fact from what is fiction, in
this profession, that we can arrive at any reliable
conclusion respecting the moving spring of their
rebellion, or the means of bringing our existing
war to a successful close.
That the people of the Southern States, with
comparatively few individual exceptions, sincere
ly believe themselves to be democratic members
of a democratic community, there can be no
doubt. But the question before us is not a question
as to what the Southern people believe or sup
pose themselves to be, or what they are believed
or supposed to be by others. It is a question of
fact, whether they are or are not capable of them
selves exercising or submitting to the exercise
by others, of despotic dictation in civil affairs.
86

36 NATUEAL mSTOEY OP SECESSION.
Let the answer to this inquiry be reliably ascer
tained, and in that answer, and in that only, we
have the data for framing a policy which will
bring our present grievous intestine war to a
successful issue.
The history of the Southern people, at first
view, appears to justify the conclusion that their
profession of democratic principles is sincere.
Originating from the same national stock, trans
ported at about the same period across the same
almost interminable ocean (as then navigated),
and subjected to the same perils of starvation
and savage hostilities, there is nothing wanting
but the same severity of climate and poverty of
soil, to complete in all essentials the historic
parallel between the early experience of the
Northern and Southern colonies. Each appears
to have had substantially the same experience
and training, leading and impelling them to re
sist the dictatorial exercise of power by the
mother country; and with substantially the
same result. The end of a century and a half
of colonial existence found the accumulated col
onies of the North, under the lead of Massachu
setts, and of the South, under Virginia, alike
prompt and desirous to inaugurate and carry on
the war of independence, and alike worthy to
share the benefits that war obtained.

southern SENTIMENT IN 1776. 37
Such a test as the war of the Eevolution sup
plied, could not fail to develop any deficiency of
the elements of freedom, had any such defi
ciency existed at that time. Since then, the
trade of politicians has been plied in every quar
ter of the land so thoroughly, so perpetually and
persistently, that any movement of the people
or of any portion of them, requires to be re
viewed and repeated for some length of time,
before it is safe to consider it as spontaneous or
sincere, and not artificial and produced by dem
agogues. But at the time of the Eevolution
and before, whatever the people did was reason
ably sure to have been done sincerely and of their
own simple motion. There were tories North
and South ; individuals, and sometimes large
neighborhood majorities, who preferred monar
chy, or, at least, preferred the old British govern
ment, to anything which they thought likely to
be achieved by revolution ; and they showed this
preference by active cooperation with the Brit
ish, or by very obstinate neutrality. There ap
pears to have been more of these in the extreme
South, than in any other section. A more ener
vating climate, less advantages of education, and
of enlarged intercourse, and a more natural in
difference as to what government they were un
der, may account for this. While the splendid

38 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
specimens of ability and devotion to ^Freedom's
cause, which were at the same time displayed in
the same section, largely offset the other, and
almost dispel any suspicion that the Southern
colonies, as a section, were behind the North in
their demand for national freedom, or in their
contributions for its procurement.
The influence which the Eevolutionary strug
gle, with its sacrifices and privations, must have
had on those who engaged in it, could not have
been other than to deepen and confirm their
preference for the cause they espoused, even
if that preference had been at first waver
ing. And the results of- the glorious achieve
ments of that war — the sense of triumph, and
the rapid rise of national character and wealth
— must have overwhelmed the craven spirit of
toryism that at first persisted in its preference
fpr British monarchy as its government. Such,
we may well believe, was indeed the case. Pref
erences for monarchical government disappeared.
And up to a recent period, almost no one has
had the hardihood to avow a preference for any
form of government other than the one we have'
had. So perfectly and so splendidly has the
upward progress of our nation exemplified and
illustrated the benefits of free government, that
evidence amounting almost to proof of hatred

THE REBELS ENEMIES OP FREE GOVERNMENT. 39
to all democracy in the authors of this rebellion,
is found in the fact that tbey have purpo.sod, and
are laboring to achieve, the overthrow of this
first successful specimen of popular self-govern
ment. This government is universally admitted
to be the representative and almost the embodi
ment of all modern free government, and those
who are engaged in an assassin struggle for its
overthrow are a monstrous anomaly in the world
of sequence, if they are not the representatives and
champions of the tottering monarchies of a ty
rant-ridden world. The gauzy pretence that they
are laboring to establish a more perfect form of
free government, is but an extorted compliment
to the admitted worth and splendor of the one
they are laboring to destroy. Nothing else but
such pretence could shield them from the open
shame of being the common enemies of man
kind.

YI.
CAUSE OF THE SOUTHERN LAPSE FROM DEMOCRACY BACK TO
DESPOTISM  IMPERFECT LIGHT WITH WHICH THE NATIONAL
CONSTITUTION WAS ADOPTED.
Unquestioned and unquestionable is the his
toric record, that, from Washington and Jeffer
son, down to Marion and Sumter, the Southern
colonies supplied many of the bravest warriors
of the Eevolution, many of the ablest and most
devoted of the framers of our present govern
ment. Equally certain is it, that the ablest
minds of the South, one and all, with sparse
exceptions, are now laboring with infuriate zeal
to dissipate what the valor of their fathers won,
to pull down what the wisdom and devotion of
their fathers reared.
This change, that has occurred between the
fathers and their sons, demands to be accounted
for. To attribute such a change to caprice, or to
political accidents, one or many, without the
intervention of the sternest laws, and the deepest
principles that influence and govern national
character and conduct, would be to abandon all
40

*HE SOUTHERN LAPSE. 41
idea of cause and effect in the sphere of man's
associate action, and to convert the moral world
into a moral chaos, wherein all law is nugatory
and reason useless.
That the parties undergoing it should be
themselves intelligently cognizant of the change,
is not to be expected. It is too deep and radical,
its occurrence has been too gradual and silent,
it is too total, extensive, and absorbing, to be
intelligently comprehended by those who are
the subjects of it. It is the greatest and most
mysterious change that human character can
undergo, next to that change of which the
Scriptures say, " as the wind bloweth where it
listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but
canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it
goeth, so is every one that experiences it." It
is the change from democracy to despotism;
or rather the lapse consequent on the conver
sion from despotism to democracy having been
in the first instance imperfect.
When the war of the Eevolution was over,
and the convention which formed our Constitu
tion had assembled, jarring and repellent inter
ests well-nigh rendered their labors finally abor
tive. This was to be expected. Only the heavy

42 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
costs of freedom had as yet been proved. The
rich fruits of its possession were still conjectu
ral ; and union, as indispensable alike to their
procurement or preservation, had not then, as
now, become matter of manifold experience.
Sectional interests and even local prejudices
were sufficient to jar,*and even repel, the parts
that had not then been formally united, nor
welded into one, by three-fourths of a century
of happy and glorious experience.
No fundamental ground of diversity in prin
ciples or practice then displayed itself Even
the question of slavery was far from being local
at the South. Though the States were all, or
nearly all, slave-holding, the predominance of
interest in that institution was at the South.
Yet the South was far from being unanimous in
favor of slavery ; and the North was nearly as
far from being unanimous against it. The lead
ing statesmen of the age, from the South as well
as from the North — themselves slave-holders —
were against perpetuating the institution. They
had successfully perilled their lives, their posses
sions, and their hopes, to obtain for themselves,
their posterity, and their country, the boon of
civil freedom ; and they were then engaged in
the extremely arduous and critical work of giv
ing security and permanence to what their perils,

DEFICIENCY OP LIGHT IN 1787. 43
privation, blood, and toil, had gained. They
were deeply conscious of the incongruity of
making the perilous and costly consummation
of the freedom of one race the occasion of riv
eting irrevocably the fetters of another race,
intermingled among them on the same soil.
But the peril of such a course they did not
understand. The latent, inevitable, consuming,
hostility between despotism and free govern
ment, had not, at that early stage of the conflict
between these two great principles, been suffi
ciently demonstrated to be understood. They
dreaded only the murpations of those who were
despotically disposed ; and had no dread of the
broader, deeper, and more surely prolific ground
of despotism, — the subservient disposition of the
masses. That the existence of slaves necessi
tates the existence of masters, and that masters
are necessarily tyrants, despots, are truths, obvi
ous enough to us, but which they appear not
distinctly to have discovered. The war they
had just gone through was looked on as not ge-
nerically diverse from former wars, and not as the
initiatory engagement in a series of conflicts,
the most fierce, perhaps, that the world's history
will ever have recorded, which are to terminate
in the utter subversion of all monarchy.
It was left for us, their descendants, at this

44 NATUEAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
remoter period, by the light which the history
of their day throws forward upon ours, and in
the light which ours and intervening years
throw back on theirs, to discover the truth that
they and we are taking part in the downfall of
universal despotism, the greatest revolution that
civil society ever has been, or will be, called to
pass through; that they and we are fighting
out issues, not for ourselves alone, but for the
human race, — issues not again to be reversed
till the end of time.
Had the patriot framers of the Constitution
of our country's government been permitted to
see and realize the magnitude and extent of
the change they were inaugurating in the world's
history; had they obtained a glimpse of the
inevitable certainty and consuming bitterness of
the wars which they had begun, and which were
to rage at intervals until the last of monarchical
institutions shall have become extinct, sooner
than do as they did, — plant the seeds of inevi
table, intestine, consuming war in the bowels of
the sacred structure they were rearing up to be
consecrated to universal Freedom, — such colony
or colonies as refused to pledge themselves to
final emancipation would have been left outside
the Union, till the bitter fruits of their fatal
choice had ripened in destruction on their own
unpitied heads.

YII.
VIKWS WITH WHICH THE CONSTITUTION WAS ADOPTED —
WHAT THAT INSTRUMENT DID, AND WHAT IT DID NOT
DO FOR SLAVERY.
Had the States which persisted in making Af
rican slavery perpetual been excluded from the
original Union, would the Free United States
have prospered as they have done in the union
of all the States ? The history of the Free States
does not admit the shadow of a doubt, that,
without any union with, or assistance from, the
Slave States, their prosperity would have been
great and their advancement irresistible. Their
chmax of greatness might, perhaps, at no time
prior to the present, have reached the point at
which it stood when this war began ; but there
can be no doubt that it would have reached the
condition in which it wiU be found when this
war shall close.
The Southern or slave-holding States, on the
other hand, would have been early won, to join
the prosperous Free States, and abandon slavery,
or else they would have become monarchical in
form as rapidly as they became so in fact ; would
46

46 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
have become confederate with European mon
archies ; and their present war on freedom, would
have taken place ten or twenty years earlier
than it has, and before the Slave States attained
a tithe of their present power for mischief The
war, in that case, might have been less deci
sive, more protracted, or repeated at intervals,
more than now, but during its course, whether
long or short, there could hardly have been as
much lying as has been done in Europe and in
the Slave States during each ten days since the
rebellion commenced.
But the truth of the case is, that the patriot
founders of our government never believed that
African slavery, though extant, would become
perpetual. They were themselves possessed of
a love of liberty that outweighed all other con
siderations. They knew the same sentiment to
pervade their countrymen. North and South.
They knew that the terrible costs of the war
had not only proved the existence and preva
lence of this sentiment, but had developed, deep
ened, and increased the same. They saw with
sanguine faith something of the rich prosperity
that awaited the future of the United States ;
and they not unreasonably calculated that this
would confirm the love of freedom in every sec-

THE CONSTITUTION AND SLAVERY. 47
tion of the land. And they saw no good reason
to doubt that the evident incongruity of a love
of being free one's self, and the love of enslav
ing another — the warring difference there was
between the sentiment and the practice of se
curing the widest liberty to the white, while
imposing the heaviest servitude on the black —
would, at no distant day, while yet the love of
freedom in the citizens was unshaken, eventuate
in the enfranchisement of the slaves.
They secured the extinguishment of the foreign
slave-trade, and permitted the domestic slave-trade
to have a free field. They allowed a representa
tion in Congress to the masters on account of
slaves, and secured the return of the fugitives.
These things they did as a fit and customary
compromise of jarring interests, and left the in
evitable opposition between slavery and freedom
to work out the rest; desiring and believing that
the result would be, the ultimate glorious tri
umph of the latter. Their expectations are not
to be disappointed. But the long delay and
the bloody vale of humiliation, which were to
intervene between the inception and the accom
plishment of their hopes, they did not fore
see. The causes of this partial disappointment
of their expectations, it is worthy of our most
earnest and patient endeavors to understand.

YIII.
THE CONSTITUTION ADOPTED — SLAVERY ABOLISHED IN THE
NORTHERN STATES — FROM WHAT INFLUENCES, AND WITH
WHAT RESULTS.
The Constitution, formed by the Convention
for that purpose met in Philadelphia, through
much difficulty, peril, prayer, and patience, was
at length completed. More or less tardily each
of the thirteen then existing States gave in its
adherence thereto, and on the thirtieth of April,
1789, it went into operation by the assembling
of Congress and the induction of George Wash
ington into office as the first President. From
this date commenced the progress of the United
States in a career of affluence, expansion, re
spectability, and power, unparalleled and unap-
proached in the history of nations,* and un
checked, until it was confronted with the prod
uct of those seeds of conflict and of dissolution
which were planted in the Constitution when
* It seems to be only with some qualification that the term nation can be
applied to a conglomerate like that which fills the boundaries of our laud —
a type of population like the gathered nationalities of former universal
monarchies, which seems of itself to presage the universal spread of the
government they sustain. 48

NORTHERN STATES ABOLISH SLAVERY. 49
its protections of African Slavery were per
mitted to remain perpetual.
Six of the northernmost of the original thir
teen States shed off the incubus of negro sla
very without commotion and without regret.
This result was favored by the accident of
climate, and perhaps of soil. Negroes are coji-
stitutionally adapted to a warm climate. They
seem almost incapable of being hardened to a
cold climate like the white races. Hence they
did not thrive so spontaneously, they did not
multiply as rapidly, as in the Southern States ;
it cost more to keep them, and they were
worth less when kept. Again, the bracing cli
mate stimulated both the mental and bodily
powers of the white race into greater activity,
so that there was less demand for slave labor.
The fast-growing spirit of freedom and equality
soon produced a social atmosphere in which the
individual, if personally otherwise inclined, be
came deeply ashamed to accept his sustenance
or wealth at the hands of an unrequited, half-
civihzed, half starved darky. The negro him
self became stimulated, if not by the climate, by
his large and constant intercourse with intelli
gent, ingenious, and self supporting whites, and
rapidly and obviously became fit for freedom.
The soil in the Northern States is not suflfi-

50 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
ciently productive to admit of the constant
production of one great staple crop, to be sold
off for cash ; and all experience proves that in
no other circumstancjes is slave labor profitable.
Nothing but the potent stimulus of personal in
terest will so far overcome the latent inertia of
human powers as to induce a man to apply him
self successfully amidst a variety of domestic or
agricultural pursuits. Under a relaxing climate,
authority may avail to impel the slave along in
the deep-worn channel of routine, in the simple
production of cotton, rice, sugar, or, tobacco.
But if provisions and teams are also to be raised
as well as the staple crop, the white man will
find it about as cheap to do his work himself, or
to pay some one who will be concerned to save
his varied interests from harm.* If no great
staple is to be produced at all, if, as is the case
almost throughout the Northern States, affluence
is to spring from the application of skill, indus
try, and economy, to the multifarious vocations
of a sterile country, slave labor soon proves
itself to be a costly nuisance.
Slavery having been finally and effectually
abolished in the six northernmost of the original
States, and being excluded from the northern-
* See Appendix A at close of volume.

FRUITS OF AMPLE PEEEDOM NOETH. 51
most of the new States which, from time to time,
were admitted to the Union, nothing was left
in these States to limit or retard the maturing
to perfection of "the sentiments and principles
of free government. "For better for worse,"
whatever these principles and sentiments lead
to was destined here to be witnessed and expe
rienced to its full extent.
Accordingly we see the Northern States pre
eminent in the increase and general diffusion of
wealth and learning ; the shipping and manu
factures of the country fell almost entirely into
their hands, and so well were they handled that
history presents no parallel results. Immigra
tion fell so exclusively to the North, that, in
1860, the Northern States possessed two-thirds
of the white population of the whole country.
The peculiar work of democratic principles — the
leveling down of individual preeminence — had
at this date been so effectually performed that
not only had the Southern oligarchy held con
trol of the general government, and used it for
their own purposes for half a century, but when
they now came to cast off the Northern States,
robbed, insulted, and defied, and these were
^compelled to resort to arms for self-preservation,
their armies were like sheep without a shepherd,
and their legislature more so. With such a

52 NATUEAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
trembling grasp was power held by their exec
utive, that, at the end of sixteen months of war,
it was not easy to show that they had not injured
themselves by exhaustion, more than they had
inflicted injury on their antagonists ; and Europe
was still in doubt whether the South, with two
men to her one against her in the field, with a
still greater disparity against her in pecuniary
resources and war-material, and without the
shadow of a navy, against the best fleet in the
world, was not destined to have things her own
way, simply by virtue of efficient leadership.

IX.
CAUSES WHICH OPERATED AGAINST THE ABOLISHING OF
SLAVERY IN THE SOUTH  AN ARISTOCRATIC CLASS AL
WAYS EXISTED THERE  CLIMATE MADE THE NEGROES
THRIVE  FEW WHITES HAD THE INTELLIGENCE TO UN
DERSTAND, OR THE ENERGY TO ASSERT, THEIR RIGHTS.
Peior to the adoption of the constitution we
have seen that the Southern colonies were set
tled by a class of men, of character somewhat
different from that of the settlers at the North,
and for somewhat different purposes. Yet they
struck for freedom at the Eevolution ; they
contributed adequately to secure the prize, and
shared on terms of equality in the distribution
of its benefits. It is true that the contributions
from the South toward the achievement of our
independence, and the subsequent founding of
our government, came more in the form of dis
tinguished leaders than of a reliable or abun
dant supply of men to fill the army ranks, or a
strongly supporting sentiment of the common
people. Yet up to the final adoption of the
Constitution, and the organization of the govern
ment under Washington, we find no ground to
e* 63

64 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
justify the suspicion of a radical, even incipient,
departure, on the part of the South, from the
guidance of the principles of popular govern
ment. It is, then, to a period subsequent to the
adoption of the Constitution, that we are to look
for the inception, growth, and maturing of those
principles which have produced the present Ee
bellion and intestine war. And the first promi
nent fact that strikes our attention in the search
is, that whereas African slavery dwindled to
extinction in the Northern States, it progressed
uninterruptedly at the South. The causes and
the consequences of this progress demand atten
tion, and the latter more than the former. But
first the causes.
It is noticeable that in the settlement of the
Southern colonies, nobles, or prominent leaders
figure extensively. The common people appear
not at an early period to have manifested the
same power and will to take care of themselves
that from the first characterized the colonists of
the North. In 1671, in a population of 40,000,
Virginia numbered 2,000 slaves and 6,000 in
dentured white servants ; and was presided over
by a governor who prayed "that they might
long remain free from the pernicious influence
of free schools and the printing-press."
The educating trials of colonial experience.

OBSTACLES TO FEEEDOM'S PEOGEESS SOUTH., 55
and the salutary discipline of the Eevolutionary
War, doubtless went far to obliterate aristocratic
distinctions, and to make the Southern commu
nity in reality what it professed to be, — self-
governing by popular suffi-age. And yet, neither
free schools nor colleges, or other schools not
free, nor yet the printing-press, have ever pre
vailed at the South with more than a tithe of
the influence they exerted at the North ; and
society there has always, to the present time,
exhibited strong tendencies to divide itself into
dominant and subject classes. This tendency
may have had some direct influence in limiting
the extension and perfecting of the principles
of free government, but it may also be regarded
as one strong barrier to the spread of that spirit
and practice of emancipation that swept the
Northern States.
The warm climate, adapted to the African
constitution, made the negroes thrive, and pre
vented the institution of slavery from declining
of its own accord. It also imparted to the
master an indolence of disposition, averse to
personal application, enterprise, and industry,
and went far to reverse those characteristics of
the Northern population, which made them scorn
alike to become the subjects of another's mas-

,5,6 NATUE^iL mSIOEY OP SECESeiGN.
teyship, or to accept their living at the hands of
,slaves over whom they happened to have the
power to extort it.
This indolence of disposition, on the part of
the whites, goes far to account for the absence
of free schools, and the almost entire absence
of a Southern literature to the present day.
The reason why slavery was not abandoned
in the South at the time and under the pressure
of the influence of free institutions for the
whites, which abolished it at the North, is in
no small degree to be found in the fact that the
Southern white population lacked the enterprise
to abolish it, even if the vast majority of them
sincerely desired it to be abolished. The actual
slave-owning part of the Southern white popu
lation never has been more than one in thirty.
These hold five-thirtieths of the others, or five
times their own number, identified in interest
with themselves, by blood relationship' and fam
ily alliance ; leaving four-fifths who not only
have no interest in slavery, but whose every
prospect, hope, and privilege, but that of vege
tating on a scanty subsistence, are blasted by its
presence. The most prominent of all the causes which
countervailed the abolishing of slavery in the

SPIEITLESSNESS OP SOUTHERN MASSES. 57
Southern as it was abolished in the Northern States,
under the influence of free institutions estab
lished for the whites, is, that the non-slave-holding
people of the South lacked the enterprise, intelligence,
and daring to demand and exact their democratic
rights; but on the contrary they sat down su
pinely to the possession of naked existence,
under a network of legislation and popular
usage which their slave-holding oligarchy had
framed for their subjugation. The same is a
most prominent cause, without the operation of
which, the present nefarious Eebellion against
the national government could not have existed
two months. And without the subversion of
which, this Eebellion can never be put down
effectually.*

* In allowing the majority of the people to be defrauded of the right of
suffrage in the States tliat never did, and never could, carry a popular ma
jority in favor of Secession, — as in Virginia, Louisiana, and Tennessee, —
and in then permitting these Union majorities to be forced by despotic mil
itary power into the ai-mies arrayed against a government which, if left to
their choice, they would quite as soon have supported as opposed, the ad
ministration of President Lincoln appears to have shown deficiency of aim
or an inefficiency of action which ought not to be charged to the account
of the necessary weaknesses of democratic government. Perhaps a part of
the " damnable inheritance " entailed on the present administration by its
immediate predecessor, was the necessity of inaction in this regard ; but it
appears to be exceedingly desirable to know, whether the constituent of a
government on which he is dependent for protection abroad, is or is not
entitled to aid from the general executive, when he finds himself in an
emergency like that in which these Union majorities were placed. If the
only protection to which these Union men were entitled, was to be found in
the decisive energy of their own strong arms, un^r the lead of such men

68 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
«
as could be found in their own number, it might facilitate business very
much to have this fact clearly understood, before another such emergency
shall arise.
Perhaps no demonstration could be more conclusive that these majorities
had become perfectly conformed to the character and condition, of the ab
ject many in a despotism than the fact that they allowed — as in Virginia,
for instance — the tyrant few, calling to their aid what negro-traders, gam
blers and other desperadoes could be collected, to defeat, put down, and im
molate, the masses of the community.

X.
CAUSES OF THE NON-ABOLISHMENT OP SLAVERY IN THE
SOUTHERN STATES CONTINUED  THE ENERVATION OF
THE WHITES — THE RICHNESS OF SOIL — THE GREAT NUM
BER OF NEGROES  THE POOR WHITES ACQUIRE A LOVE
OF IDLENESS  THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE NEGROES
DEGRADES AND DESPOTIZES THE WHOLE WHITE COMMU
NITY. Not only did the inertness of character pro
duced by the climate of the Southern States act
by deterring the great non-slave-holding majority
of white citizens in those States from asserting
their rights and enforcing what their interests
dictated, in respect to" the abolishment of slav
ery, but the same lack of enterprise also de
terred many and many a master from ever acting
out his own hearty wish to leave his posterity
free from the obvious curse.
Such was the radical working of the despotic
principles "in the whole framework of society,
that it presently became a matter of very great
diflficulty for a slave to be set free, or for a mas
ter to abrogate the onerous prerogatives of own
ership. The fertihty of the soil, by enabling .the coun-
59

60 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
try, for a long time, to bear the embarrening
influence of the thriftless institution, contributed
far to postpone the day of necessary emancipa
tion. The number of negroes in the Southern States
being much larger than in the Northern, as it
was. difficult, if not impracticable, to remove them,
the apprehended inconvenience of having so
large a number of persons of little intelligence
or principle, and unused to exercise the rights of
freemen, let loose upon a civilized community,
operated adversely to emancipation. Perhaps
they might have been exported, but the expense
and difficulties of the work would have been im
mense ; their labor was needed. The poor whites
soon came to prefer poverty and idleness to in
dustry and thrift, and the presence of the slave-
system so effectually turned away the immigra
tion of foreign laborers that no one thought of
obtaining a supply of labor from that source.
But among all the causes that contributed to
withstand the progress of free principles at the
South, and to prevent the spread there of that
perfect spirit of freedom which cleared the North
of slaves, perhaps the most prominent and effect
ual was the direct influence of so large a pro
portion of half-barbarous Africans interspersed
among them, in forming the character, principles,

SLAVES MOULDING THEIR MASTERS. 61
and habits, of the members of the white com
munity. It has been before remarked that in these
pages we are dealing, not so much with what
men suppose themselves to be, or with what
they intelligently purpose to do, as we are with
what men are, from the necessities of the situa
tion in which their ancestors placed them, and
in which they consent to remain ; and with what
they do, as a necessary sequence of what they
are. For the " high-born," labor-scorning aristocrat
of the South to suppose or to admit that there
is anything African in the composition of his
character, is not to be expected. And yet, that
sparsely-settled white families, who, of their own
free-will and choice, abide in the midst of col
lected Africans, often have their infants nursed
from the breasts of African women, grow up in
the companionship of African playmates, pass
their early and their later years perpetually
leaning on African attendants, are perpetually
tempted, and not seldom effectually tempted, to
indulge in African recreations ; supported in af
fluence on the proceeds of African labor, from
youth to age perpetually familiar with the tones
of African voices, and conversant with the work
ings of African minds, and exalted to what

62 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
themselves suppose and esteem to be the high
est pinnacles of social and political eminence, by
nothing but the upholding of African subordi
nates, — to be, to do, and to suffer all this from
generation to generation, and come off at the
end uncontaminated with any considerable traits
of African character, is simply impossible. " Evil
commimications corrupt good manners." Two
individuals of different grades of moral elevation
and improvement can hardly be brought in con
tact, to any considerable extent, without each
participating, to some extent, in the character of
the other. Two masses of population, of differ
ent grades of civilization, can never be continu
ously interspersed, as are the whites and blacks
in one of the Slave States, and avoid the effi
cient action of that natural law which tends to
bring both to a common, medium level. The
more degraded will be elevated ; the more ele
vated will be brought down.
Many traits of character which. have been thus
imparted to the white from the colored race, by
long and familiar intercommunication in the
Slave States, it would be invidious to specify.
But one of these, if possible, more prominent
and more important, than any other, it is neces
sary here to consider. That trait is African des
potism, — unmitigated by any of the amenities of

APEICAN TITLES IN AMERICAN HANDS. 63
revealed religion, or of modern learning or civil
ization, imported in the form of masses of the
vilest barbarians, and participated in through
the medium of a willing, constant, intimate, and
lifelong intercommunication by the white race
in Slave States.
This, as all other forms of despotism, neces
sarily exists in two divisions, — in the imperious
usurpation of dictatorial power on the part of a
few over the many, and in the cringing acqui
escence under this dictation, on the part of the
many. One of these divisions cannot long exist
without the other; and the one is necessarily
produced and propagated by the presence of the
other. The former, or usurping, dictatorial class
were not imported from Africa. These were
generated on the spot by the presence of the
servile masses. Yet the rights and authority in
which they flourish were imported, and are pure
ly African. A barbarous father sold his child to
the brutal slave-trader ; a bloody chief of an
abject tribe surprised a sleeping village, and,
after murdering a portion of its inhabitants, sold
the rest to the slave-trader for rum and tobacco.
Titles thus acquired to the lifelong services of
the remotest descendants of these abject, god
less captives, are transferred to an American mas
ter, and in these he flourishes ; with the effect, it

64 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
is true, to better the condition of the slave, for
it does not admit of being made worse; but with
the effect on himself, to deprive him of all ability
and disposition to act an honest part as a citizen
of a democratic community, in supporting the
principles and institutions of popular self-gov
ernment, or to understand that, looking at the
matter with any other than the eyes of an Afri
can despot, it is not only undemocratic, but un
utterably mean, cruel, unjust, and dishonorable,
to recognize any such title as that by which the
negro is held in bondage, or to fatten in useless
idleness on the unrequited toil of a slave, com
pelled to labor by the > force of superior intelli
gence and combination.
The presence of these abject masses of Afri
cans, by elevating their owners into the position
of lords and nobles, and by depriving the non-
slave-holding whites, to a great extent, of the
usual opportunities of productive labor, and also
by rendering labor of the whites disreputable,
thereby confining down the non-slave-holding
whites, for the most part, to a state of hopeless
poverty and idleness, perfected what the presence
of nobles and great men had early begim, — the
separation of Southern society into the two mon
archical grades of high and influential few, and
low and uninfluential many; thus sealing and

SLAVERY ADVEESE TO PEEE SCHOOLS. 65
rendering perpetual a social state inimical to
democracy. The blacks, not only by the force of their ex
ample, remaining in contented ignorance, but by
spreading out the white population so sparsely
as to render public free schools ill-convenient
for children to attend, contributed much to pre
vent that degree of general intelligence among
the whites, without which affairs of government
cannot safely be intrusted to the hands of the
public at large. 6*

XI.
THE EFFECT OF SLAVERY TO COUNTERVAIL THE PROGRESS
AND PERFECTING OF THE PRINCIPLES OP FREE GOVERN
MENT IN THE SOUTHERN STATES, EVEN AMONG THOSE WHO
HELD THEIR SLAVES AT FIRST UNWILLINGLY.
The last chapter was to have completed our
notice of the causes that acted in the Southern
States to stop the progress of those sentiments
of freedom which had cleared the North of
slaves. The closing passages of that chapter
verged upon what is the stated aim of this,
namely, to notice the effects of slavery while it
was retained, to counteract the growth and to
turn back the progress of the principles of free
government. The influence exerted on the
white community by that heathen mass, so dis
tributed as to come in contact with them at
almost every point, cannot be overestimated in
its effect of imparting to American minds Afri
can opinions and sentiments of what is advan
tageous, what is proper, and what is right, in
regard to ownership, by one man, of property in
the life and services, the bone, muscle, and brain,
of another. The whole tone and spirit of the
66

SLAVERY AND DESPOTISM mSEPAEABLE. 67
Anglo-Saxon mind and character must have been
degraded and demoralized by the contaminating
influence of heathen associates — must have be
come essentially Africanized — before this doc
trine of property in man could have been per
manently introduced.
But, having been once introduced, approved
of, and rendered permanent, it requires but a
glance to show that the deepest, darkest, form
of despotism had been planted there, so that
wherever African slavery existed, and was per
manently preferred to a state of society where
all are free, there this lowest form of heathen des
potism obtained in principle and in practice, and
slavery and despotism mutually confirmed each
other, and both necessarily increased and ex
tended, till they reached and confronted the
vital forces of a sincere democracy, there to
rage and rave and perish, as they are now
doing in the existing war.
Much of American slave-holding is to be at
tributed to accident, and not to design or choice.
In such cases, principles of free government
were held and cherished sincerely, and without
being greatly counteracted by the unwilling, ac
cidental, holding of the relation of master. Such
was the case of Washington himself, of Jefferson,
of Clay, and doubtless of the vast majority of

68 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
slave-owners in the latter colonial times, and in
the early history of the States. They lacked
only opportunity, a sense of the important influ
ence slavery was secretly exerting against free
government, and a more energetic enforcement
of their own hearty preference in respect to it,
to have freed themselves from its contaminating
power. These, however, they lacked. They
sluggishly acquiesced in its continuance. The
degenerating, degrading influence of African asso
ciations acted on their descendants more and
more in each succeeding generation, until the
love and approbation of ownership in slaves be
gan generally to prevail, and with it all real at
tachment to the principles and institutions of
free government were silently and unconsciously,
but effectually and thoroughly, undermined and
uprooted; and every one became unwittingly
prepared to take his place at a greater or less
elevation in the common grading of subordi
nates beneath a despotic head.
I say every one became unwittingly thus pre
pared; for if there had been one uncontaminated
freeman left, he would have pronounced himself
by severing that despotic head from the shoul
ders on which it was sustained, ere the meshes
of tyrannical control had been woven around
him, and his bleeding land laid desolate merely

SOUTHERN UNIONISTS. 69
to save that head from being severed. Per
haps this remark should be modified in favor
of some whom compulsory distance or prison
walls prevent from performing the desire of
their hearts.

XII.
CONDITIONS WHICH SO MODIFY SLAVERY AS TO ABATE ITS
INFLUENCE IN COUNTERACTING THE PROGRESS OP FREE
PRINCIPLES. Fkom the influence of climate, rendering the
negroes prolific and content, and the whites
averse to industry and toil ; from the influence
of a soil so rich as to allow the thriftless system
to continue ; from the influence of the numbers
of slaves, rendering emancipation difficult and
hazardous ; from the social influence of the
blacks, acting to depress and Africanize the
civilization of the whites, and to import and im
part the property-title, and the type-African,
which is the lowest form of despotism ; and
from the influence of the numbers of the blacks
in spreading the white population so sparsely
that free schools could not be maintained ; and
perhaps from the influence of still other causes
which have been overlooked, — it came to pass
that the progress of the principles of free
government, which had abolished slavery in the
Northern States, was stayed at Mason & Dixon's
line. Slavery remained, and still remains, un-
70

DEMOCRACY .IND SLAVERY INCONGRUOUS. 71
abolished, and, tiU recently, prospering in the
Southern States. What lies before us now is
to observe in detail the several ways in which
this existing institution necessarily acts to con
vert back to the principles of political despotism
the people of those Southern States who had
once given in, with some emphasis, their adher
ence to the principles and (as far as white per
sons are concerned) to the practices of civil
freedom. And, first, we are reminded by the language
in which the above proposition is necessarily
stated, that there is, and must be, a radical incon
gruity, a deep, internal self contradiction in the
pretence of adopting or adhering to the princi
ples of free government for one class of persons,
while the same franchise is totally denied to
another class in the same community, — the
broadest, free government for whites, and the
deepest, darkest despotism for blacks in the same
community, and on the same soil.
To obviate the bad appearance and bad result
of this unhappy combination of despotism and
democracy in the South, it is to be remembered,
as already remarked, that much of the slave-hold
ing, as in the case of Washington and his com
peers, was accidental and without any sincere
participation in the governmental principle

72 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
which wilKng and persistent slave-holding in
volves.* How far the practice of slave-holding, where
the principle is rejected, will act gradually and
silently to corrupt and undermine opinions and
preferences favorable to free government, is
a question that we cannot definitely decide.
Where the unwilling slave-holder is constantly
occupied, as were the fathers of the Eepublic, in
elaborating the form, and erecting the institu
tions, of free government, the presence of this
odious hulk of despotism would, doubtless, pro
voke a spirit of reaction against the govern
mental principle on which it is based. But,
where the actual slave-owner, though favorable
to free government, is left unoccupied by any
employment that puts his love of freedom in
active and trying exercise, although that love of
freedom may not be consciously or entirely sub
verted by the practice of slave-holding, yet it
will not be strange if his continual practical
acquiescence in a system which he disapproves
should have the effect to blunt his apprehension
of what freedom really consists in, and so to
* Those readers wlio are disposed to pursue a definite and extended
inquiry into the expressed views of the fathers and founders of this gov
ernment, on the subject of " negroes as slaves, as citizens, and as soldiers,"
will find the material for such investigation collected ready to their hand,
m An Historical Research, by George Livermore. Boston: A. Williams
& Company, 1863.

UNFITNESS OF NEGROES TO BE FREE. 73
accustom him to submit to doing what he disap
proves that he would at length be found to be
the fit man to enlist under the rankest despot,
to fight for the " liberty " of Ivolding other men in
bondage. But there is still a very wide differ
ence between the willing and persistent, and the
accidental and unwilling, holding of slaves, in
respect to the influence which slave-holding
exerts to undemocratize the master.
Besides the accidental and unwilling character
of much of the slave-holding that has character
ized the South, one other condition has inter
vened essentially to modify the influence which
slave-holding would otherwise exert to counter
act the perfecting and the spread of principles
of civil freedom. It is the unfitness of the
negro, by reason of ignorance and vice, and of
his low, spiritless, and barbarian traits, either to
be himself profited by possessing the franchises
of freemen, or to be a safe or useful member of
a democratic community.
There is no denying that negroes when freshly
imported from their barbarous African homes, —
where, according to the best of testimony, " nine-
tenths of the inhabitants are slaves to the other
tenth," — are utterly unfit to be intrusted with
the privileges of free citizenship in an enlight-
17

74 NATURAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
ened community. And, during this pupilage of
degraded feebleness and ignorance, which, where
large masses of them are together, may last for
generations, it is hardly violating the principles
of civil freedom, to hold them dependent on
masters as their proper guardians. This it was
that rendered slavery in colonial and Eevolu
tionary times, compatible with the inception,
growth, and all-conquering progress of the prin
ciples of civil freedom. And this, together with
the large amount of unwilling slave-holding that
existed at the time the Constitution was adopted,
rendered the authors and adopters of that instru
ment so little concerned about the anti-repubh-
can tendencies of the institution which they
neglected to extirpate.

XIII.
THE GRADUAL DEPARTURE OF THOSE CONDITIONS WHICH
RENDERED AFRICAN SLAVERY IN AMERICA MILD IN CHAR
ACTER AND SLIGHT IN INFLUENCE DURING THE FIRST
CENTURY OR MORE OP ITS EXISTENCE.
HiSTOEiCAL events of the highest magnitude
and importance often fail to be appreciated,
because they take place gradually. Such was
the case in the transition of negro slavery, by
which it passed from the mild, accidental form,
which marked the first century or more of its
existence in this country, to the positiveness and
virulence of its character in later 3'ears. Had
the boundaries of the original colonies remained
unchanged, had the early character of our com
mercial exports not altered, and the political
arena been free from agitation on the subject of
slavery, then might the action of the institution,
in respect to its influence on our peculiar civil
system, have remained harmless as at first. But,
unfortunately, neither of these conditions of
its harmlessness was preserved. Our Western
boundaries were extended until they embraced
additional territory enough for a magnificent
75

76 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
empire, of the richest of soils, and under the
same Southern sun. This gave to slaves a value
that they never possessed in colonial times, and
added new rivets to the bondage that previously
appeared almost ready to fall off" of its own
accord. Next came, gradually, the discoveries,
that cotton was one of the most desirable textile
staples in the world, that every human being
wanted it, in no stinted supply, for clothing, and
could afford to pay well, according to his means,
rather than be deprived of its use, that the soil
and climate of the Southern States, with this
newly-acquired Southern territory, were best
adapted of any known to the production of this
desired staple, and that slave-labor was better
adapted to its cultivation than to any other
known branch of industry. Next came the im
provements in machinery for the cleaning and
manufacture of cotton, which increased the de
mand for it ten thousand fold. The market
money-value of negro slaves rose five hundred
per cent., and settled forever, on the wrong side,
the question whether the spreading application
of the principles of free government should
peaceably progress any farther in opposition to
the sway of this darkest form of African des
potism. Now was the time, as soon as the above facts

NOBTBEEN QUIETUDE. 77
became developed, to have recognized a state
of irreconcilable war between slave-holders and
their adherents on the one hand, and the up
holders of the principles on which the civil insti
tutions of our country had been founded, on
the other hand. But the inherent imbecility of
popular governments, as compared with mon
archies, in respect to matters of war and self-
defence ; the cupidity of those at the North
who contrived to share in the profits of lucrative
slave-holding, and the intrigue of the slave-hold
ers to keep everything quiet until they could
corrupt the Northern people, and grasp the reins
of power in the general government, all wrought
together to prevent alarm, until the designs of
despotism had progressed so far that, in the
estimation of disinterested European statesmen
and observers, the fate of free governments in
general, and of the United States in particular,
was sealed, before the people of the Northern
States allowed themselves to believe that any
thing was seriously amiss with them.
While the area of fertile Southern territory
was being extended, and the enormous and
lucrative business of cotton production was being
developed, and the pecuniary value of slaves
was being doubled over and over again, thus fix
ing them in their state of bondage beyond the
7»

78 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
hope of any peaceable release or relaxation, an
other change was silently and gradually taking
place, which enhanced the tyrannical and op
pressive nature of their bondage, about in the
same proportion in which its perpetuity became
inevitable. This was, the growing intelligence,
civilization, and Christian enlightenment, of the
negroes, which fitted them daily more and more
to enjoy the privileges, and to discharge the
duties, of freemen ; thereby rendering it daily a
greater and greater outrage on the principles
of free government to hold them in servitude.
We have before remarked that where two
masses of population, of different degrees of
elevation and enlightenment, were thrown to
gether on terms of intimate and constant inter
change, the result must be, not only that the
more elevated would be brought down, but the
more degraded would be elevated, untU a common
medium level should have been reached by each.
The master may designedly and systematically
withhold from his slave the art of reading, and
all instruction tending to his enlightenment and
elevation ; but it is not within the power of that
master to prevent the slave from learning _a
lesson for his improvement every time he looks
on, or listens to, a person more intelligent, more
civilized, or more a Christian, than himself This

NEGEO IMPROVEMENT AND ITS RESULTS. 79
course of improvement must go on, on the part
of the blacks, until their masters, and those
whites with whom they come in contact, in their
downward course, come to a level where the
two grades of civilization meet, and the negro
has no more of civilization, manhood, or Christi
anity, to learn of his once superior master. In
proportion as the negro thus becomes elevated,
intelligent, and fit for freedom, the policy and
the practice that confine him down to servi
tude become bereft of paUiation, and stand
out in active and confessed hostility to the
principles of all free government.

XIV.
THE ULTIMATE, POSITIVE, AND EFFICIENT, ACTION OP SLAVE-
HOLDING IN RADICALLY CONVERTING THE SENTIMENTS OP
THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE BACK FROM DEMOCRACY TO DES
POTISM. Serious and important occupation has a pow
erful influence in moulding the sentiments of
one who is heartily occupied therein. The try
ing labors and sacrifices of the Eevolutionary
struggle, with the discussions which preceded
and followed 'them, acted strongly to generate
and confirm a love of freedom in the hearts
of those, on the American side, by whom these
toils and sacrifices were sustained. The pe
riod which we are now about to consider is
one in which such occupations and their in
fluence have long since passed away. The
enervating, corrupting, influences of protract
ed peace and unexampled affluence have suc
ceeded to the struggles and hardships of Eevo
lutionary and colonial times. The pursuit of
personal aggrandizement has succeeded to an
absorbing interest in the nation's welfare. In
those States where slavery never extensively
so

THE EISE AND VIRULENCE OP SLAVERY. 81
existed, and has been abolished, agriculture,
mechanics, and every industrial pursuit, are fol
lowed with an earnestness and success unparal
leled under monarchical government.
In those States where slavery still flourishes,
supine submissiveness to ignorance and poverty
and the domination of the few, seizes on the
many ; while the possession and management of
acres and of slaves, and the influence and emolu
ments of public office, form the objects of suc
cessful aspiration to the few, — the " master
race," as some of their public orators have the
modesty to call themselves.
The palliation of slavery, that grew out of
the unfitness of the negroes for freedom, has
largely passed away. The comparative in
difference with which slave-owners formerly
regarded their right of property in the slave,
owing to their small pecuniary value, and to
the ugly incongruity between the master's
claims for freedom for himself, and for secure
bondage for his negro, has also passed away.
His African associations have implanted in the
mind of the master an opinion favorable to the
justice and propriety of his claim on the ser
vices of his slave. The increased numbers of
his fellow-slave-holders, and the increased age
of the institution, confirm the same opinion, and

82 NATURAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
quiet feelings of uneasiness respecting the incon
gruity of his claims. The enlarged bounds of
fertile slave territory dispel apprehensions of
trouble from the impoverishment of the soil;
and the lucrativeness of cotton-raising insures
him large pecuniary returns, either for raising
cotton or for raising slaves. Now what a school
is this in which to learn democracy, and perfect
these preferences for popular freedom which are
not mature ! * At the same time and in the same
proportion in which negroes have become more
fitted to be free, and their labor has become
more valuable, arose the necessity for guarding
against insurrection, and for systematic legisk-
tion and police regulations, rendering this kind
of property secure. Laws had to be passed by
each State, prohibiting the instruction of slaves,
lest their learning should render them more de
sirous of freedom, more competent to secure it,
and more accessible to the approaches of de-
* The term republic, though sometimes used as substantially synonymous
with democracy, may with propriety be applied to a republic of slave
holders, or a leagued band of aristocrats. So far as the latter is its true
import, the Constitution of the United States, in its provision that the
government of each several State shall be republican, simply covers up
the seeds of its own destruction. So far as the import of the word is
synonymous with democracy, this -provision of the general Constitution
has been violated every time a Slave State has been admitted to the Union.
Democracy and Despotism divide the universe of civil afltairs between them.
There is and can be no middle grotmd that will not, of necessity, soon merge
itself in the one or the other.

SLAVE INTEBESTS CONSOLIDATE. 83
signing disturbers of the patriarchal system.
Also, laws by each State prohibiting emancipa
tion within its bounds, and the ingress of free
negroes ; lest individual owners, who felt av,erse
to slave-trading, should free vicious negroes, to
save themselves the most unpleasant task of con
trolling them, and the number and character of
the free colored population should thereby be
come such as to make slaves uneasy, and en
danger the public safety. Thus slave-holding
became more and more consolidated into a sys
tem, and the individual owner became less and
less at liberty to pursue any course which was
not dictated by regard for the interests and
-quiet of all slave-holders.
The effect of this consolidation — the imposed
necessity of acting together for the protection
of an imperilled interest — was not only a great
advance toward monarchy ; itself constitutes
a great essential element of monarchy.
It was the necessity of defending national ex
istence amidst menacing or actually hostile na
tions that first induced the prevalence of mon
archy. Produce one great, all-absorbing interest
of a class, or section, even in a republic, and let
it be surrounded by sentiments and mterests
adverse to its prosperity, and you have got a
consolidation of peculiar interests. You will

84 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
soon have, on the. part of their holders, a una
nimity of views and a wiUing acquiescence in
anything which promises to subserve and render
those peculiar and imperilled interests secure.
You have got seven-tenths of all that is requi
site to a monarchy, and the other three-tenths
cannot, from the nature of things, be long want
ing. It was this unanimity, resulting from neces
sary consolidation on this peculiar interest, that
gave to some 60,000 Southern slave-holders a
perpetually preponderating influence in the af
fairs of the general government, which neither
one nor all of the varying political interests, and
combinations of half as many millions of other
population have been able to countervail. ,
Combinations on an imperilled interest like
this, are necessarily fatal to any republic, not
itself entirely comprehended in the combina
tion. Had the stakes involved in the preservation
of slavery been of less pecuniary value, or had
the principles and practices of slavery been less
repugnant to everything around them, then
had the consolidation been less constraining, and
the results less decisive. Had the interests of
slave-holders remained unimportant as at the
time of the Eevolution, then had they remained
as harmless. But the unexpected and unex-

THE WAE NECESSITATED. 85
ampled rise of the importance of slave-holders'
interests, taking place contemporaneously with
the spread and maturing of the principles and
forms of fi:ee government, developed the latent
antagonism of the two systems, and necessitated
the present war, which might have been calcu
lated years ago, by any skilful and clear-minded
statesman, with as much certainty as the astrono
mer calculates an eclipse.

XY.
ARGUMENT DEFINED, AND FORCES POINTED OUT AS THEY
APPEAR IN HISTORY, WHICH FORCES HAVE FORMED AND
STIMULATED OUR SOUTHERN BRETHREN TO THEIR PRESENT
ONSLAUGHT ON ALL DEMOCRACY.
Besides obtaining a just apprehension of the
influence of slavery in general, to counteract the
progress of free government, we are here to
examine the influence in this direction of African
slavery as it exists in this country, and also as it
has existed during recent years, in contradistinc
tion from the same as it existed at and before
the founding of our free institutions. The ques
tion obtrudes itself for answer. Why has the insti
tution which at, and prior to, the adoption of the
Constitution exerted little or no influence adverse
to the rise and establishment of civil freedom,
since exerted so powerful an influence as to con
vert back again to principles of the darkest des
potism the sons of sires who, amidst the acting
of the same slavery system, suffered and bled for
freedom ? The answer is to be found in the
altered action of the system. At the same time
that slaves and their labor have risen enormously
86

POLITICAL EFFECT OP SLAVEEY. 87
in money value, and a stringent and powerful
police system has had to be everywhere put in
operation for the security of this peculiar species
of property, the slaves themselves, having ad
vanced greatly in attaining the language, senti
ments, intelligence, and civilization of their mas
ters, feel more and more keenly the wrong that
is done them by the system, and react against it
with more pressing and perpetual elasticity.
The fact that no arguments are heard from
their lips against the policy of their enslavement,
that few fights are made by them to demonstrate
their unwillingness to remain longer enslaved,
that only now and then a plot is discovered for
a general rising to free themselves, does not
prove that there is no strong and ceaseless pres
sure on their part against the confines that cir
cumscribe their freedom ; they rather, prove the
success with which their masters have learned
the arts that despots use to keep their victims in
subjugation. It is not our object here to discuss
the right or wrong of slavery. That there is
such a distinction, and that it is important to be
attended to, we freely admit ; but that is not the
theme of these remarks. These pages are not
intended to contain an essay on morals or reli
gion ; they profess to deal with politics purely ;
and with these only in reference to despotism
and democracy, and the relations or repulsions

8? JTATURAI. PISTORY OF SECESSION.
that necessarily exist between theip. Of this
subject we treat, as it applies to, and is illustrated
by, the past history and present condition of
affairs in the United States, — the home and seat
of the only permanent democratic government
the history of the world has yet presented.
Therefore, when we speak of the stringent legis
lation and police arrangements that have been
gradually built up around the slaves to keep
theni safe, at the same time and in the same pro
portion in which the money-value of these slaves
has gradually and enormo,usly increased; and
while we speak of the gradually increasing fit
ness of the slaves for freedofla, a?id their conser
quently increasing desiire aud demaud for free
dom, which takesi place at the same time that the
provisions for keeping thewi securely in bondage
are tightened and strengthened, o,ur object is not
to direct attention to the moral crirne of slavery
^t a,ll, bi\t purely tp present the fact of the per
petually iucreasing intensity of the conflict
between slavery and freedom, between despot
ism and democracy, -T- the development of the
latent and necessary conflict oi; the part of the
negroes to be free, and on, the part of the mas
ters to retain them in secure and profitable sub
servience to their lust of power and of gain.
Our object in turuiing attention to the constantly
increasing intensity of th,is cpipfliot is not to show

NEGROES TAUGHT DEMOCRACY. 89
the cruelty or the moral wrong of keeping the
negroes still in servitude, but to point out the
tremendous and necessary effect of the perpet
ually intensifying strife to mature and perfect
those masters, and such as are acting with them,
in the spirit and the precepts, the principles and
practices, of despotism, — of exercising despotic
and dictatorial control over their fellow-men.
Among the smaller changes that have taken
place, which have contributed to make up the
whole great sum of altered circumstances which
give to slavery, as it recently existed, an hun
dred-fold the power it once possessed to despotize
American democracy, is that mutual exchange
by which not only has the African imparted to
his American master much of his barbaric char
acter, and especially his native leanings toward
the darkest form of despotism, but in return has
received not only gradual enlightenment, civil
ization, and Christianity, but also a preference
and fitness for the institutions of free govern
ment. The history of the freed slaves colonized
in Liberia demonstrates this. And the possess
ing of this predisposition for free government,
which they could have acquired nowhere but in
this country, makes their bondage more grievous
to them, and their reaction against imposed
restraints more incessant and intense.
8*

XYI.
THE ABOVE DEFINED ARGUMENT PRESENTED IN DETAIL — THE
MOULDING, PRESSURE CONTINUALLY RESTING ON THOSE
WHO FEEL THEMSELVES RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRESERVA
TION OP QUIET IN THE SLAVE STATES  ITS EFIjECT.
We now propose to examine more in detail the
practical workings of those principles, and that,
too, under the circumstances which we have
above stated and defined.
The negroes have now come to be three or
four millions. The price of a field-hand has
risen from its former range of from one to three
hundred dollars to cotton-planting value of from
ten to fifteen hundred dollars, and a ready cash
sale at that. What is the mode of operating to
render this ainount of property secure and pror
ductive? The whole power of the United States army
and navy is understood to stand pledged to sup?
press insurrection and to return fugitive slavea
There is then soine danger that large or small
portions of this valuable property shall make
use of its legs and run away. There is also
danger, — grave enough, in the incipient stage
90

Peessuee op peril on slave-masters. 91
in which the peril existed seventy-five years ago,
to deserve a constitutional provision, — that this
intelligent property, of which " its follies and
its crimes have stamped it man," should take to
itself the weapons of vengeance and inflict im
mense sufferings on those whom it supposes to
be the authors of its conscious wrongs.
This danger is no less than the danger of
losing an aggregate of twenty-six hundred mil
lions of doUars' worth of property, and of the
devastation of a greater or less portion of the
soil of the Southern States, with the slaughter of
its white inhabitants. These surely are grave
perils, and the weight of them is sufficient of
itself to make despots of as many men as are
left to feel that the responsibiUty of providing
against these perils rests upon themselves.
The strain and pressure of such a responsibility
is probably entirely beyond the comprehension of
one who has been born and educated in the con
fiding quiet and equal privileges of democratic
civilization. Such an one has no experience in
his history in which to find a simile that would
parallel for an hour the strain of this life-long
responsibility that rests more or less sensibly on
every intelligent and habitual dweller in a slave-
holding community, but more sensibly and im
mediately on the slave-holder himself who has

92 natural history op secession.
a wife and children, parents, brothers, sisters, and
friends, involved with him in the same more or
less imminent peril. One, from prodigality or
moral refinement, may divest himself of any
desire or esteem for the pecuniary value repre
sented by property which statutes of the country
recognize and guarantee in slaves ; but the ter
rible consequences of pernaitting or provoking
any extensive struggle on their part to free
themselves must appall the stoutest heart that is
not prepared to sport with wide-spread devasta
tion and human suffering and slaughter.
With this standing peril ever hanging over
them, it may at first be supposed, that the South
ern mind had become callous to its force ; but
history, and somewhat extended personal obser
vation, have convinced the author that, from the
passion-kindling influence of the climate, from
the absence of other things to displace this from-
the attention, or from oliher causes, the fear of
slave insurrection, instead of being deadened by
use, remains extremely vivid, if it does not grow
increasingly so, in the majority of Southern
minds. I knew the ladies of an extensive neigh
borhood, in a Slave State, with scarcely any
exception, to pass a week of sleepless anxiety
and fear, because they heard a rumor that some

FORM OF CHARACTER WEOUGHT BY PEEIL. 93
bargeg filled with negroes were seen to pass a
neighboring river.
Accustomed from infancy to revel in the
broadest liberty that ever was coupled with the
Siweets of civilization, comparatively few men in
the Northern States are acquainted with any
object of fear, in heaven, earth, or hell, that is
capable of imposing on them the practical
restraint which the slave-holder, and those con
nected with him, ordinarily feel, from the fear
of a slave insurrection.* It is an imposed re
straint which they never question, never par
ley with. Its dominion over them is absolute.
4-n.d one of the functions of this absolute alle
giance is, never to allow its authority to be ques
tioned by others, within their borders or with
out them, so far as they have the power to
prevent. His Creator — and it is rare to find a Southern
man who questions either his existence or his
claims — may or may not be obeyed. That is
a matter which every individual is perfectly free
to exercise his own preference upon. The au-
* The tens of^iousands of lives, and the hundreds of millions of money,
which the existing war is yearly extorting from the Northern people, has
roused ia few if any of the minds of the millions who remain at home, the
amount of serious earnestness and persistent devotion which instantly took
possession of the mind of each intelligent Southerner, the moment he was
caUed to contemplate a serious dis.turbanoe of the ^ower-imposed qui?t of
iiieir slaves.

94 NATUEAL mSTOEY OP SECESSION.
thority of the country's laws and government,
every one is usually considered at liberty to
regard or disregard as he pleases. So also with
the claims of truth, justice, and humanity. But
any risk of raising a slave insurrection is not to
be incurred, come what will.
What is a republic, what is a democracy,
under such circumstances? What, but a con
ventional equality of command in a community
of despots?
Twenty-six senators, and three or four times
that number of representatives from the South
ern States, assemble annually at the national
capitol, professedly to legislate for the benefit
of the common population of the whole country,
and under oath to support the common govern
ment ; but, in reality, a leagued band, trained
and disciplined under recognized leaders, armed
with side-arms of the carnal sort, and with all
the panoply of rhetoric, logic, sophistry, parlia
mentary tactics, diplomatic guile, political effron
tery, and county-court tergiversation. But what
are they there to do ? One thing, — the same
that they have done from infancy, and will con
tinue to do as long as breath is in them and
they have the power of voluntary motion, — the
thing which will be done effectually in those
legislative halls and elsewhere, wherever these

SLAVE-HOLDEES AS GENERAL LEGISLATORS. 95
men are found, their own oaths, and the learn
ing, the logic, the rights, and the numbers of
their opponents to the contrary notwithstanding,
viz. : see to it that the absolute and practically
unlimited despotic power of masters over their
slaves remains undisturbed, unapproached by
any unfriendly restriction, check, or limitation ;
see that no law is passed, and no act unrebuked,
unrevenged, is performed, that would in the
remotest manner encourage a slave to run away
from his master, or inspire in the negroes, as a
class, the faintest gleam of hope or expectation
that theif oppressed condition is to be ameliorat
ed. In other words, the one unvarying task of
those assembled legislators from the Southern
States — the thing which they wiU be perfectly
sure to see accomplished at all times and in all
places, and despite all difficulties and opposition
— is to provide that the dominion of that malign
divinity, the presiding genius of slave-holding,
the very soul and essence of the darkest, deep
est, and most damning, form of despotism, before
whom th«y have bowed down and worshipped
all their lives, and (though less devoutly) their
fathers before them, remains unmolested, unin
fringed upon. This worship they pay and this
service they perform, not more because they
love to than because they must. To escape the

96 NATURAL mSTORY OF SECESSION.
inexorable exigency of the position in which
they have been born, requires a breadth of com
prehension, ability, and behevolencej which prob
ably it is not possible should be generated in
the walks of slave-holders.

XTII.
INTENSITY OP THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE PRINCIPLES
OP FREE GOVERNMENT AND THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH
SLAVES ARE GOVERNED  THE LATTER ANALYZED  THE
PRECEPT  THE PENALTY  CHECKS ON THE LATTER.
Why have the upbuildings and outgrowths of
institutions of benevolence, philanthropy, reli
gion, and missionary zeal, which have preemi
nently characterized, adorned, and blessed, our
common land, giving the powerful weight of
their testimony in favor of the beneficent influ
ence of free government, been able to accom
plish so little in mitigating the severe exactions
made upon the Southern slave, — in softening
the sharp iron of the despotism which has this
prone servitude for its base ?
The answer is found in the same facts that
account for the turning back of the wave of
free principles, which, sweeping from the North,
extinguished slavery in one-half of the original
States. The opportunity to peaceably abolish slavery
from the Southern States presented itself at the
time of the adoption of the present form of our
9 <¦ 97

98 NATURAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
general government. But it was an opportu
nity that soon passed, to return no more. The
^latent antagonism that existed between the
principles of despotism and democracy became
rapidly developed by the constantly irritating
contact of the two, and it soon became impos
sible to modify either, until the one should be
extinguished utterly by the armed and bloody
triumph of the other. As well might one go
on a mission of peace to the eternal abode of
devils and damned spirits, expecting to harmo
nize their jarring strifes, and to produce an
enduring compromise between the conflicting
passions of those who there abide, as think
effectually to obviate or compromise the conflict
that has raged in this country for the last half-
century, for the most part with unbloody weap-'
ons, but which has now assumed the more natu
ral and effective form of fierce and bloody, not
to say exterminating, war. Any truce, or com
promise, or compact, or division of territory,
that could be agreed upon, would of necessity
be only the inauguration of interminable, vexa
tious, bloody, and disastrous, hostilities.
Look at the mode of operation by which mur
murs are quieted, and aspirations after freedom
suppressed, by masters among their slaves. In

PEECEPT AND PENALTY FOR SLAVES. 99
doing this, we may as well start with the prac
tice at its origin, in Africa, where " nine-tenths
of the population are slaves to the other tenth," *
where the lives of slaves are held at so cheap a
rate, that they are slaughtered by hundreds,
as a token of respect to a deceased monarch.
There, we need not be told, that physical suffer
ings, unto permanent maiming, and the death
penalty, are inflicted without stint, wherever
and whenever the owner of a slave supposes he
has any occasion to inflict them. In the hands
of the slave-trader who brings them across the
ocean, or buys them to sell again after they ar
rive, the same mode^of government prevails,
mitigated by nothing but the increased pecuni
ary value of the slave, and the corresponding
pecuniary loss, in case of crippUng or killing
him, as he approaches the plantation where he
is to spend his life of labor.
When arrived on that plantation, and fixed in
his condition for life, and for the lives of his pos
terity after him, the precept by which he is, and
is to be, governed is still the will and pleasure
of his owner, and the penalty of violating that
precept is physical suffering, restrained only by
the pecuniary estimation in which he is held,
* This statement is quoted verbally from Commodore Gregory, of the
U. -S. Navy, who spent ten years in service on the Afirioan coast.

100 NATUEAL HlSTGEt OP SECESSION;
the greater or less humanity of his master, and
perhaps a law of the State, prescribing some
punishment for killing him, provided the murder
is confessedly unprovoked, and can be proved
by the testimony of white witnesses.
Look at these three items, that alone tend to
mitigate the intensity of Africa's barbarous des
potism. The high pecuniary value at which the slave
is held by his master acts to guard that slave
from the extreme of inhuman punishment and
death. Does this avail anything to obviate the
extreme degradation of his servile condition,
or the despotic supremacy of his master over
him ? If it does, then let us make due allow
ance. But though the degradation Of the Slave
whose master values him at a high price appears
not in every sense to be as low as that of one
whose life would be sacrificed for a trifle, yet
the negro, in his more valuable estate; is proba
bly the more intelligent, feels this servitude
more, and, though his elevation changes the
field of its operation, it does not, probably, mit
igate the tyrannous intent and purpose of his
master in holding him in bondage. Indeed^ the
intention of the master, in holding the high-
priced, intelligent negro in a bondage which
he strongly resists, is probably more tyran-

ABSOLUTENESS OF SLAVE DESPOTISM. 101
nical than that which holds the low-priced
slave, who scarcely has the intelligence or the
manhood to desire to be free. And what we
are looking for, in this investigation, is not the
degradation or suffering of the slave, or any
thing else, other than the despotic principle, and
purpose, and action, of the master ; and this, too,
only as the exercise of this despotic principle, or
purpose, on the part of the master, tends to
confirm itself, and to make him radically a
despot The legal restriction in the Slave States,
against the master, taking the life of his slave,
is just enough to constitute a legislative ac
knowledgment that the negroes are human be
ings, without practical force enough to afford
them any substantial protection, even of their
lives. The legal requirement in respect to tes
timony is so easily evaded, and the assertion of
resistance, or assault, on the part of the negro,
is so easily maintained by the master, that con
viction for the murder of a slave, if the murder
had been conducted with any prudent safeguard
against notoriety, would be impossible. But the
operation of pecuniary interest which the mas
ter has in his slave constitutes quite an ample
protection in this regard.
9*

XYIII.
THE ABOVE ANALYSIS CONCLUDED  CHECKS ON SEVERE PEN
ALTIES  BENEVOLENCE OP THE MASTER  THESE CHECKS
LIMITED AND REVERSED BY STATE NECESSITIES  RESULTS.
The enlightened benevolence of the Atneri-
can master — although this is a very uncertain
quantity, yet, in the aggregate, in comparison
with the murderous cruelty of the African mas
ter, it is exceedingly great and precious — consti
tutes the chief cause of mitigating the exercise
of that tyrannical authority which the American
slave-owner possesses ; thereby mitigating the
reactive effect which the exercise of that author
ity would have, to annihilate the remnant of his
own free principles. The enjoyment of ease
and affluence tends to make one generous
toward others. The Africanization which the
master's mind has undergone, through the influ
ence of negro educating and negro society, has
not entirely reversed this tendency.
If the principles of free government still re
tain any sway in the master's mind, they will
join their influence to that of a native or acquired
103

MITIGATIONS OF SLAVE DESPOTlBM -^ THEIB LIMIT. 103
benevolence, inducing that master to leave un
used much of the despotic power over his slave,
with which the civil code of his State invests
him. Hence arose that softening-down of the
claims and pretensions of mastership which had
well-nigh yielded up the whole system of slavery,
at about the period of the adoption of the
Federal Constitution. Hence, also, that lack of
sympathy with the slave system, which caused it
to be absolutely abhorred by thousands who
continued to practice it from the force of circum
stances, which they lacked the skill and energy
to control.
But all of these mitigating influences were
doomed to meet their limit, and their final defeat
and reversalj in the State necessity, as it may be
called, — the necessity of treating the negroes
in such a way as would secure the public welfare,
beyond a peradventure, against insurrectionary
disturbance. What this mode of treatment is,
it is not left wholly to individual judgment to
decide. Education, universal usage, and an
exacting public sentiment, determine that it
shall be such usage as will effectually keep down
all manifest aspirations after a better condition,
— that the art of reading and writing, and all
means of increased intelligence shall be, as far
as possible,inhibited,^^ that the personal property

104 NATURAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
held by slaves shall be kept down as near aa
possible to zero ; especially the possession of any
thing that might be used as an offensive or de
fensive weapon shall not be permitted; that
the orders of the master, any member of his
white family, or his overseer, shall be performed,
righji^or wrong, under penalty of the severest
chastisement. After all this has been exacted
and complied with, I know not that it is adding
anything, to say that the most obsequious defer
ence is exacted of, and paid by, every negro, to
every white person of the master-class when in
his presence.
The justice of the master's claim to every
thing the negro is, or has, or can produce, is
never permitted for a moment to be questioned.
The negro has no rights, is to advance none,
to defend none. Food and clothing of some
sort, and attendance when sick, are secured to
him by the master's property interest in his
health and efficiency. Other than these, it is
deemed to be extremely imprudent to allow a
negro to claim as his any right or privilege
whatever. To do so would open the way for
negroes to make larger and larger claims, and
would certainly lead to some struggle on their
part to maintain and enforce such claims. The
only way to keep them quiet is not to allow

MASTERS IttrST PUNISH SLAVES. 105
them to claim as their right anything whatever,
or to possess anything but what their master
pleases graciously to allow. Here is the hmit
that is set to the exercise of benevolence or free
principles on the part of the master among his
negroes. The exigencies of the public safety
forbid these bounds to be enlarged, and enforce
this prohibition by the peril of all the untold
loss and horrors of servile insurrection.
Look for a moment at the means by which
the slave-owner, be he benevolent or malevolent,
be he monarchist or republican, must enforce
upon his negro this abnegation of all claims to
any personal right, — this implicit, unquestioning
obedience to his owner's will. Suppose a negro
slave to question or resist his master's right to
dispose of him as he pleases. It matters not
when, or where, or in what manner, this lack of
submissiveness is manifested. There is one law fot
that refractory slave, and, like the laws of the
Medes and Persians, it changes not Physical
suffering must be meted out till that rebellious
will is broken. The punishment may be admin
istered by the owner in person, or by his deputy.
The master may or may not superintend and
prescribe the limit The punishment must
emanate from the master's right, and is to vindi-

106 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
cate and sustain his authority, and it is not
optional with that master whether to punish or
not. The first condition of owning a slave,
according to the African system Americanized,
the system universally practised in the Southern
States, is to enforce submission by corporal
punishment to any needed extent; and every
negro and every intelligent white person in the
South knows this to be so. So that to own a
slave and not whip him, is as impossible as it is
to Kve in the body without breathing, except so
,far as the slave anticipates the whipping, and
prevents it by sincere, unvarying, submissive
obedience. Other than this, there ds no alterna
tive, except to sell the slave, — a punishment
which he usually dreads next to death.
This whipping is not often done in public. It
is not usually done in the presence of the white
family, or where they will even hear the negro's
cries. The generally prevailing opinion- among
masters is, that the less of it is done, the better ;
and the more silently, the better. That every
expedient of successful government should be
resorted to in order to avoid it, both on account
of its unpleasantness, its brutifying effect on
the master, or those who act under him, and the
danger of damage to the slave. But, however

MASTERS MaST PUNISH SLAVES. 107
obscurely concealed, however remotely post
poned, there it is, known, calculated on, and
inevitable ; the slave that refuses to submit
implicitly to his master must be whipped till he
yields.

XIX.
RESULTS OF ABOVE ANALYSIS RECAPITULATED AND APPLIED.
We have, then, from an analysis of slavery,
this result : The slave is deprived of all rights,
has all aspirations after liberty suppressed, is
reduced to, and retained in, implicit subjection
to his master's will. He is placed in this position
by statute laws recognizing the claim of an
African captor, or purchaser, to the lifelong ser
vices of his slave, and of that slave's descendants,
and also recognizing this claim, now termed a
right, as it stands transferred from an African to
an American owner. This law is enforced, and
the benefits of this right are exacted, by the
ever-present fact or fear of corporal suffering,
inflicted to an unlimited extent by the authority,
and according to the will, of the slave-owner.
Any mitigation of these conditions is accidental,
— is due to the kindness and the skill, the benev
olent and freedom-loving spirit which the mas
ter may happen to possess ; and is limited and
restrained by the imminent danger that public
disturbance and incalculable calamity will result
108

SLAVE-HOLDING MAKES DESPOTS. 109
from any considerable relaxation, or failure to
enforce his claim, on the part of the master.
Now, and here, the very important question
arises. How long can a man occupy, exercise, and
enforce the claims of a master on his slaves,
without becoming himself imbued with the
spirit and principles of a despot, and without
having his attachment to the principles of free
government sadly undermined ?
Certainly, if that man has in his composition
the average natural amount of logic, he must
exercise the functions of master with extreme
reluctance, and must find his most cherished and
indulged associates remote from the servility of
slaves, or, before he is aware of it, the principles
of free government, as held by him, will have
become a mere inoperative, dreamlike theory,
however strongly he may suppose himself to be
attached to them ; and the whole tendency and
habit of his mind and character will have been
moulded to every lineament of a despot.
While the slave system was in its incipiency,
while the master held the unenlightened African
as much from motives of benevolence as of gain,
and cared little whether the worthless wretches
were retained or free, slave-holding could not
have had much power to mould the principles
and political habits of the master. But, as the
10

110 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
established institutions of the country began to
exert a pressure on that master in favor of the
principles of free government, and to demand
jfrom him a sincere and active support ; as the
^negro became more and more enlightened and
fit for freedom, and more and more desirous of
obtaining it, thus exerting a constantly increas
ing pressure against the force that kept him
down in servitude; and as, at the same time; the
high and advancing price of felave-labor induced
the slave-holder, from motives of pecuniary gain,
to grasp with new vigor; and exercise with new
stringency, the power by which he held hisslave
in bondage, -^— then it was that the power of the
practice of slaVe-holding became irresistible to
mould the governmental principles of the slave*
holder; then it was that the whole Southern
mind became so tempered with, and infected by^
the intoxicating sweets of despotic authority,
that nothing was wanting but the agitating pres^
ence of a bold and desperate leader, to precipitate
the infected mass into the solid form of a con
crete despotism.* And the present war has
* " I say to every man present, that there exists not on the face of the
earth to-day a deeper nor a darker despotism than now reigns over the
Southern people." — Speech of Gen. Corcoran on Boston Common, Aug. Z9th,
1862. " I had no idea that the whole people of a county could be so frightened
as to permit a few men like Walter Mitchell and Wm. B. Stone and their
confederaites to create a rftign of tettor in their midst. But such *aS the

HATEED TO PEEEDOM FOECED ON THE FIGHT. Ill
followed as naturally and as necessarily as dark
ness follows the setting of the natural sun. And
the present war must last, with all its world-
rocking commotions and its local devastation, till
one or the other of the conflicting principles,
either despotism or democracy, with its final ad
herents, no longer survives with power to carry
on the conflict When the Southern leaders tell
us (and no Southern man, except their leaders,
ever tells us anything, except what has been put
into his mouth) that they have been forced into
this fight, they tell the truth. And the trueness
of the statement arises on this wise : From the
moulding force of slavery, or, to speak with more
definiteness, from the moulding force of their
perilous mastership, acting in their education,
their characters have become stamped with every
lineament of despotism, and their interests, so
far as they are able to discern where they lie,
are identified with the perpetuity of that hoary
crime. Hence the presence of an antagonist so
inimical as a free, self-governing people, vital
with the spirit of their civil institutions, and
fact : the people were so frightened, that it would have been impossible to
have raised fifty men in the whole county to fight the few rebel soldiers in
Port Tobacco." — Private Letter from Charles Co., Md., Aug. 12th, 1862.
" The Confederates once whipped in Virginia, and you win hear one pro
longed and thundering shout for the downfall of this damnable government
from New Orleans to Fortress Monroe." — Private Letter from Charleston,
S^C; July 20ih, 1862.

112 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
shining with success, necessitates this war, and
will continue so to do till one or the other of the
hostile parties is converted or consumed.
This necessity for a state of war has arisen,
not from any change that has taken place in the
North ; not from anything the Northern people
have done ; but from the Southern leaders, who
act for the Southern people, having become re
converted back from democracy to despotism,
and seduced to repudiate the principles and to
subvert the institutions of their fathers by the
increasing profitableness of holding slaves.

XX.
PECULIAR QUALITIES CONFERRED ON THE MASTER OF SLAVES
BY HIS POSITION — PRACTICAL DISPLAY OP THESE QUAL
ITIES. Such being the educational power of master
ship to transform the Democrat into a Despot,
it follows that before the free institutions of our
government can prevail again over its former
territorial limits, not only must that source of
the pernicious education become extinct, but
another generation of Southerners must be edu
cated under different auspices. How effectually
the few years of the present war may avail to
displace the generation of its authors from mor
tal life, from political and social power, and to
correct the vicious educating of those who are
to succeed them in the leading places of South
ern politics and society, is a question that time
alone can answer. It is not, as the London
"Times'" affirms, that " the United States must do
as Britain did in 1783, or govern the South as
Eussia governs'Poland." The "Times," that vile,
subsidized tool of despots, knows, if it would
a^mit, that the United States occupy the same
10* 113

114 NATUEAL mSTOEY OF SECESSION.
position now which they occupied in 1783, as
the representatives and champions of free gov
ernment; and now, as then, the antagonistic
arms of despotism must yield before them, if
the "Times" and its august compeers cannot
succeed in lying them into such a state of fear
and uncertainty as to give up the contest
But we have not done with the practical de
tail of slave-holding, as it acts to mould the char
acter and habits of the master.
To say that it confers a habit of command, is
to describe but a part of that ingrained sense of
superiority, that perfect contour of lordliness,
which results from lifelong surveillance over a
subject race, and which has in it much that com
mands respect and exerts influence among men,
despite the absence of merit, of learning, and of
mental grasp, and the presence of much that is
mean, cruel, treacherous, dishonest, and unjust
It acts instinctively and powerfully to place its
possessor above your criticism, above your in
vestigation, and to command your reverend ac
quiescence without consulting your judgment or
your will. It can never be attained by study or
assumed by direct effort. It can never be gen
erated or preserved in a democratic state of
society. It must be conferred from infancyj

MASTERING TALENT.,OF SLAVE-HOLDEES. 115
doubtless becomes more or less hereditary, and
acts with the spontaneous, instinctive ease, not
of a second nature, but of a first. It results
from lifelong habits of the successful exercise of
dictatorial control over men. It enables its pos
sessor to take the first move, the vantage ground,
the choice of position, and contributes greatly
toward his success in all transactions with those
who have it not. This kind of superiority, when
possessed by only an individual or family, has
produced immense effects in the Old World ; but
when it comes to be the common heritage of an
indefinitely extended class, as in this country,
its full influence remains to be discovered. It
has inclined and enabled Southern leaders so to
husband the few political advantages they pos
sessed, and so to turn their very weakness to
advantage, that they have not only put a perpet
ual quietus upon all movements and tendencies
contrary to their own among their own seven
and three-fourths millions of poor white popula
tion, but to exercise a controlling influence in
our national affairs, over Northern majorities and
a predominance of learning, talent, truth, justice,
and consistency. So that said Southern leaders
have had their way in everything desired but in
preventing the material progress and multiplying
numbers of the Free States; and when they

116 NATHRAL HISTOEY OF SEe]ES8|eN,
found that, by virtue of dead weight, the North
was becoming too vast for them to handle, they,
by virtue of the quality we are considering, se
lected their own time and method and circum
stances for teriuinating their connection with it.
But, thanks to an overruling Providence, they
have let the matter of separation alone too long.
Although overreached, befooled, and betrayed,
and although we commenced this contest with
a national treasury robbed and bankrupted, ar
senals rifled of their contents, an army and navy
demoralized and depressed, and their remnants
scattered to the ends of the earth ; though the
national administration, for the first time com
posed practically of Northern men, without an
element of the hitherto all-controlling Southern
leadership to give it strength, cannot conceal its
weakness; and although, from the commence
ment of the war to the time of this writing, Sep
tember 12, 1862, our commanders in the field
appear to have been, on the whole, extensively
outgeneralled and baffled by that same disdain
ful assuming of the initiative on the part of their
antagonists, which h^-s baffled our congressmen
for half a century, — yet we expect, and not
without good reason, that by mere dead weight,
superiority of number^ and resources, we shall
tirjiHmph in the end.

SOUTHERN DICTATION. 117
It was this quality of Southern leadership, the
result of being born and educated masters, which
petulant Northern journalists, notwithstanding
the wonderful power which it exerts, and the
success of its applications, persist in denominat
ing " superciliousness," and " insufferable inso
lence," that inclined and enabled the South
Carolina legislature with impunity to mob the
agent (Judge Hoar) of Massachusetts sent to
prosecute a case in the United States court at
their capital, — that inclined and enabled Preston
S. Brooks with impunity to cudgel Senator
Sumner in his senatorial chair till a trifle more
of the same treatment would have terminated
his life, — that enabled Andrew Jackson to de
molish the United States Bank, and virtually to
terminate the application of Federal appropria
tions to purposes of internal improvement ; and,
under pretence of " conscientious scruples " and
" constitutional objections," with others like him,
his compeers and successors, to do whatever they
deemed best adapted to cripple the strength and
impede the prosperity of the Northern States, —
to establish a compromise Hne, bounding slave
territory on the North, when they thought such
action for their advantage, and abolish it when
they saw fit, — to resort to the doctrine of pop
ular sovereignty to abolish the Missouri Com-

118 NATURAL HISTORY DP SECESSION.
promise, thereby bringing Kansas into dispute,
between Free State and Pro-slavery parties, and
to resort to a military despotism to force slavery
into it as soon as it had become disputable, —
so perpetually to dictate the policy of the gen
eral government as to inhibit all acknowledgr
pient of nationality at honae or abroad, in Li
beria, Hayti, or elsewhere, to any people of the
jfaces from whom their sjaves are taken, ^- so to
dictate at the North the sentiments with which
negroes shall be regarded, as to exclude them
from the cominon rights of citizens and from
military service, at the imminent risk of
losing all we have at stake in the present war,
in consequence of th^t exclusion.

XXI.
OTHER TRAITS OP CHARACTER CONFERRED BY HIS POSITION
ON THE SLAVE-MASTER, FITTING HIM FOR WAR; AND
DISPLAYED BY HIS CLASS IN THE PRESENT CONTEST.
Aside from the quality mentioned in the last
chapter as resulting from lifelong presiding over
a servile race, there are other qualities, or traits
of character, acquired thereby, and not often
derived from any other source. Among these
is a certain wakeful, watchful, reconnoitring
alertness, an instinctive, habittial quickness to
apprehend danger, and effectually to provide
against it, the result of being born and bred in a
state of perpetual war, where tremendous penal
ties for remissness were continually pending.
What ! it will be asked by some, is the state of
the slave-holder a state of perpetual war ? The
answer to this inquiry is. Yes. And the only
qualification needed to explain the answer is;
that the " master race " is, in general, in a state
of complete triumphant success ; so that very
little fighting has to be done. The only reason
that there is not frequent and active fighting is;
that the hegrbes are effectually deprived of
119

120 NATURAL mSTOEY OP SECESSION.
means and opportunities to fight with the re
motest probability of success. That there is just
and sufficient cause for constant war, the negro
and his master alike well know. It is the disci-
pline and practice of keeping his negroes thus
perpetually deprived of the means and oppor
tunities of waging active war, that gives the
slave-holder the habit, and at length the power,
of examining, measuring, estimating, and com
prehending every man that presents himself for
acquaintance, or for transactions with him : that
is, he measures, estimates, and comprehends him
so far as to arrive at an approximately certain
conclusion as to what course of action he is likely
to pursue, what benefits or mischiefs are likely
to accrue to himself (the slave-holder) and to
his cause therefrom, and how, and how far, it
becomes incumbent on him to make provision
against such mischiefs.
The slave-holder also understands and acts on
the importance of tampering with his enemy, to
bribe and disarm his hostile feeling, and thereby
lessen the danger and the frequency of resistful
encounters. Every time he corrects a servant
for misbehavior, he fights an engagement in
the general perpetual battle, by complete suc
cess in which on the part of the master the
negro race are kept against their wills in im-

SOUTHERN SELP-PEpSEEVATlON. Igl

plicit and profitable servitude. Another lesson,
eniinentjy fitting one for active war, which the
master of slaves is compelled to learn, is to take
care of himself The war he is perpetually en
gaged in carrying on is not a war with equals ;
it is war with a servile race ; and in such a war
it would be disgracefully imprudent to allow
himself to be injured. Hence the purpose to
inflict a punishment, or to transfer by sale, or
anything that is likely to rouse the negro to
resistance, is instinctively kept an inscrutable
secret; the negro is eyed and calculated for
till it is seen that he is about to come into a po
sition where he can be captured, handcuffed, and
h9,ndled at pleasure, and without peril to the
master. Hence the sly, secret, stealthy operations of
the Southern forces in the existing war, and
their persistent and perpetual refusal to fight,
except where overwhelpiing numbers, or advan
tageous position, or some other advantage on
their side appears to them to place their success
beyond a question ; also their unparalleled and
inimitable indifference to what all other warriors
have esteemed to be the disgrace of fleeing be
fore the face of an equal foe. Hence, too, their
torpedoe? by land and sea, their bushwhacking,
j^fir ai!sa?pi?i^ti,Pn of pickets, picking off officers
11

122 NATUEAL mSTOEY OF SECESSION.
in engagements, and the like, — proceedings
which have been criticised and complained of
by Northern men as " outrageous," " mean," and
" treacherous," but which result necessarily from
the lifelong education every Southern master
has received. Hence, also, the noteworthy suc
cess of the South in taking prisoners. Though
whipped in three or four battles, where they are
victors in one, they take more than prisoners
enough to exchange for all they lose.
Efficiency of action is another trait that has
become confirmed, and, to a great extent, per
fected, in the character of the slave-holders ag a
class. It arises from the tremendous penalties
of failure in dealing with their negroes, which
penalties are continually hanging over them, and
from habits of complete success which have for
ages attended their labors for the subjugation of
the Africans. Extremely few experiments are
ever tried by this class of men. Hence their
notorious destitution of any spirit of invention,
and the exceeding slowness with which they
admit the most important and most demon
strated improvements of the age.
This habit of decisive action, as displayed by
them in inaugurating and carrying on the pres
ent war, has been remarked and wondered at,
ridiculed and doubted, by observers in and out

SOUTHEEN DECISIVENESS. 123
of authority in the North, and in Europe. It
was thought by some to augur something in
favor of the South in reference to the final re
sult, and was regarded for a time by all as char
acteristic of this particular contest. But it is a
characteristic habit of Southern leaders, a class
of men who, from educational causes above-men
tioned, never accept of partial success unless it
be temporarily, and as a means of achieving
complete and final triumph in the end. ^
Language is feeble to portray that absolute
determinedness not only to succeed or perish,
but not to be defeated when one has perished,
which becomes habitual to the leading Southern
mind as a necessary result of a lifelong contem
plation of the imminent and enormous perils of
failure in dealing with a body of three or four
millions of slaves, valuable and intelligent, and
daily increasing in value and intelligence, and in
disposition and in power to be free. The pres
ent onslaught on the national existence, vast as
is the scale of its operations, presents but a fee
ble exposS of the infernal force that has been
gendered and will be matured by a few gener
ations more of a hmited class of slave-holders
being permitted to bear the responsibilities and
ply the functions of their vocation in ^the bosom
of this otherwise democratic republic. If the

124 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
Northern people or the national administration
choose to carry On war with these men as an
experiment, to see whether their character and
purpose will not change under the operation,
they can do so ; but it will be an experiment of
transcendent costliness, and the issUe of that war
will be dictated by this unbending trait of
Southern character. With an utterly inexhaust
ible fund of patient mildness on the side of thei
government, — a mildness that refuses to exter
minate anything, even for the salvation of its
own confiding, imperilled, iirtpoverished, tor
mented and tortured dependents, — and on the
other side a relentless decisiveness as utterly un
changing ; exhaustless resources on the part of
the former combatant can only prolong the war,
and postpone a catastrophe which those resources
cannot finally avert.

XXII.
THE FALLACY OF SUPPOSING THAT DISTINCTIONS OF COLOR CAN
CONSTITUTE ANY PERMANENT LIMIT TO THE DESPOTIC EX
ERCISE OP AUTHORITY OR GREED FOR POWER ON THE PART
OF SLAVE-MASTERS.
One important point has been implied in the
previous pages, which has not been explained.
We have spoken of the despotic character ac
quired by the master in dealing with his slaves,
as if the same would still attach to him in his
dealings with white people, — we have spoken
of the peculiarities of the particular modes of
warfare by which he maintains his victorious su
premacy over the negro race, as if these same pe
culiarities would stiQ characterize him in his war
against the free North in pursuit of the liberty
of holding other men in bondage.
Now the Southerners and their Northern
friends will strenuously protest against this mode
of reasoning. They will maintain most ear
nestly that they never intended to treat gentle
men, or white people, in anything like the way
in which they are obliged to treat the blacks.
A few months ago,, this kind of talk sounded
11* 185

126 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
well, and gained believing listeners ; and the
danger is, that a few months hence, being sauced
with a good deal of Southern blandishment, and
seasoned with a spice of concealed Northern trea
son, it will again be urged on the Northern gov
ernment and people with some sucoess, namely,
that men have one character in their dealings
with black men, and another in their dealings
with white men, — that they may be the rank
est despots in their dealings with negroes, and
the most sincere of democrats in all their rela
tions to the whites. We shall, doubtless, be told
presently that it was altogether an oversight, re
pented of and apologized for, that during the
heat of the contest their ideas became somewhat
mixed, and in language, in '^deeds, and in bitter
violence of feeling, " they unfortunately identi
fied us with the despised negroes. And this toOj
only so far as they supposed themselves to have
just cause to believe that we placed ourselves on
a level with the negroes, and were really em
ployed in aiding them to secure their liberty by
a servile war."
Two considerations stand in the way of all
this. First, we are not dealing with the admitted
intentions of slave-holders, or of any other men.
We are contemplating their characters, the laws
that govern their a'ctions, that have governed

WmTE SKINS NO BAB TO DESPOTISM. 127
them hei'etofore; and wiU govern them hereafter,
whether the performers of those actions intelli--
gently design it or not ; and never ruOre legiti
mately than during the din of conflict, when
customary disguises and artificial restraints are
necessarily forgotten, and the roused individual
displays his true self with more sincere honesty
than it would have been possible for him to prac
tise, had he not been thrown entirely off" his
guard by the fire and strifes of war. These sin
cere traits of character, these laws that have
governed and still must govern their undisguised
conduct, were displayed by guerrilla warfare,
masked batteries, assassination of pickets, poison
ing springs, and selling poisoned provisions to
our soldiers, sequestration of the property of Un
ion Southerners, persecution, imprisonment, and
hanging, of such Unionists, sinking infernal ma
chines to blow up our ships on the water, and
planting torpedoes to mutilate and murder un
suspecting men on land, plundering and disrob
ing our dead on the battle-field, robbing the
wounded of their haversacks and leaving them
to die by starvation ; disinterring our dead to
get their skulls for drinking-cups and their bones
for relics, treating prisoners with wanton outrage
and cruelty, and shooting them down in cold
blood, -^ these, and a volume more of like trans-

128 NATURAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
actions perpetrated by the Eebels in this War,
verify beyond dispute, that the distinction made
by slave-holders between white and black in the
putting forth of their democratic or despotic prin
ciples and modes of action, is a purely fictitious
and fanciful distinction, and wherever it is ob
served at all, it is so observed only for lack of
power to enforce the cruel dictates of their ty
rannical principles and habits, and the desire of
their Africanized, barbarous hearts.
The truth is, — and this is the second objec
tion we bring against the pretended reasoning
of the slave-holders and their friends, — that the
principles and habits of despotism are supreme
and all-moulding in their possessor. He cannot
rid himself of their all-controlling force. As weU
might you plant a tree with all its roots above-
ground, and all its leafy boughs beneath the sod,
and expect it to flourish and bear fruit ; as well
might you take a child of the ordinary human
stock, in full health, and make him promise and
swear not to grow to exceed three feet three
inches in stature, and not to exceed fifty pounds
in weight, as expect a man who has been born
and bred to the exercise of despotic control over
men, to lay by the principles and practices of
despotism, and become an honest democratic
member of a democratic community. He may

DESPOTS WILL DEAL DESPOTICALLY. 129
become such a member of such a community ;
but it will be only in submission to a force that
utterly precludes the possibility of his doing oth
erwise. And the moment that compelling, co
ercive force is relaxed, that moment, as a per
fectly elastic physical body, released from the
force that had compressed it, springs again into
its full former form and dimensions, so the coer-
cively democratized despot will instinctively
spring again into the exercise of his former
despotic principles and habits, all the purposes
he may have formed, aU the promises he may
have made, and all the oaths he may have
taken, to the contrary notwithstanding.
Not only is it the law of the human mind, —
a law admitting of no exceptions, other than
such as are made by compulsive force, — that
despots will deal despotically ; but it is also such
a law that they will do so ultimately, to the full
extent of their ability, to the utmost limits of
the population over whom they are able to es
tablish their control. And the idea that our
Southern despots, having three or four millions
of blacks under their unquestioned controlj
would bound their exercise of and their greed
for power, by the line that limits the complex
ion of the African skin, is one of the shallow-

130 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
est fallacies with which a rational man ever un-
took to deceive" himself
Like the facility with which wealth is accu
mulated, so the ease of accumulating despotic
power increases in geometrical ratio to what is
already possessed.
Had the Southern tyrants had no supreme
control over millions of blacks, they could neyer
have subjugated the seven and three-fourths
millions of poor white population. Had they
not succeeded in establishing an absolute des
potic control, over these millions of non-slave-
holding whites in the Southern States, they would
not have been able to entail on the North these
years of bloody and exhausting war for the
enlargement and perpetuation of their despotic
sway. When the framers of the Constitution guaran
teed to slave-holders the perpetual, quiet pos
session of their increasing numbers of African
slaves, they put into the hands of that class of
men a weapon wherewith they could presently
put that Constitution, with all its beneficent
provisions, out of existence. When the rise of
the cotton-trade gave new vitality and pecuni
ary power to slave-holders, it necessarily im
parted to them the disposition and the power
to use that weapon.

CONDITIONS OF PEACE. 131
If the present war does not deprive slave-hold
ing of permanent vitality, so that it can never
take root and sprout into vigorous growth again,
then the present war will act on the causes
that produced it, only as a limited amount of
water acts on a conflagration which it suffices
only to deaden, while it does not quench.
The slave-holders and their apologizing friends
tell us that ""the abolitionists are the cause of
the present war." Every man who refuses to
bow his neck in permanent subjection to the
Southern despots whom slavery has raised up, is
the cause of this war by said refusal. If the
whole Northern population had so bowed their
necks, then would there have been no war, and
on no other condition. On any other condition
than that perpetual and universal submission on
the part of the whole Northern population to
be ruled over by the masters of the Southern
slaves, the present war will rage, and must inev
itably rage, in one form or another, and at longer
or shorter intervals, till either despotism or de
mocracy is exterminated frem within our coun
try's boundaries.
Whether the genus Despot can be preserved
and propagated by the subject class of the South
ern despotism, is a question on which there need

132 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
be no doubt or controversy. The change of
place from the subject to the dominant class in
a despotic community, is a natural and easy
change. And unless the blacks and whites of
the subject class in the Southern States are ele
vated to the rank, and inspired with the princi
ples of equals among equals in a democratic
community, as sure as that the dead carcass
breeds worms, so sure is it that the dominant
class will not long be wanting, and the despotic
form of Southern society will be preserved, with
more or less detriment and peril to the demo
cratic North. And those Northern-bom and
Northern-t)red politicians who are laboring with
intense persistency, by opposing the emancipa
tion war pohcy, to conserve th,e intei^ests of
self-immolated slave-holders, are thereby doing
all that God has placed it in their power to
do, to forge and fasten on thsir own posterity,
and on all the freemen of the North, the same
inhuman despotism, which, at this hour is sub
mitting to every Southern white man between
the ages of sixteen and forty-five (sixty in some
states), who is not the owner of twenty slaves,
the cool alternative of placing himself in the
front of a deadly fight for destroying the gov
ernment of his fathers, or among t^ose who

IMPORTANT ALTERNATIVES. 133
are being led out by scores, and shot down hke
dogs, for not obeying their leaders.*
* Cincinnati, Sept. 15, 1863. The Gazette has a Leavenworth despatch
which says : " Gen. Blunt at last accounts was at Fort Gibson, preparing
to start for Fort Scott. Eefagees from the rebel conscription are coming
iuto Blunt's lines by hundreds. Theb: sufferings are represented as inde
scribable. More than one hundred Union men -have been shot and hung at
Fort Smith since the rebellion begun." The Nashville Union of the 6th
October, 1863, says : " It is not known, we believe, that the privilege of
habeas corpus has been suspended altogether in the Confederacy, for over
twelve months. We have the highest judicial authority for stating this
fact, although we cannot give any name. The suspension was made by a
private order of JeflF. Davis to the leading judicial offi,cers, and never has
been published. Probably not one man in fifty thousand in aH Eebeldom is
aware that for over twelve montlis, the privilege of habeas corpus has not
existed in the South at. all. Our authority ou this point, we repeat, is
unquestionable." A volume might be filled with similar accounts.

XXIII.
RECAPITULATION — THE SEVERAL WAYS IN WHICH SLAVERY
ACTS, TO RECONVERT MASTERS BACK PROM DEMOCRACY
TO DESPOTISM, AND TO CONFER ON THEM WARLIKE QUAL
ITIES. We have now considered in detail, to the ex
tent proposed, the operation of slavery as it has
existed since the change that was wrought in it
after the adoption of the Constitution ; namely, its
operation to convert back to despotism the sons
of sires who fought, bled, toiled, and sacrificed,
without remission and without reserve, to win
the independence of our common country, and
to establish within it the glorious fabric of free
government, an achievement which has brought
more of hope and joy and of substantial happi
ness to the human family than any other event
that has occurred since the dawn of time, except
the advent of the Christ of God.
We have seen that slavery, in its modem
form, necessarily concentrates such an enormous
amount of imperilled interest, antagonistic to
everything that pertains to freedom, as would
overthrow a stronger government than ours, had
184

RECAPITULATION. 135
not the potent cause of freedom rapidly and
gloriously accumulated to itself an amount of
population and resources that wellnigh out
weighs the available resources of the remaining
portion of the world. We have seen that, in
addition to vast pecuniary interest, the loose
luxuriance of a semi-barbarous state of society,
the intoxicating sweets of despotic sway, and a
powerful practical predominance in all national
affairs, — all which to their possessors depend
on the maintenance of the slave system, — the
dreaded horrors of slave insurrection are per
petually impending, to enforce on the (" master
class " a unity of purpose, a harmony of action,
a subjugating of every voluntary power to the
one ruling necessity, which is, of itself, the high
est, strongest, form of despotism. We have
seen that lifelong compliance with this enforced
necessity of despotic action must mould and
fashion the character of the slave-holder, whether
he will or not, with all the features of a despot
We have seen that the habit of command, if
that term be used to cover the attendant pecu
liarities of the habit it describes, together with
the advantages resulting to them from their
own enforced unity of action and concentration
of interest, has inclined and enabled a few thou
sand slave-holders, not only to mould and man-

138 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
age their own seven and three-fourths milhons
of non-slave-holding white population, like pot
ters' clay, but, in the legislative, executive, and
judicial branches of our national government,
to do everything they could desire, except fa
tally to suppress the rapid increase of numbers '
and material prosperity at the North.
We have seen that, aside from the direct effect
of slave-holding to despotize the principles and
habits of the master, the influence of negro
associations from youth to hoary age, from gen
eration to generation, must have a powerful
effect, in his comparative seclusion from other
society, to depress and barbarize the standard
of his civilization, — thus giving powerful collat
eral aid to his natural lust for gain and lust for
despotic power ; also to disincline and unfi him
to return to the political preferences and affec
tions of his fathers, and to do away with the
compunctions he might Otherwise be supposed
to have, for using the despotic power he pos
sessed in a barbarous way and for barbarous
purposes. A state of war is perfectly normal to a des
potism. It is the reverse of this to a democracy.
So rtiuch so, that even democratic material has
to be thrown into grades of enbordinate and

EECAPITULATION. 137
commander, and the whole placed under a despotic
head, before it can be called an army, or become
at all reliable for fighting purposes. We have seen
that a state of mastership over a subject race, as
the negro race is held in the Southern States
in recent years, is, and necessarily must be, a
state of war, and calls into constant and vigorous
exercise all those accomplishments of strategy, re-
connoissance, inscrutable reticence, and decisive
action, which are the highest attainments of the
warlike leader; while the act of corporal pun
ishment, which must be perpetually pending,
and more or less frequently performed, serves to
brutalize the finer feelings, and divest the state
of actual war of much of the repugnance with
which it would necessarily present itself to other
classes of society.

XXIV.
ANTAGONISM OF DESPOTISM AND DEMOCRACY OVERT AND TAN
GIBLE  MILITARY ORGANIZATION AND ACTION PERFECTLY
NATURAL AND HEALTHFUL TO A DESPOTISM, BUT DIFFI
CULT AND DESTRUCTIVE TO A DEMOCRACY.
It has been stated in the foregoing pages of
this work, that despotism and democracy, sla
very and free government, are inimical to each
other, — that exterminating hostility must rage
between them till one or the other perishes,
wherever they coexist.
This is not a mere antagonism of abstract
principles. The antagonism of principle works
itself out in concrete form; and the different
steps of its operation are not too secret to be
uncovered and explained.
In no respect is this overt antagonism more
apparent than in the military qualities which
despotism imparts, the military grades it im
poses, the military strength it relies upon, and
the military spirit and habits which it produces ;
while the action of democracy is the reverse of
this in every particular.
In monarchical government, the whole reli-
188

DEMOCRACY" PACIFIC. 139
ance for securing immunity from an invasion of
national territory or rights is military strength,
which bids defiance to the power that threatens
wrong. As soon as wrong is threatened, mili
tary qualities are put in action to forestall the
execution of that threat ; whereas, in the demo
cratic community, the principle acted on is, that
if there is no tension, there will be no rupture ;
if there is no compression, there will be no ex
plosion. Entirely occupied in developing their
own resources of peace, the people of a demo
cratic community naturally judge others by
themselves, and suppose that every civil com
munity is so employed. They think little of
the need of defence, and have no motive to
assail. Peace is. to them so much more profit
able than war, they are slow to believe that
other nations regard their interest in a different
light. Indeed, it is no small source of their felt
security, that from their example of affluence,
and from the lucrativeness of their commerce, it
is really more profitable for their neighbor to be
at peace than to be at war with them. The
very contagion of their open, tolerant, and un-
warlike feeling exerts no small influence to
keep other nations from aggression. From the
very constitution of society, organically des
titute of a watchful head or leaders who feel

140 natural history of secession.
themselves habitually responsible for the wel
fare of the whole, it is almost impossible to
alarm a democratic community; and still more
difficult to obtain effective action, where action
depends on the spontaneously harmonious move
ment of the headless and disintegrated mass.
And when the democratic people do move for
military effect, it is only by an abandoning of
their characteristic state and modes of action,
and adopting those of despotism, to such an ex
tent as to incur some danger that they will not,
when war is over, readily return to democratic
form. And were the object fought for any other
than to repel an assault on their civil liberties,
the danger would be imminent, that free princi
ples would be affected unfavorably by their
course of action. So that in addition to the
peril of being subjugated by military force, such
is the repugnance of a state of civil freedom to
a state of war that a democratic government is
in imminent peril of being worried out of exist
ence as a democracy, by the perpetual menace
and irritation of a despotic institution within
its boundaries, or a despotic government located
on its borders.
Such a despotic government on its border,
having, as all neighboring governments have, or
suppose themselves to have, continually, some

WAR DESTRUCTIVE TO DEMOCRACY. 141
causes of complaint against its neighbor, and
naturally and necessarily resorting to military
menace to obtain redress and secure future re
spect, thereby forces on its democratic neighbor
the necessity of frequently abandoning her nat
ural modes of action, of sensibly interrupting
the lucrative employments of her citizens, to
assume a warlike attitude and assume the grad
ing and the drill, and take up the weapons, of
despotism to repel threatened assault.
So great is the peril from this source that
under the supervision of divine Intelligence, no
permanently democratic government came into
existence until a whole broad continent had
been prepared and set apart for its develop
ment, with broad and effective ocean barriers
on every side between it and the nearest des
potic power. And the practical success of ocean
steam navigation, which has brought the oppo
site shores of these barrier waters so near to
gether, was not permitted to take place until
the democratic power on this continent had
passed the perils of its infancy. If leading
Southerners or their allies and abettors, the'
monarchists of Europe, are aiming, through the
unguardedness of the present national adminis
tration, or the so-called Democratic party of the
North, to subvert and finally ruin the democratic

142 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
institutions of this country, as they doubtless
very well understand, nothing else is necessftry
to that result but the recognition of a Southern
government, founded on slavery as its capital
institution.

XXV.
SAME GENERAL SUBJECT CONTINUED — THE POOR WHITES OF
A SLAVE-HOLDING COMMUNITY EQUIVALENT TO A STAND
ING ARMY, WHEN CONTRASTED WITH THE DESTITUTION OF
COMBATANTS WHICH MARKS A DEMOCRACY.
The overt antagonism of monarchy to free
government, bodied forth by the slave interest
in the South, against the active freedom of the
Northern portion of this country, is, perhaps, in
nothing more apparent than in the idleness it
induces in the great majority of the Southern
whites. This is done, in part, by rendering "labor
disreputable, — throwing a stench of servility, an
air of degradation, about industrial pursuits, fol
lowed for the honest earning of one's livelihood.
It is done, in part, by rendering labor unne
cessary to the whites. The mild climate, with
scarcely any winter, reduces the list of absolutely
necessary things for one to live on, to a very
small number and amount The abundance
with which these are produced, under a South
ern sun, makes them easily attained. The great
profit of slave-labor leaves much to be disposed
of by the slave-holder gratuitously to friends
143

144 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
and dependents, and semi-gratuitonsly to all who
need. The characteristic and habitually easy
handling, by the masters, of what their negroes
earn, serves to throw an odor of niggardliness on
the small earnings and savings of one who works
with his own hands. The same result is stUl
farther promoted by the monopoli?;ing of the
land, and of the production of the great staples
of trade by the wealthy slave-owner, leaving
very scanty resources for the white man to
spend his industry on, unless he goes with the
negroes into the field, for negro wages, which
almost none will do.
The result is, that the poor whites, who con
stitute the immense majority of the whole South
ern -population, lie perpetually in unconfined
idleness, with nothing to lose, and little to
fear, from any change of circumstances; ever
ready, at the shortest notice, to be constituted
into a military force, without pay or rations,
to be precipitated upon any offending or unof
fending neighbor, at the option of their naturi^l
leaders, the slave-holders ; thus constituting a
force but few removes from a standing ^.rmy,
perpetually menacing those, who, being demo
crats, must necessarily be hated by the despotic
slave-holders. The full force of this standing menace is npt

SOLDIEES HAED TO EAISE IN A DEMOCEACY. 145
perceived until the peculiar character of the
community against which it is directed is brought
to view. It is a community of preeminently
industrious, thriving, individuals. The pressure
of dictatorial authority, and its hampering institu
tions, has long since been removed. With almost
the freedom of the savage state are combined the
refined enlightenment, the upward aspirations,
and the susceptibility of being injured, peculiar
to the highest civilization. The humblest indi
vidual in that community, excepting a few who
are a prey to rare vices or misfortunes, has the
prospect of easy competency, and an open road,
if he chooses to follow it, to positions of the
highest social eminence. The consequence is,
that there is hardly a class, however small, who
can be spared to take up arms, and meet the
standing menace of the South. Whoever does
this has, in most instances, to leave a suffering
family and a neglected business. Our own mer
chant marine cannot be manned without draw
ing largely on the aid of foreigners. Except a
few for officers, our native-born citizens can be
better employed. When the worst has come,
and an army must be raised to defend the North,
in the absence of despotic coercion to enforce
sacrifice, enormous outlays must be incurred in
wages, bounties, subsistence, and pensions, to fill
13

146 NATURAL fflSTORY OP SECESSION;
the army ranks with men, who are accustomed
to every comfort, and to the enjoyment of more
or less accumulated and still accumulating wealth.
Aside from the enormous public expense, to
induce the enlistment of these men, and the
pecuniary sacrifice that many of them still make
by enlisting, they feel it to be a great sacrifice
to leave their quiet and happy homes, for the
perils and privations inseparable from a cam
paign ; whereas, the Southern ranks, by a simple
authoritative decree, are filled with men who
have nothing to leave, and nothing to peril, but
the semi-enjoyment of a degraded, ignorant, and
poverty-stricken existence, by being drafted into
a Southern army, without pay, subsistence, or
clothing, to any considerable amount, beyond
what they can supply themselves with, or plun*
der from friends or foes,* and all at the bid of
despots whose dictation they are almost " un-
gifted with any ability to resist," — The North,
* " Many a Northei-n man, of the pickets especially, has been killed for
his clothes." — Army correspoTicUnt.
A correspondent of the Lowell News, who has lately escaped from Savan
nah, tells the following story: —
" After the assault on Fort Wagner, when Colonel Shaw was killed, a
rebel soldier was showing his boots in Savannai, and bragging how he got
them. He said he attempted to take them off a Yankee soldier on that fatal
field, who, though wounded, remonsti-ated, saying there were dead ones
enough from whom he might take a pair. Then, with a fiendish exultation,
he went on to say how he thought he wouldn't rob the wounded, so, putting
his bayonet through the man's heart, he took the boots and came away. If
devils ever dance, that fellow should be counted in, boots and aU."

SLAVERY AND DEMOCRACY INCOMPATIBLE. 147
at the same time, not only having no competent
leaders, but, from the construction and habits of
its society, being almost incapable of producing
leaders competent to conduct its affairs, in a
state of war, to any satisfactory result.
Under these circumstances, aside from the in
delible disgrace, enfeeblement, and humiliation,
of parting with a needed portion of our national
domain, to permit the establishment of a slave-
holding confederacy on the borders of this re
public would be about as bald a suicide as a
nation of idiots could commit.
A perpetual series of alarms, which the lead
ers of such a confederacy would instinctively
be raising, at no cost to themselves, and for mere
amusement, would, in a few years, worry the
Northern democratic government out of exist
ence, by keeping it in a state of afflicted uncer
tainty, more disastrous to its delicate and varied
industrial and commercial interests than actual
war. No sane man can pretend that treaties
with such a confederacy would avail any more
than did the official oaths of the traitor senators,
congressmen, and cabinet officers, who gendered
it

XXVI.
VIEW OP THE ALTERED CONDITION OP AFFAIRS IN 1860, COM
PARED WITH 1789  WAS THE PRESENT PRECIPITATION OP
HOSTILITIES NECESSARY ?  AS VIEWED BY NORTHERN MEN,
IT WAS NOT  AS VIEWED BY SOUTHERN MEN, IT WAS.
In the light of the foregoing reflections, we
are, perhaps, prepared to make some just esti
mate of the real and immediate causes of the
existing war. In attempting to do so, we find
that natural history is encroaching more nearly
than before on the boundaries of history proper ;
and the natural causes which we have hitherto
been tracing in their action, irrespectively of
any human design or intelligent purpose, will
henceforth be bodying themselves forth in the
intelligent purpose and resolute action of the
prime movers of this nefarious Rebellion.
Slavery, as we now are called to look upon it,
has advanced from the state of unimportance
and of non-influence in which it did not interfere
with the declaration of our independence, or the
adoption of our national Constitution, in 1776-
'89, to a condition of all-moulding influence and
incalculable pecuniary importance, in 1860. It
148

INFLUENCE O'F SLAVEEY IN 1€60. 149
has moulded Southern society into the grades
of despotism. It has reduced the mass of non-
slave-holding whites to a state of degraded igno^
ranee and poverty, bereft of any capacity or
disposition to controvert the authority of any
body who may assume to dictate to them. It
has, by its necessary action, moulded the senti
ments and habits of the master, to the purest,
fiercest form of despotism, reversing the demo
cratic character and devotion of his illustrious
sires, and putting him under the pressure of
pecuniary and social influences adequate to dis
pel all hesitancy as to maintaining his present
position. He has retained just enough of de
mocracy to serve as a rule of harmonious action
between himself and his fellow-despots, as they
serve together, with one heart and one mind, in
profound obedience to the dictates of their one
consolidated interest. The practice of holding
slaves has conferred on him almost all the qual
ities of a military strategist and leader, in a
high -degree; has done much to divest him of
any aversion to a state of war, and he has be
come conscious of his irresponsible sway over
the mass of poor whites in his own section.
The practice of slave-holding has also conferred
on the master the faculty of controlling, and its
stringent necessities have supplied him with an

150 NATURAL mSTORY OF SECESSION.
efficient motive to control the policy, and, to a
great extent, the action, in detail, of the general
government. The question here presents itself, demanding
to be answered, whether natural causes, at this
time, necessitated a precipitation of the armed
conflict. Had the antagonistic principle of des
potism, as prevailing at the South, so far ex
pressed itself in overt injury and annoyance as
to force the North into armed resistance ? Or
had the material and numerical progress of the
North rendered it unsafe for the South longer to
count on her forbearance ?
Looking at the question from a Northern po
sition, and with the mild, tolerant eye of a Dem
ocrat, there was, at this time, no necessity of a
rupture. Innocently supposing others to be as
open and honest as themselves, fully occupied
by their several schemes of individual aggran
dizement, the Northern politicians had never
extended their investigations so far as to discover
that there was working in the South a govern
mental principle, potent, vital, and aggressive,
inimical to their spirit and practices of freedom.
That the Constitution bound them to non-inter
ference with slavery in the States was univer^
sally admitted. And had the South been satisfied
with this, and with the lenient exercise of their

SOUTHEEN LEADERS NEVER TRUST. 151
own predominance in the general administration,
no class or number of alarmists could have roused
the North to acts of overt hostility.
But look at the same question from a South
ern point of view, with the eye of a tyrant's
jealousy and suspicion, as he stands surrounded
by the imminent and enormous perils of servile
insurrectionary disturbance, beneath the shadow
of a vast and growing governmental force,
imbued with the spirit of democracy, and neces
sarily inimical to the despotic system which he
has wrapped about him till he could not rid him
self of it if he would, and a different answer had
to be given. To wield the political influence, and
to conserve the interests of concentrated slavery,
devolved on men who never trusted in anything
which they could not control, never asked for
anything which they could not exact, never
commended any course of action which they
could not compel. Their character was the ne
cessary result of their education. Hardly any
body, that had not been trained on the deck of
a pirate or of a slave-ship, could be expected to
comprehend their motives, or to predict their
course of action.

XXVII.
LEADING SOUTHERNERS DETERMINE TO DIVIDE THE UNION —
THIRTY YEARS SPENT IN MATURING AND PREPARING TO EX
ECUTE THE DETERMINATION — STEPS TAKEN TO THAT END.
Although, in the early history of the govern
ment, the Southern or Slave States outweighed
the North in territorial extent and population,
yet it soon became apparent that the principles
o£ free government, as carried, out at the North,
were operating to develop the resources of that
section to an unparalleled degree, and were secur
ing to it almost the entire influx of foreign_pop-
uiation. Its territorial expansion, which could
not be cheeked, could only be equalled^ for a
time by a forced expansion on the part of the
South. This constantly augmenting preponderance
on the part of the North never escaped the no
tice or due oonBideration of leading Southern
ers. They were for thirty years counting on
the hour when their domination in the general
government would be hopelessly outweighed,
and the temporizing shifts to which they long
isa

EAELY PUEPOSE TO DIVIDE THE UNION. 153
resorted to keep up their practical predomi
nance could no longer be relied on. They had
taken these thirty years to deliberate on the
course they would pursue in the foreseen emer
gency; with characteristic reticence they had
concealed their conclusion, and taken all the
preparatory steps necessary to carry their pur
pose into^execution. The repugnance that ex
isted between their own system and what they
were sometimes pleased to call the " agrarian-
ism " * of the North, they had deeply pondered
and justly weighed.
The continued coexistence of the two antag
onistic forces within the limits of one govern
ment, they never were stupid enough to ex
pect. From the time that the profitable expansion
of the business of producing cotton became
an admitted fact, they had turned their backs
irrevocably on all projects looking toward eman
cipation, or toward any considerable relaxation
of the rigor of the slave-system as then prac
tised.

* The practical abandonment of those class distinctions without which
a monarchical form of society has no existence. And, as a real monarchist
never admits, never even conceived of, the existence of government with
out sovereigns, one or more, " agrarianism " is a mild expression to de
scribe the anarchy, the utter absence of all government, which he necessa
rily supposes to exist where there is no governing class.

154 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
Nothing remained to them but prospective
separation from the Federal Union.*
Men of their antecedents and surroundings,
of their character, and in their circumstances,
could have come to no other conclusion.. Noth
ing remained contingent but the time and mode
of bringing the separation about.. Thus the
minds of leading Southern men were educated
for a generation under the influence of the de
liberate purpose to establish a separate Southern
government/Nor was this the educating influ
ence of a mere idle purpose. The revolution
that separated Texas from Mexico was a bold
and successful step, planned and executed by
Southern adventurers in aid of that design.
The subsequent admission of Texas to the Un
ion, the consequent war with Mexico, and the
acquisition of New Mexico, California, and Ari
zona, were all so many successive steps brought
about in obedience to the same design.
* Once out from under the national Constitution, with four or more mil
lions of blacks in utter subjugation, and eight or more millions of whites
whom they can shoot and hang with impunity, with half the former na
tional territory and coast whereon to raise armies and navies, with the ac
knowledged right to make foreign alliances and treaties, without any nat
ural boundary between their territory and the Northern States, these men
never doubted their governmental ability to keep the North so perpetually
in hot water, as etieotnally to check its material progress, and to teach its
money-earning, money-saving population, that not only black men but
white men "hava no rights which" a slave-holding cotton lord "is bound
to respect."

STEPS EARLY TAKEN TOWARD SEPAEATION. 155
The incurring of enormous debts (perhaps
only constructively) by the State of Texas, to
certain of her citizens, and the subsequent as
suming of these debts by the general govern
ment, constituted, perhaps, one of the first of
a series of acts, designed to impoverish the
North, or the general government, preparatory
to the coming separation.
The writer of these pages was personally cog
nizant of the fact, that eighteen years before
the civil disturbances in Kansas took place, un
der the administration of President Pierce, it
was the plan of leading slave-holders to " bring
the question of the extension of slavery, to an
issue of arms on some territory external to the
jurisdiction of any State government" It was
presumed that Northern men would not fight,
and that slight demonstrations of prowess on
the part of Southerners would enable the latter
to have matters all their own way. It was a
refinement on this original design, to have the
general government, in the hands of Southern
men, with such an automaton as Frank Pierce
in the executive chair, make armed demonstra
tions in behalf of slave extension, with a view,
if possible, to betray the freedom-loving North
into acts of overt hostility against the Federal
government, and bring on a war against slavery.

156 NATUEAL HISTOE'^ OP SECESSION.
with the treasury, the authority, the army and
navy of the general government on the South
ern side in the conflict.
The outrages committed against the Free-
State men and their property, lives, and families
in Kansas, were not accidental ; they were a
part of the regular plan, ordered and insisted
on from headquarters, in furtherance of the
above design.. But with the hanging of John
Brown and his associates, this part of the pro
gramme failed ; except so far as its prosecution
had availed to ferment animosity between the
Northern and Southern people; to supply ma
terial for misrepresenting the North in Southern
sections, and to supply the occasion for getting
up and exercising some martial spirit among
the people of Virginia.*
Kindred to these operations for bringing the
North into overt conflict with the general gov
ernment, was the plan of packing the supreme
bench of the United States Court, with a view
to obtain decisions so outrageously violative of
the principles of free-government, as to weary
out the patience of the Northern people and
exasperate them beyond control.
* It was of very great importance to the success of their subsequent de
signs, civil and military, that the Southern leaders should have this occa
sion to bring their own abject underlings through the surprise and repug
nance of a first taking-up of arms.

ATTEMPTS TO lEEITATE THE NOETH. 157
This packing of the United States Court com
menced as far back as the appointment of
Roger B. Taney to a seat upon its bench, as a
reward for his subserviency in removing the
treasury deposits from the United States Bank,
an act of doubtful legality, which his predeces
sor in the treasury department refused to do,
in obedience to General Jackson's imperious
and unreasonable mandate.
The framing of the Fugitive Slave Law, with
features of needless harshness, was also planned
with a view to irritate the North into acts of
violence against the general government.

12»

XXVIII.
ORIGIN AND OBJECT OP THE PRO-SOUTHERN POLITICAL PARTY
UNDER JACKSON.
The annexing of territory to the South and
West, with a view to increase the territorial pre
ponderance of the slave section, and favor the
multiplication of Slave States, the depletion
of the United States treasury, to add absolute
and comparative wealth to the South, the bring
ing of the slavery controversy to an issue of
arms on the territory, the planned and perpe
trated enormities on the Free-State settlers in
Kansas, and the needless harshness of the Fugitive
Slave Law, with other like efforts to irritate the
North into acts of overt hostility to the general
government, while that government was yet in
the hands of Southern leaders, and the packing
of the United States Court, were all measures
of secondary importance, compared with the
grand scheme of corrupting, dividing, and pre
occupying the North, by means of the so-called
Democratic party. This qualified term is here
used to designate this important political frater-
168

TWO EAELY POLITICAL PAETIES. 159
nity, not as an expression of disrespect, but be-.
cause their favorite self-applied titles. Democracy
and Democratic, cannot be her,e appropriated as
they have been wont to use them, without doing
irreparable violence to the vocabulary of history-
Soon after the close of the Revolutionary War,
two great parties developed themselves among
the constituency and leading statesmen of the
Union. Difference of opinion and of preference,
respecting the degree to which governmental
power should be centralized in the general ad
ministration, to the disparagement of State or
ganizations, appears to have been the chief
ground of difference on which these party com
binations first took their rise. With different
degrees of intensity in the cohesion with which
their several elements united, with some variety,
and even interchange of the names by which,
at different periods, these parties were severally
designated, and with more or less change, from
time to time, in the distinctive principles, or
political creeds, on which they claimed to found
the different courses of governmental action
which they severally advocated, these two great
political parties continued till the time of Jack
son's administration.
This appears to have been, more than any

160 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
other, the period of a commencing transition in
the condition of our national affairs, — a com
mencing transition from a state of comparative
feebleness and peril to a state of conscious and
defiant strength, — of commencing transition
from a state of debt-incumbered national poverty
and enforced economy to a state of conscious
pecuniary ease and affluence, which, perhaps
inevitably, begets looseness, extravagance, and
corrupt procedures.
The individual character of President Jackson
himself, also, had much to do with the impress
his eight years' administration left on the coun
try in general, and on the political party which
sustained him in particular. Bold and energetic
in the extreme, by birth and education a South
erner of the western type, proud of that frank
ness and honesty Avhich does much to gild and
give eclat even to the strongest vices, a soldier,
accustomed to camp habits and successful cam
paigns, he never shrunk from the assumption of
any responsibility which he thought there was
occasion to exercise ; confessedly a stranger to
any higher virtues than unbounded devotion to
his friends, and an exterminating vindictiveness
toward those whom he viewed as enemies, per
haps the most remarkable feature of his char
acter was an unguarded susceptibility of being

GEN. JACKSON AND HIS POLITICAL PARTY. 161
imposed upon by those who succeeded in main
taining in his presence a friendly attitude.
His bold, frank, energetic, and decided char
acter gave confidence and strength to his politi
cal adherents, who never allowed themselves to
be embarrassed with cumbering creeds, or polit
ical doctrines, that did not work well for the
time being ; his military renown proved to be
a profitable basis on which to erect political
reputation ; his gallant quashing of South Caro
lina's insane and ill-timed attempt at nullifying
the acts of the general government, by an as
sumption of supreme power on behalf of the
individual State, made him stand well at the
North, while his supreme rule of favoring his
friends, and disfavoring his opponents, led him
to prostitute the vast and growing patronage of
the general executive office to reward the servi
ces of all who had contributed to his individual
or party success.
James Buchanan, whose aid had, perhaps, ,
availed to turn the doubtful presidential election i
in Jackson's favor, and who, to accomplish this,
had perfidiously turned against his bosom friend
and former patron, the opposing candidate, was
unblushingly invited to reward himself with the
honors and emoluments of a choice embassy.
The present chief justice of the Supreme Court,

162 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
as before remarked, was given this place as a
reward for services of doubtful legality, which
his more honorable predecessor in the secretary
ship of the treasury would not sell himself to
perform. /The ablest graduates of the naval
and military academies were compelled to resign,
or take rank under idle, worthless boys, and
used-up politicians, whose only claim on prefer
ment was, that they or their friends had contrib-,
uted to the success of the Jackson party.
The result was, a powerful political organiza
tion, having for its ruling principle the acquisi
tion and retaining of office for the sake of its
patronage, and this patronage to be distributed
as the reward of party services.

XXIX.
THE CHARACTERISTIC PRINCIPLES OF JACKSON'S POLITICAL
PARTY.
The scantiness of the public revenue, and the
pressure of the public debt, had till now enforced
a frugality that had kept the offices of the gen
eral government eminently clear of the herd of
cormorants, that, like carrion crows about a pu
trid carcass, persist in cursing with their pestif
erous presence the government .whose abun
dant resources are fitted to gratify their insa
tiate and undiscriminating appetites. The conse
quence was that ability and faithfulness to pub
lic trust were the practical and recognized pass
ports to not over-paying offices. But now, a
plethoric treasury, ample resources, a practi
cally extinguished national debt, the vast and
increasing number of public functionaries, called
for by the rapidly-increasing area of settled ter
ritory, all contributed to render the period of
Jackson's administration preeminently tempting
for the ingress of a plundering horde to the
multiplied, and still multiplying subordinate offi
ces in the gift of the chief executive.
S- 1618

164 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
To this peculiarity of the times, add the pe
culiarity of President Jackson's personal charac
ter as put forth in the aphorism which he un-
blu,shingly established as a ruling law in respect
to political contestants, — " To the victors belong
the spoils," — and we have only to attribute to
the community around him an ordinary amount
of corruptibility, in order to predicate of his po
litical adherents, and of his and their successors,
qualifications for office and deportment in office,
exactly the reverse of what characterized their
predecessors. From this time forward, the grand aim and
study of every political man necessarily became,
first, the art of controlling voters ; and second,
the art of counteracting the efforts of rivals
similarly employed.
Perhaps the purgatorial fires of the present
war, and the enormous incumbrance of the re
sulting war-debt, are the easiest, and the only
agencies capable of reversing the prevalent
prostitutions of political functions, that have
been induced under the late succession of so-
called Democratic administrations.
A galaxy of preeminently able statesmen,
who defended the national interests at that
time, coerced the administration into some de
cent regard for appearances. This induced con
cealment of those corruptions which would

POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 165
otherwise have shocked the moral sense of a
hitherto comparatively virtuous people ; * and,
it also led to the deeper and more thorough
planting of the principles to which the then
prevalent party owed its strength; so that a lon
ger time was secured for the germinating of
those principles, and the people were gradually
and insensibly accustomed to practices of politi
cal fraud from which they would otherwise have
strongly revolted.
Those statesmen were occupied in defending
the Constitution and the first principles of the
government, from assaults that came thick and
fast upon them, under the august profession of
the policy of the administration ; while in fact
said assaults were really a blind, to divert atten
tion from what was really the policy of the ad
ministration, namely, the prostituting of all ¦ the
powers of government to party purposes, — to
the emolument and immunity of that line of
succession which was to be filled with the most
active and least-principled individuals who should
rise to the surface in that polluted caldron, the
so-called Democratic organization.
*Not far from the close of Jackson's administration, the buildings of both
the Post Office and Treasury Departments were destroyed by fire. And as
one or both were fire-proof buildings, and much of the evidence of fraudu
lent governmental dealing was commonly known in the vicinity, little doubt
was entertained by citizens residing thereabout, that the fires were set inten
tionally on the inside, to destroy the record of such dealing.

166 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
Had this principle been discerned and dem
onstrated in the first place, and held up before
the public gaze till the last, to the exclusion of
all other issues, its disastrous operation might,
perhaps, to some extent, have been averted.
But the fatal error of the' able men who de
fended the Constitution and the interests of the
country, was, to join issue with their opponents
upon various political questions, and argue their
time, breath, and power, away on these, while
the real source of danger was almost undis-
cerned and unresisted ; and, as for the particular
political questions argued, the so-called Demo
cratic leaders would adopt or abandon any and
all of them as best suited their one ruling aim.
Perhaps with the increasing resources and
necessarily increasing expenditures of the gov
ernment, an air of lavish looseness would have
crept in, under an executive of the most frugal
principles. But to anticipate the coming change
from poverty to affluence, to obtain the reins
of government at this particular juncture, and
so dispose of all the patronage at command,
both legitimate and factitious, as to lay the
foundations deep and broad for perpetuating
power in that particular party, by systematic
corruption, — this was the function of the Loco-
foco, or so-called Democratic, organization, and
displays its inimitable genius.

XXX.
SOME OP THE MODES IN WHICH THESE PRINCIPLES OPERATED.
Under the administration of General Jackson,
during two successive terms of four years each,
followed immediately by that of Van Buren, the
Vice-president of his second term and the suc
cessor of his choice, whose avowed ambition it
was to " follow in the footsteps of his illustrious
predecessor," the characteristic principle and pol
icy of the party of which these two men may
with propriety be said to have been the founders,
became confirmed and influential beyond the
reach of permanent and successful resistance.
Some of the details of its operation require to
be examined.
First : its effects upon the political periodical
press were such as to command the devotion at
first of a large and influential number, and event
ually, of a large majority, of the newspapers,
which were almost the only source of political
information for the people, especially in the older
of the Northern States. This devotion was
evinced by such a universal and persistent sup
pression of whatever was damaging, such a mag-
167

168 NATURAL mSTORY OF SECESSION.
nificent presentation of whatever was favorable
to the party, such a warping and falsification of
current history, that a discriminating and disin
terested foreigner, attached to one of the lega
tions at Washington, on inquiring of one of
Van Buren's friends for the best journal of then-
party, felt himself compelled to reject every
thing that could be brought forward, as unfit to
be read by any fair-minded man. It was the
policy of the leaders of this party, to keep it as
isolated and distinct as possible. Its voters were,
as far as practicable, inspired with feelings of
animosity toward all political opponents, and
with feelings of intolerance for any version of
facts, other than such as emanated from their
own party press. Under these circumstances,
the operation of such a party periodical litera
ture could not be difficult to predict It must
put an enormous despotic power into the hands
of those who, by controlling the patronage of
the general government, dictated the utterances
of that party press. It must have educated,
and it did educate, the common voters of that
party, unquestioningly and unwaveringly, to sub
mit to whatever of dictation came to them
through their recognized party leaders. These
leaders they were induced to regard as the only
true and trusty patriots and statesmen, while all

POLITICAL PERVERSIONS. 169
besides were fools and knaves. Their love of
COUNTRY WAS THUS TRANSMUTED INTO LOVE OF PARTY,
and many of them were brought sincerely to
believe that the sum of all impending public
calamities would inevitably follow the transfer
of the treasury keys to other than the hands of
their own party magnates. The editors of these
partisan journals were led to expect, and, for the
most part, were eventually made to experience,
that it was not unprofitable to serve their politi
cal masters.
At the South, and in portions of the Western
States, where the common people were less edu
cated, less was done by the press, and more by
popular orators. These were indoctrinated, and
toned by their chiefs, and made in their sev
eral localities to perform the functions else
where assigned to a- subsidized and unprinci
pled press.
Second: in pursuance of the same general
party policy, and by the application of similar
instrumentalities, the foreign-born population
were taken hold on, and their political influence
secured to a cause about which they knew noth
ing, but that its adherents flattered their preju
dices, pandered to their vices, talked more loudly
in favor of licentious freedom, and dealt out to
them more of the dictation to which they had
16

170 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
been accustonaed in their native monarchies,
than anybody else presumed to do.
Third : the terms Democracy and Democratic
were made, with some success, to play a magnifi
cent part in covering up and denying the real
attitude and aims of the fraternity; while the
general plan was adopted of bringing into the
connection not only the foreign-born, but ull the
lower, less intelligent, more vicious, blind, and violent
portions of the whole population, and of arraying them
in hostile prejudice against the more principled, intelli
gent, and discreet, dubbing the latter as aristo
crats. The plan of appropriating the United States
revenues as a reward for party services operated
with such effect that the party often found itself
in such undisputed power as to be able to resort
to some obviously iniquitous and injurious dis
plays of power, for the purpose of driving from
its ranks the more intelligent and conscientious
portion of the people, of bringing upon itself
such opposition as would serve as a pretext for
inspiring its own blind adherents with increased
degrees of party violence and hate, and thus
widening the difference, and aggravating the hos
tility that prevailed between those who were
within and those who were without the bounda
ries of this party organization. This made the

PARTY ENGINEERING. 171
position of their own office-holding, office-seeking,
adherents more obviously distinct ^nd desperate,
and had the effect of obtaining from them more
desperate and persevering exertions to perform
their assigned part of carrying the elections.
Fourth : applying improved modes of carrying
important elections became an important branch
of occupation for the ablest minds in the frater
nity. Executive abilities of the highest order
were called into exercise in this department The
subordination of parts was rendered as complete
almost as in a military organization. Writing
and speaking abilities of the, highest order were
employed and paid for. A fixed per centage
on their salaries was regularly exacted from
those who enjoyed the gift of salaried offices in
the services of the government ; contracts for
government supplies and services were so man
aged as to yield immense sums for party pur
poses, and when these sources of supply were
insufficient, magnificent defalcations were now
and then resorted to,
Such was the state of self control and disci
pline, throughout the party, that a sublime reti
cence sometimes marked the incubation of their
most desperate and decisive operations.
The surveying of the whole field of contest,
and the husbanding of resources, so ds to neglect

172 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
all those parts where their own party was so
strong as to make success certain without effort,
and also those parts where the opposition was
so strong as to render effort hopeless, and centre
all available influences on those few fulcral
points where defeat would be fatal to the party
sustaining it, is one of the highest attainments
that had been advanced to, by this colossal com
bination of perverted governmental powers,
prostituted to the perpetuation of power in a
corrupt political party organization.
It is in violent struggles to carry such limited
localities which exert a decisive influence on
extensive elections, that fraud, perjury, and cor
rupt practices were more frequently resorted to.
At a certain time, not far from the close of
General Jackson's second official term, while the
administration party and their opponents were
very nearly balanced in the lower house, the
seat of a member from Pennsylvania fell vacant,
perhaps by death. An election was held to fill
that vacancy. It was of very great importance
to the administration party to carry that election.
The people of Pennsylvania, despite the falsifica
tions of the party press and speakers, knew
themselves to have been damaged to the extent
of many millions of dollars by recent acts of the
executive, in depriving their iron works of the

A SPECIMEN. 173
benefit of a protective tariff^ and in destroying
the United States Bank, which had always been
in their chief city. Hence it was known that
the vote in the vacant district would be heavily
against the administration.
John B. Clark, at that time a carriage-maker
of Gettysburg, Pa., an active politician of the
administration party, — who afterwards removed
to southern Missouri, was there elected to Con
gress for two or three successive terms, took a
prominent part in defeating the election of Sher
man of Ohio to the speakership of the second
Congress of Buchanan's term, and was afterward
expelled from the House for being in arms
against the government at the battle of Boon-
ville, — took an active part in carrying the elec
tion to fill the above-named vacancy in Pa., of
which, some years afterwards, he gave the pres
ent writer the following account : " We imported
voters from Baltimore, New York, and Quebec ;
some of them we boarded on expense for weeks,
or perhaps months, before the election. Some
of the smartest of them voted four times in one
day, and perjured themselves every time, and
we paid them for it." Clark also went on to
describe the process by which the State elections
were systematically controlled 'by party leaders
of the same dye, and the expenses of the opera-
is*

174 NATURAL HISTOET OP SECESSION.
tion defrayed from the profits of a preconcerted!
plan of colluding to plunder the public treasury.
A volume might be filled with, authentic
accounts of similar transactions, (perhaps instead
of a volume I should have said a library,) but
this must suffice as a specimen.*
While such transactions were being carried
on, the administration press was hurling such a
storm of abuse and vilification on their oppo
nents as to lead disinterested persons to sup
pose that whatever of the above and like his
toric truth was uttered by those opponents was
so uttered under the excitement of irritated
feeling, and to repel assault
* See Appendix E.

XXXI.
RESULTS OF THE -OPERATION OF THE ABOVE-NAMED PRIN
CIPLES.
The common masses of a political party, thus
combined and dealt with, must of necessity be
rapidly preparing to become the instrument of
anything its leaders see fit to employ it about ;
whether the enterprise be the consummation of
some gigantic treason against the government,
or whether it be the more quiet and protracted
process of controlling the elections and appro
priating the public revenues for the benefit of
their party leaders. But the eflfects which such
a party organization, so combined and controll
ed, must produce, beyond the boundaries of its
own enclosure, deserve examination.
That portion of the community who least
appreciate the sacredness or worth of the elec
tive franchise, together with those of more intel
ligence who are least disposed to see that fran
chise guarded and preserved, constitute the com
bination, which, from its preeminent strength
and efficiency, as well as from its being the first

176 NATURAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
of its kind, deserves to be designated the party.
Those who are outside the boundaries of 'this
party organization suddenly find themselves ex
cluded from almost all voice and participation in
the affairs of government. The limits which
patriotism, self-respect, common justice, and fair
dealing have hitherto set to party violence and
usurpation have been spurned and disregarded
by their opponents. By means before unheard-
of and unsuspected, the casual majority of the
hour HAVE CHANGED THEIR TRANSIENT ASCENDENCY
INTO A PERMANENT USURPATION OF THE REINS OP
GOVERNMENT; and those who are left outside of
the usurping party have nothing left for them
to do but to pay taxes. Their only alternative
is, to organize and attempt to operate a rival
party. This they attempt to do.
But they are not equal to their teachers at
organizing. They have no such pliant mass to
act on, no taste or disposition to act the tyrant
and the demagogue over it if they had. Dec
ades of peace and affluence have banished fear
and nursed presumption in the popular mind
respecting national security ; and patriotism has
almost died out for lack of exercise. The pub
lic press and public speakers have been so far
suborned that it is next to impossible to make
any extensive impression on the public mind

DISCOUEAGEMENTS OP PATEIOTISM. 177
respecting the existing state of things or the
future prospect. No argument that can be
educed can counteract among the masses the
influence of interested leaders, bent o« the at
tainment of office by the exercise of party zeal-
Falsehood and vituperation are used by the
dominant party to the wildest extent, and with
the effect to create an impression of more or
less general extent that their opponents lie as badly
as they do themselves, and are as dishonest and. cor-
rupt. This general impression that all political
men are corrupt, and that all their utterances,
being designed for party ends, are as likely to
be false as true, seems to cut off" the last chan
nel through which any effort can be directed to
retrieve the general demoralization and despotiz-
ing of the popular masses. The intelligent and
patriotic seem doomed to sit down helpless, and
see the dreadful work go on, till the madness be
comes so excessive as to produce a reaction and
correct itself Twice did the evil run to this ex
tent, and twice did this corrective reaction take
place, and the dominant party in 1840 and in
1848 simply through the excess of its obviously
corrupt maladministration was defeated in its at
tempts to elect its party candidate to the presi
dency. And twice did a very singular interposi
tion of divine Providence, or some assassinating

178 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
instrument of human designing, cut suddenly
short the lives of the men who were elected to
the chief magistracy contrary to the wish and
purpose of the leaders of the otherwise invaria
bly successful party. Thus leaving that party a
practically unbroken series of successes from the
inaugurating of General Jackson, in 1828, to
1860, when its leaders, assembled in convention
at Charleston for traitorous purposes, elected to
defeat themselves ; and, as a consequence, in the
following year Abraham Lincoln was called on
to do the best he could in an effort to gather up
and reunite the palsied and putrescent frag
ments of a severed Union. •
In the mean time, the portion of the people
who had been left out in the formation and con
tinuance of the dominant party, seeing the
worse than uselessness of attempting to oper
ate a rival party organization, abandoned the ef
fort. The more able and discriminating of them
retired from concern in public affairs. The
more corruptible of them at last joined the
dominant party, or, in combination with such as
occasionally fell off from that party organiza
tion, on principles more or less allied to those
of the old parent, formed the succession of nas
cent, imperfect, and shortlived party organisms
which have successivelyborne the honor of be-

NASCENT PARTY ORGANISMS. 179
ing the opposition, since the Whigs disbanded,
one of which caught the crumbling government
and happened to have the national administra
tion fall into its hands when, at the close of
Buchanan's term, the party that elected him,
true to its principles, mature in its tendencies,
with traitorous intent, achieved its suicide.

XXXII.
THE PROSTRAIION RESULTING TO A PATRIOTIC MINORITY,
FROM THE USURPATION OP A DESPOTIC FEW, CONTROL
LING A MAJORITY.
In case of hopeless and unendurable abuse of
power, under a monarchical government, armed
rebellion affords a natural, and at least tempora
rily successful, method of redress. As long as
the monarchical form of government is contin
ued, it can hardly be said to be a revolution for
a people inured to being dictated to, to change
one master for another. But in a democracy,
revolution, when once begun, tends strongly to
become chronic. Besides this, when the major
ity of the voters can be irredeemably cajoled by
a succession of graceless villains, whose vocation
it is to manage voters for their own and their
party's benefit, the last of human remedies ap
pears to have been exhausted. With such a
cajoled or cajolable majority, a revolution — un
less it be a revolution back to despotism — can
accomplish nothing, unless it be, if possible, a
nearer approach to anarchy, or a chronic condi
tion of revolt and intestine war. 180

SHRINKING PROM POLITICAL DUTY. 181
Under this condition of affairs, the prevalent
practical course with us has been, for men of
patriotism and ability to abandon politics and all
practical concern in governmental matters, and
to devote themselves to private business and
personal and family aggrandizement, in other
lines of action; consoling themselves with the
reflection that the people rule, and have every
thing their own way.
It may seem hard to say that more than this
is required of a democratic member of a demo
cratic community. Yet the events of the cur
rent crisis compel us to admit, and to act on the
admission, that much more is required ; even
the temporary resigning of almost • every per
gonal right, and the submitting of ourselves to
military discipline, with the certainty of experi
encing very great hardships, privations, and suf
ferings, with the imminent risk of losing health,
limb, and life itself What is the conclusion?
This, namely, if the privilege of existence as a
democratic member of a democratic community
is liable to cost all this, in a crisis that imperils
the nation's life, it is reasonable, and no more
than reasonable, that, to avert the occurrence of
such a crisis, something more should be done
than merely to submit to the majority, and then,
besides this passive duty, turn one's entire atten-
16

182 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
tion, concern, and effort to the work of personal
and family aggrandizement. The efforts of de
signing demagogues should be counteracted with a
liberal portion of the persistency, the zeal, the per
sonal hazard and the cost, with which, when the crisis
arrives, we are obliged to contend for national exist
ence on the tented field, and in the battle's strife.
The inadequacy of public legislation, the mal
administration of public officers, the deliberate
frauds and falsehoods of partisan pohticians,
combinations to defeat the ends of justice and
the achieving of the public weal, should be un
covered and explained by men who are known
to have higher ends in view than to fatten at
the public "crib.
It were better that the code duello, with all
its evils, should prevail than that millions of
voters in our democratic government should be
fed by the half century together on nothing but
the political fiction and falsehood which design
ing knaves, who are incapable of any higher
aim than to plunder the public treasury for per
sonal and party benefit, see fit to deal out to
them, till another war like the present, with the
slaughter of its tens of thousands shall result.
Perhaps no other operating cause, but the
throes of expiring despotism, could have pro
duced such a colossal and infuriate combination

PENALTY OF NEGLECTED DUTY. 183
as is now struggling to overthrow democracy in
this country. But had those on whom it devolved
to sustain democracy in this couniry for the past
quarter of a century, been more persistent and in
quiring, and less presuming, puerile, and supine, the
disaster which the couniry is now sufering could never
have occurred. It may be true that no motive
cause but the throes of expiring despotism could
have induced the present assault on the life of
our nation ; but it is also true that without
the powerful collateral aid of a despotic and
traitorous party of Northern citizens to assist
them, the Southern despots who are now threat
ening our capitol and invading the Free States
with an army of a hundred thousand men, could
scarcely have survived the first year of their
onslaught. One of the most extensively disastrous ef
fects produced outside of its own limits, by the
party on whose chronicle we are dwelling, was
the obliterating of the public conscience and
the thorough spread of corrupt principles and
practices in respect to everything political; so
that material impressed with political honesty
can hardly be found, wherewith to constitute a
ruling majority, even when the despotized fra
ternity which has ruled the country for the past
thu-ty years shall have been displaced.

184- NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
How far the presumptuous supineness and pue
rility of our Northern statesmen are legitimate
results of the rich and hitherto almost costless
immunities conferred by our system of free gov
ernment, and to what extent they are justly at
tributable to the gov'ernmentless mythologies
which obtain among us so extensively in the
religious world, are questions that may be sug
gested here, but which it lies not within the
assigned limits of these pages to discuss.
When it comes to be the unmistakable testi
mony of current history, that there is not force
enough in our national administration to punish
the most flagi^ant malfeasance in office, or the
most gigantic frauds, it is the opinion of the
present writer that a little judicious blood-let
ting, after the manner of William Tell, would be
for the public health. And that when this or
other remedial action is deferred to the all-ab
sorbing vocation of personal and family aggran
dizement, there exists a festering plethora which
betokens disastrous sickness of the civil system*
It is a sign of unhealthiness in the system, when
the powerlessness of. public justice can be calcu
lated on only by the baldest villains. " It is "
sometimes " expedient that one man should die
for the people, that the whole nation perish
not."

XXXIII.
HOW THE JACKSON-BUCHANAN PARTY BECAME IDENTIFIED
WITH SECESSION.
Andrew Jackson was not a Secessionist ; Martin
Van Buren was not a Secessionist. How, then,
came it to pass that the party, of which these
men were the founders and fashioners, should
become a powerful and efficient instrument in
the hands of Jefferson Davis and his coadjutors
for destroying the United States government?
Jackson, Van Buren, their compeers and suc
cessors of the same political school, down to
James Buchanan, did one thing ; namely, they
combined, kept up, and operated, a political party
on the following principles: among the mem
bership, unqualified devotion to the j)arty and
unquestioning obedience to its leaders, with un
scrupulous and vindictive hostility to every one
who opposed them ; among the leaders, the
usurpation of the government, for the sake of
its honors and emoluments, to be appropriated,
first, to perpetuate the usurpation, and, second,
to aggrandize themselves individually.
Patriotism and justice, veracity and self-respect,
18* 185

186 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
in short, every sentiment more elevated or sa
cred than the honor proverbial among thieves.
Was effectually replaced by a blind, unscrupulous
devotion to performing the dictates of party
leaders. Instead of fearing for the destruction
of their country, and instead of being purposed^
at all costs, to avert any detriment or disaster
that might threaten the precious civil institu
tions which their fathers bequeathed, and to
which they owed their unparalleled prosperity,
the damnable political demagogues who assem
bled at the national capitol, under guise of exec
utive administration and legislature, had brought
the popular masses of their party to a, state of
mind in which they feared nothing but the defeat
of their party candidate, no matter who he
might be, and were perfectly purposed at every
cost to defend iwthing but the succession of mis
creants, who should be designated in secret party
conclave to succeed each other, in wielding the
usurped governmental powers for party purposes,
and in disposing of the public treasure for per
sonal aggrandizement, — a state of mind in which
they could see nothing offensive but the real or
imaginary faults of political men who belonged
not to their party, nothing to be feared but the
exposure, breaking up, and reform of that deep
and dark and long-continued series of atrocities^

FRUITS OF SO-CAtLED DEMOCRACY. X87
into supporting and defending which themselves
had been betrayed. To avert these feared re
sults, no sacrifice was too costly, no application
too assiduous.
James Buchanan and Isaac Toucey, two despi
cable lickspittles of the perjured crew who ruled
over them, and used them and their official
power to initiate the present dreadfully disastrous
War, are but mature and ripe specimens of what
the principles and practices of their long domi
nant party have tended, more or less effectually,
to make of every Northern man, who, for the last
thirty years, has consented to be counted in its
numbers. The results, to the Union, of the official con
duct of James Buchanan and Isaac Toucey, —
the deliberate giving up of the army and navy,
the forts and arsenals of the country, into the
hands of conspirators leagued to destroy the
government, — are nothing more nor less than
the results which the principles and practices of
their party have directly, and more or less effec
tually, tended to produce, ever since that party
first received its characteristic impress from the
consecutive administratiojas of Andrew Jackson
and Martin Van Buren. The truth of this re
mark is amply attested by the pertinacity with
which — notwithstanding the defection of such

188 NATURAL mSTORY OF SECESSION.
men as Butler, and Corcoran, Busteed, D. Dick
inson, Shepley of Maine, McClernand of Indiana,
and hundreds more of the ablest and rnost hon
est that ever were caught in the meshes of a
colossal, corrupt, and traitorous party organiza
tion — the major part of the masses of that
party, up to the fall elections of 1863, under
the lead of C. L. VaUandigham, Fernando Wood,
and Horatio Seymour, still adhere to the cause
of their old Southern leaders.*
The Southern oligarchy under Jefferson Davis
conspired to overthrow the government, that
they might obtain a large fragment from its
ruins whereon to erect an empire sacred to des
potism in general and to African slavery in par
ticular, from whence to fulminate destruction on
all antagonists, to the boundaries of the conti
nent, and to the end of time.
It will' be seen that there is no very positive
contrariety between the aims of the two frater
nities. Up to the time^ at which the Southern
conspiracy matured into armed treason, nothing
Was necessary but for the conspiring party to
conceal their ulterior design, and the two frater
nities were one in spirit and in action, straining
every nerve to beat down their common oppo
nents. Up to this point, the only difference be-
• See Appendix P.

CONFLUENCE OP COGNATE PAETIES. 189
tween the two affiliated parties was, that the
Southern wing would and the Northern wing
would not prosecute their common vocation to
the point of armed rebellion.
But the same qualities which had given South
ern men a ruling ascendency in the government
of the nation had, nearly or quite from its ori
gin, given them a ruling ascendency in the Jack
son-Buchanan party. This ascendency they had
used to impart to their subalterns and partisans,
particularly at the North, a party spirit of the
utmost virulence, and habits of party action to
ihe last degree violative of the dictates of honor,
honesty, justice, and patriotism. So that, up to
the time at which these Southern leaders of the
party threw off all disguise and assumed the
attitude of armed rebellion, their Northern coad
jutors. President Buchanan among the foremost
of them, were ready and earnest to engage in
anything, no matter how dishonorable, unjust,
mendacious, or treasonable, so long as it did not
expose their own necks to the halter, and they
could be shown some plausible reason to believe
that the proposed measure would result to the
benefit of their political party. Hence the dis
persion of the United States army and navy,
the rifling of the arsenals and treasury, and
the almost utterly defenceless exposure of the

190 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
Southern forts, mint, and shipyards, preparatory
to opening the present hostilities, which prepa
ration James Buchanan assisted in accomplish
ing, and his Northern adherents assented to,
for the benefit of their political party, and in
obedience to their political leaders.
At the time of the attempted execution of
the nullification project, this school of treason,
of which the present seceding body is the out
growth, was confined to South Carolina. The
issue on which this project worked was the tariff!
The effort was to unite the South in resistance
to the government on the ground, as was pre
tended, that the general government, under the
influence of Northern men, would, tax Southern
imports for the sake of protecting Northern
manufactories. Upon the suppression of this conspiracy, by
the prompt energy of President Jackson, it is
matter of history that the defeated leaders of
that schejne took counsel, and determined to
change the issue from the tariff to the slavery
question, assured that the whole South could be
united on this latter issue, and on nothing else.
The doctrine of State sovereignty, or the superi
ority of State authority over the authority of the
general government, was from this time propa
gated with the utmost industry, especially at the

THE ISSUE RENDERED SECTIOn/l. 191
South, for the poisoning of the popular mind,
and to prepare a foundation upon which, at the
proper time, the Secession edifice could be reared.
From this time, also, no doubt, it was that the
clique of traitors who remodelled their plans after
the failure of their South Carolina nullification, I
saw the important benefit which would result to
them by having a general political party under/l
their control, selected the Jackson-Buchanan
party as best suited to answer their ends, gath
ered themselves into it as honest bona fide mem
bers, took it under their control, and began to
manage it for the accomplishment of their own
purposes. When, after the death of President Taylor,
and the defeat of the Whigs in attempting to
elect his immediate successor, the Whig party
gave up its organization and became practically
extinct, these Southern leaders of the Jackson-
Buchanan party, by preventing either the re-for
mation of the Whig or the successful organization
of any other opposition party in the Southern
States, achieved this important result ; namely,
that the opposition which was raised against them,
if it ever assumed a party form and organization,
must of necessity be a sectional party, confined
to the Northern States. This result they found
themselves able to accomplish by virtue of the

192 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
despotic control they already possessed over the
non-slave-holding population of the Southern
States. So remote were the Northern people from any
thing like ostensible monarchy, that the dictation
of this clique of despots came to them like the
" Vox populi, vox Dei," by which the Democrat is
always governed. And when they cried against
Abraham Lincoln and his supporters, "Black
Republican," " Abolitionist," the latter seemed to
shrink back and shudder, as if they had been
rebuked by a voice from heaven. Whereas, the
seven and three-fourths millions of non-slave-
holding whites in the South had scarcely more
to do with originating or reiterating this outcry,
or with inducing the sectionalized state of the
anti-despotic party, than had the black slaves
that served under the same masters.-

XXXIV.
RECAPITULATION OF THE PART PERFORMED BY THE JACK
SON-BUCHANAN PARTY IN BRINGING ABOUT THE PRESENT
WAR. On this branch of our general subject we re
sume as follows: — The disposition and power
for despotic usurpation was^ produced and nour
ished into strength in this Republic, by having
an abject mass of Africans consigned to perpet
ual bondage by the laws and Constitution of the
country as commonly interpreted.
This disposition and power for despotic usur
pation first manifested itself in the form of
overt treason, in South Carolina, during the ad
ministration of President Jackson, in an attempt
to nullify the laws of Congress by authority of
the individual State. This attempted treason
against his government was promptly suppressed
by Jackson ; who also founded a political party,
which, without literally infracting the Constitu
tion, usurped, and, with the exception of two
brief and partial interruptions, for thirty years,
held the United States government for its own
use and behoof; and this it succeeded in accom-
n 193

194 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
plishing by virtue of distributing the govern
ment revenues as plunder to be divided out in
reward for party services.
This usurping party, though distributed
through the Northern as well as through the
Southern States, like the general government,
was under the practical and permanent control
of leading Southerners. At least they soon
placed themselves in such control.
As the natural tendencies to despotic usur
pation developed in these leading Southerners,
and as the necessities of their situation pressed
them more and more, they formed the intellir
gent design to break up the government, and
on a portion of its ruins found an empire for
themselves, free from the embarrassing presence
of a democratic people and democratic institu
tions. Next to this in point of time came the
purpose of using the party which Jackson
founded, to demoralize and divide the North;
at the same time extinguishing all organized op
position in the Southern States. They did
much to conceal their real aim, by successfully
nionopolizing to themselves, and to their adher
ents the political appellatives "Democrats" and
" Democracy." They despotized and depraved
their own party in the North, by accustoming
them to march under training file-leaders, as

THE ADVENT OP TREASON. 195
near upon the verge of treason as they could
go and not precipitate war. They demoralized
that portion of the Northern people whom they
could not control, by rendering political integ
rity useless, and perfidious corruption practi
cally unobjectionable.
When they had matured their arrangements
and completed preliminary operations in these
several directions, having also disposed of the
treasury, army, navy, arms, and milit.iry stores
of government to their satisfaction, they then
deliberately broke up their own political party,
thereby throwing the responsibilities of the dis
mantled government into the green hands of an
ill-connected sectional minority, opened their
overwhelming batteries on Fort Sumter, and
advanced their legions by rafl. to beleaguer
Washington. The- elements of success had hardly been mis
calculated on the part of the traitors. Their
sway over the Southern masses was absolute
and unconditional, while the whole North did
not contain a man in whom any considerable
portion of the people felt that they could con
fide the conduct of public affairs in the crisis
that was forced on them; there was scarcely
known to be a military officer who could credi
tably handle an army of ten thousand men;

196 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
there was a natural certainty that the best of
such officers as should be called out by the
emergency would be sacrificed to the jealousy
of rival aspirants ; the habits and character of
the Northern people were as remote as possi
ble from warlike pursuits ; the interruption of
their gainful industry wo.uld double to them the
calamities of every campaign, irrespective of
victory or defeat ; it would be a slow and diffi
cult process to inspire such a people with any
thing like martial spirit or enthusiasm ; the
conspirators had a political party more or less
reliably attached to them interspersed through
out the North, with powerful influence to men
ace the administration and counteract its efforts,
and ready to act as spies on every square mile
of Northern territory, in every regiment of sol
diers, in many important positions of civil ¦ and
military trust, in either house of Congress, in
every executive department, and not improba
bly, in the very bed-chamber of the Chief Mag
istrate;* the noted honesty and mildness of
Mr. Lincoln would give the conspirators exten
sive immunity in traitorous crime and violence,
and the powerful prestige that pertains to a
bold, decided, severe, unrelenting course of ao-
* No suspicion is here intended to be thrown on any member of Presi
dent Lincoln's family.

SLIGHT MISCALCULATION. 197
tion ; and last, but not least, the inexperience
of those into whose hands the government must
be intrusted would be a source of certain and
extensive feebleness. The only points in which
the conspirators appear to have miscalculated,
were two : the unreliability of their own cor
rupted partisans in the North, and the exhaust-
lessness of the recuperative energies of a truly
democratic people.
In respect to the fo'rmer of these two points,
the work of converting back the masses of a
great political party from democracy to despot
ism must have been very imperfectly perform
ed, being undertaken and carried on in the
midst of the most democratic community on
earth. There were multitudes of men in the
ranks of that party who would tread the verge
of treason to secure a party victory, while un
der the influence of heated party feeling, and
excited by the presenceTof active leaders inces
santly laboring to deceive them, who would still
refuse to make the damning plunge across that
boundary, merely to save the necks of their ab
sent masters. The very injury that had been
done to their better principles might naturally
enough be expected at length to react against
the villains by whom they had been instructed.
Respecting the recovering power of a true
17*

198 NATURAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
democracy, the world has had but little experi
ence, and the truth in this regard would of ne
cessity be slow to reach the attention or secure
the belief of a crew of half barbarous despots
battling for the extinction of all democracy,
until such time as they shall be privileged to
read that important truth evinced in the fact of
their own helpless overthrow.

XXXV.
THE ABOLITIONISTS.
No history of the causes that contributed to
bring about the existing calamitous intestine
war will be complete, which does not give a
somewhat prominent consideration to the char
acter and influence of the Abolitionists, techni
cally so called. By this term I would be under
stood to describe a sect of political religionists
who have made themselves conspicuous in the
Northern States for the last thirty years, as the
special advocates and champions of freedom and
morality in their bearings on slavery in the
Southern States. . ,
The leaders of this sect, and of necessity its
members to a great extent, are distinguished for
a virulent rejection of the great truths of re
vealed, religion, while yet they are the exceed
ingly zealous advocates of an indefinite and
variable code of deistical morals, framed in part
according to suggestions drawn from the same
sacred Scriptures whose supreme authority they
vehemently despise. The object of their deisti
cal worship is usually represented by themselves
IBS

200 NATUEAL mSTOEY OP SECESSION.
as shorn of every lineament of vindictive justice,
and endowed with imperturbable, illimitable, in
discriminate benevolence toward the members
of the human family, irrespective of moral char
acter, acts or aims.
Of course, in a religion like this, the holding
of one's fellow-man in involuntary servitude
would be the sin of sins. It would partake al
most of the heinousness of beef-eating under the
mythology of ancient Egypt. And the obvious
infirmity of the deity of this modern sect would
remain to be made up to a great extent by the
zeal and activity of his worshippers.
We have elsewhere observed that the highly
religious character of the early settlers of New
England appears still in form to characterize
their descendants, even when the latter have
abandoned entirely the foundations on which
their fathers reared the structure of their relig
ious faith and practice. Among these, the Abo
litionists hold a prominent place.
We have also elsewhere remarked, that after
the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and
the freeing of the slaves in the Northern States,
while, under the influence of the rising cotton
trade, political sentiment in the South was verg
ing back upon despotism, the principles and
practices of free government, ''for better for

LIBEETY TO EXCESS. 201
worse," were having unobstructed course, and
were working out their natural tendencies with
out impediment among the people of the North
ern States.
Probably it never occurred to the people of
these States that there was any such thing as
excess in loving political liberty. And the world
may well wonder that there has been so little ;
that Agrarianism, and Fourierism, and Commun
ism, and their kindred degenerations of legiti
mate popular liberty, have had so few followers,
and have produced among us so small results ;
that constitutional civil authority has been so
generally respected, so entirely preserved, that
it remained for the representatives and abettors
of despotism to do the first acts that tended in
any material extent to mar or undermine the
goodly governmental structure which our repub
lican ancestors bequeathed to us. But the class
we are contemplating, deeming themselves happy
in finding so prominent an object as Southern
slavery, against which to vent their zeal, and a
sentiment so universal, so deep-rooted, so blame
less and unquestionable, as our inherited love of
popular liberty, to which they could appeal for
support and cooperation, soon made themselves
the prominent leaders and champions of all

202 NATUEAL mSTOEY OF SECESSION.
who could be excised to pursue that liberty to
excess. The professedly Christian denominations who
really denied the truth of the revealed Script
ures had by this time become numerous and in
fluential. These had no objection to the Aboli
tionists on account of their infidelity; while
very many members of evangelical churches felt
their love of freedom so outraged by the fact of
existing slavery and its attendant evils, that they
forgot for a time their obligations of supreme
allegiance to the authority of divine Revelation,
and, with more or less sincerity, affiliated with
those who derided a divinity who was not up to
the times on the subject of human rights, and
cursed alike the producers and the product of a
civil Constitution which bound them to respect
the rights of those who held their fellow-men in
bondage. Could the real character of the Abolitionists,
and the real weight of their influence, have been
known and admitted North and South, their due
space in history would have been less than it
now is. But circumstances peculiar to either
section, and illy understood in the other, con
spired to render their influence on the affairs of
the country peculiarly infelicitous, and to some
extent conducive to the present War.

liberty's CHAMPIONSHIP USURPED. 203
Men brought up in the license of heathenism
are kept quiet by its depressing ignorance, if not
by the fetters of its superstition. But when one
who has enjoyed the light and health-giving in
fluence of revealed religion, and has been educa
ted under more or less of its restraints, casts
loose from its authority; as he begins to deal
familiarly with things that other people rever
ence, and to spurn the boundaries which others
never pass, in the estimation of undiscrimina
ting multitudes, the noisy extravagance of his
diction, and the unembarrassed celerity, the
drunken freedom, of his mental gait are almost
sure to be mistaken for superior intelligence,
eloquence, and strength.
Thus it came about that the Abohtionists,
who were really indefatigable in their labors,
acquired a prominence before the public mind,
and engrossed a share of attention, entirely
disproportioned to either their political or moral
strength. So early and so effectually did they succeed
in taking under their patronage the universal
love of popular liberty in all its bearings on the
enslaved, that it became practically impossible
for any one, however true in his support of his
country's Constitution^ or however firm in his
belief of the truths of revealed religion, to say

204 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
or do anything tending to limit or withstand
pro-slavery aggression without becoming more
or less identified with these infidel leaders in
the estimation of the observant but uncom
mitted public, particularly at the South.

XXXVI.
MISCHIEVOUS DIVERSITY OF VIEWS AS HELD NORTH AOT)
SOUTH RESPECTING THE ABOLITIONISTS.
Among the first requisites of permanent pop
ular liberty are popular self-restraint, implicit
submission to constituted authorities, a sacred
regard for the rights of the mincwity. In the
Northern States, where popular liberty obtains
in its greatest perfection, this, as well as every
other requisite of that liberty is, and has long
been, largely possessed. It was this popular
self-restraint, this sacred regard for the rights of
the minority, that secured immunity to the Abo
litionists, while they ranted and blazed against
the God of revelation, and the Constitution, and
founders of the government.
At the South, where popular liberty never did
prevail to any great extent, this popular self-
restraint not only did not exist, but the very
conception of such a thing was wanting. If
any minority there offended against the senti
ments and wishes of the majority, or of their
political leaders, it was "mob them," "lynch
them," "call a meeting, appoint a vigilance
18 206 °

206 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
committee," "tar and feather them," "duck
them," "cowhide them," "shoot them," "hang
them," — such was the verdict, and such the
execution, and not unfrequently the execution
came first The Southern people knew of no
motive but cowardice or pusillanimity that could
prompt to a different course. When they be
came aware of the conduct of the Abolitionists
at the North, and also that they were not seri
ously interfered with, they of course concluded
that the mE^ority of the Northern people were
of the same way of thinking,- or too cowardly
and pusillanimous to resist. If some of the
more intelligent Southerners ascertained that
these views which they took of the people of
the North were not correct, they lacked both
the ability and disposition to disabuse the public
mind. The Abolitionists were regarded at the North
as a set of harmless fanatics, who made a great
deal of noise, but exerted very little influence,
and produced no direct practical results, and
would ultimately sink of their own weight if let
alone. The divine declaration, " They that honor
me I will honor, and they that despise me shall
be lightjy esteemed," has seldom been more ob
viously or more conspicuously fulfilled, than in
the history of this class of persons.

THE APEICAN COLONIZATIONISTS. 207
As much of the real anti-slavery sentiment of
the Revolutionary period as survived in the South
was early embodied in the Colonization Society,
an association which aimed at and accomplished
a great work for the negroes by withstanding
the African slave-trade, by supplying a channel
in which whatever of anti-slavery feeling existed
in the South could exert itself, by demonstrating
the capability of the negro race for improve
ment, civilization, and self-government, and by
affording the masters who were disposed to
emancipate their slaves an opportunity to do so
with the prospect of the negroes being benefit
ed by their freedom. This society was among
the first recipients of the virulent antipathy of
the Abolitionists. Henry Clay, the ablest states
man of his age, a living martyr to his lack of
sympathy with pro-slavery politicians, and a
prominent champion of Colonization, was reject
ed and defeated in the presidential canvass of
1844 by the Abolitionists of New York, who, by
their factious course, procured the election of
James K. Polk, the annexation of Texas, the
war with Mexico, and the addition of three other
of the spacious States from the northern portion
of that republic, to extend the area of slave ter
ritory. By their feeble impractical ultraism, the
Abolitionists generated a powerful reactive influ-

208 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
ence in favor of the pro-slavery loco-focos, the
only effective allies of Secession at the North.
Farther than this the history of their political
-influence at the North appears to be a blank.
At the South, however, they were regarded
with more sincere concern and dread. They
were, to the Southern mind, the representatives
of all that Northern love of popular liberty
which was dangerous to slavery, and was fast
coming to be distasteful to the common senti
ment as it verged back on despotism. They
were, more or less openly, the avowed enemies
of revealed religion and of the civil Constitution.
The mist that hung about the limits of their
numbers and their strength served to magnify
both indefinitely. It is true that they generally
oooonlftirl olo-tTnwr of. a Troi^TT T»OQT>or»l-Pnl rliofcirmck

S00THEKN VIEWS 0P LIBERTY. 209
Qonsciously to blame for the existence of slavery
among them. It was more than full of those
who denied the right of Northern fanatics, of
any class, more especially of infidels and anarch
ists, to visit upon their heads the sins of their
fathers, or even their own sins, by bringing on
them wantonly the Tact or the fear of servile
insurrection. They regarded the Federal Consti
tution as guaranteeing to them the right of " life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," — even
the liberty of holding negroes as slaves, and
the pursuit of happiness in working them at
discretion, without interference from without
the Hmits of their own slave section; and with
any one who construed that great document
differently they could naturally have but short
parleying. The peculiar democratic virtue of
that self-restraint — that respect for the rights
of the minority which led the Northern people
to harbor and protect incendiaries while as
saulting the peace of the South — was a virtue
of which they had no comprehension. Neither
were Southern minds ever able to compre
hend the peculiar innocence, or excellence, of
that mode of logic by which slavery was
denounced * as a " sin " against the deistical
morals of a class of men who revile the sacred
Scriptures and their divine Author.
18*

210 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
The Abolitionists were, and necessarily must'
have been, a source of extreme, incessant irrita-'
tion to the people of the South, and enabled the
despotic pro-slaveiy leaders to accomplish what
they desired, in dividing the two sections from
each other, and in arrayingj^the people of each
in hostility against the other. Without this irrita
tion, the extreme bitterness which has been man
ifested at the South'^ throughout the present con
test, against the Northern people, never could
have been generated. Without the universal
obloquy which has been brought upon the cause
of negro freedom, by its most prominent advo-'
cates. President Lincoln would never have been
able to keep his constituency quiet for a year and •
eight months after the opening of the war be
fore issuing his Proclamation of Emancipation. '
It may not be inappropriate here to suggest
the inquiry, whether the peculiar tenets of
that no-government class, — of whom the Abo
litionists form a conspicuous specimen, who
begin by abolishing future punishment, then
capital punishment, and proceed along down to
the practical abolition of all punishment, — ha'^e
not been the source of much of the extreme,
misplaced, and sickening leniency with which
the present national administration has been
wont to absolve culprits of every class and dye

WHY CEIMINALS ARE NOT PUNISHED. 211
upon the guaranty of their mere idle promise
to do better ? — whether former administrations
have not been to some extent affected by the
same putrescent moral paralysis ? — and whether
the same is not a threatening source of national
decadence ?
To those who believe in a moral government
of the universe, it may not be without interest
or profit to inquire, whether the present pro
tracted and afflictive war has not been divinely
sent on the Northern States to check and turn
back the growth of this no-punishment, no-gov
ernment deism, the offspring of protracted afflu
ence and peace, which has already done much
to undermine the foundations of our nation's
moral strength.

XXXVII.
THE DESPOTIC CLASS IN EUROPE IDENTIFIED WITH THE DES
POTS OF AMERICA IN THE EXISTING ONSLAUGHT TO DE
STROY DEMOCRACY.
The third and last great collateral topic that
enters into the plan of the present work, is the
part taken by monarchists abroad in bringing
about the Secession of the Southern States, and
sustaining the present intestine War.
As the time approached for the full forma
tion of a popular government on this continent,
the monarchies of Europe grew sickly and dis
turbed. It was as if a demand for increased
popular rights and liberties had been infused
into the popular masses by an unseen hand. In
England, this popular longing after liberty burst
forth in the days of Cromwell, and, after annull
ing for a time the prerogatives of the monarch,
allowed their restoration, but circumscribed the
sphere of their action with a resistless hand.
From that time down to the recent revolution
in Italy, every nation has been more or less agi
tated by the same upheaval of the masses, the
same irrepressible demand for enlarged popular
212

PARTIES IN EUROPE. 213
rights and liberties. The result has been, that
parties have been produced, monarchist and lib
eral, not with very definite boundaries, or with
exact intelligent aims, but with strong, insatiate
longings for the preservation or modification of
the old monarchical system. The nobility, the
privileged classes, the very wealthy, and the
very poor, usually adhere to royalty ; while the
middle classes incline to popular liberty. The
conflict between these two parties comes to di
rect intelligent collision only on sparse Occa
sions. For the most part, it goes on in a
dreamy, obscure manner, like the alternate
dominance of disease and health, life and death,
in the frame of a sufferer from severe disease.
The antagonism is there; it is necessary, in
evitable. The popular party has the irresolute,
undetermined, unconscious strength ; its antago
nist has present possession of power, intelligent
fear, and iron organization. It has learned
much by experience in its protracted and
deepening conflict. It has greatly modified
its demands, its aims, and its modes of action.
So much so that it seems almost to have com
bined within itself more or less of the con
stituent elements of its antagonistic principle,
popular government. The reighs of Cromwell
and of the Napoleon dynasty appear to be

214 NATURAIi HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
of a mongrel class, — a peaceful commingling
of despotism and democracy. But all such
specimens are transient, and soon subside to
the one party or the other.
During the war of the American Revolution,
while the real nature of democratic govern
ment, and its universal antagonism to monarchy,
were not understood, moved by her chronic an
tipathy to England, France so far forgot herself
as to take sides with the revolted colonies, and
assist them to achieve their independence. This
proved to be the first step toward the establish
ment of a system of democratic government,
which has reacted disastrously on the cause of
monarchy in the old world. By this act,
France won the everlasting gratitude of the hu
man family ; but she planted in her own bosom
the seeds of that popular commotion that in
gulfed her ancient dynasty. No monarchy
ever before had the opportunity, none since has
had the fatuity, to commit such a blunder as to
give willing aid to the natural eueiny of all
monarchies. During the period in which on}y natural
causes acted in converting the Southern people
back from democracy to despotism, Europe was
innocent of the change. When natural causes
began to give place to intelligent design, it was
otherwise.

COLLUSION AGAINST LIBEETY. 215
No sooner did the idea enter a traitor's brain
that something could be made by a severance
of the American Union, than the desire, the ex
pectation, the assurance of foreign aid came in
to stimulate and confirm the traitorous intent.
Not that the traitorous crew of Calhoun or of
Davis understood, as we now understand, their
own lapse back from democracy to despotism,
or the necessary unanimity of all despotic hearts
and hands, when their common interests are at
stake, or the cause of popular freedom is to be
assailed; but there was a felt bond of sympa
thetic union between the despot class in this
country and their kind abroad.
These expectations of foreign aid were even
greater than events have justified. Like the
kindred expectations which were placed on their
corrupted and enslaved political party in the
North, these also were too sanguine. Not that
the monarchical class in Europe were insincere
or unfaithful, but their own situation was too
delicate and critical ; they lacked the power to
do all that their hearts desired. The antagon
ism of their freedom-loving class in their own
communities was too intense and threatening.*
* H. G. Moffat, a working man, thus speaks to the aristocratic sympathiz
ers with the South in England, through the columns of the Daily News :
" It may be very fashionable with the upper ten thousand to sympathize
with the 'slave-bl?e'edihg aristocrats of the South, but we of humbler biirth

216 NATUEAL mSTOEY OP SECESSION.
The American despots judged the people of
Europe too much by the abject millions of their
own poor white population. The contempt they
had so often expressed for the headless populace
in the Northern States they began to think de
served, and they transferred the same opinion
to the common mass, the liberty-loving class, in
Europe. These slaveholding despots had never
experienced the power of an intelligent, freedom-
loving people, undisciplined and unguided by a
monarchical head; and they were left, in their
intoxicated pride of power, to presume that
without monarchical guidance and headship
there could be no formidable strength. They
trusted to their own ability, by cutting off" the
supply of cotton, to produce wide-spread dis
tress, and they trusted to the mendacity of
themselves, and of their European friends, to in
terpret this distress to the public ear, as caused
have deeper ties that bind us to America, both political and social. When
we see the great number leaving our shores for that great country, and as
four out of six are relations of us common fellows, what will be our feel
ings ? MTiat of mine, having sisters and all tiiat is very dear to me, if we
see our men-of-war bombarding New York City, knowing morally we have
been the cause ? If we are not allowed to vote and make the government
here, we will not quietly allow the people's government to be destroyed
there. Working men are seldom heard in print upon this question; but let
not our gentry suppose there is no sympathy for the North here. They will
make an awful mistake if they go to war with America. It may be popu
lar with the rich, the snobs and city swells, but not with working men.
Let them remember the Lancashire men starring first sooner than lift up a
finger against true liberty."— fioston Jomttal, S^iember 2ith, 1863.

A WAY PREPARED. 217
by the belligerent movements of the United
States government, in case that government
presumed to move resistfuUy against the attempt
for its dismemberment.
They knew that there was, in foreign lands, a
strong antipathy toward this government ; they
had themselves, while carrying on the govern
ment, experienced and taken pains to aggravate
this.* And the traitorous desire and purpose of
severing the States of the Union had no sooner
assumed an intelligent form, than fit and trusty
individuals of the monarchical class abroad be
gan to be communicated with, consulted, and
confided in.
Not only were slave-holders at home and mon
archists abroad united by a felt sympathy and
oneness of interest in their desire to assault and
ruin democracy wherever it presented itself,
but there was a kindred treason against the pop
ular masses of their own communities, which in-
* Let it be remembered that, under the controlling influence of the same
. traitorous heads that now control the Rebel Confederacy, the United States
government took a position of unfriendliness almost amounting to hostility
to England, when the latter power was engaged, with France, in the war
against Russia in the Crimea; and also that, under the same controlling in
fluence, the proposal to abolish privateering, generally adopted lq Europe,
was rejected by the United States government. And there appears at least
strong probability, if not proof, that in those and many like instances, un
friendliness to England on the part of our government was instigated by
those designing men on purpose to prepare England to pursue just such an
unfi:iendly course as she has pursued towards this government, in an
emergency like the present, which emergency was, by them, not unforeseen.

218 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
fluenced them severally alike. The slave-holding
traitor had engaged to beguile and delude his
seven and three-fourths millions of non-slave-
holding white population into doing his fighting
for him, at their own expense and at the immi
nent peril of their lives, and with the experi
ence of all the disaster which unsuccessful war
fare can inflict, and all, with no other prospect
or reward, in case of success, but to complete
and seal their own irreversible subjugation to
their successful masters ; while the European
monarchist engaged to defraud and cajole the
popular European masses into supporting him
in his costly war alliance with the slave-holders,
for the extinguishment of the spirit and insti
tutions of popular freedom on this continent.

XXXVIII.
TEffi EXTENT AND EFFICIENCY OF EUROPEAN COOPERATION
WITH AMERICAN TREASON.
The natural sympathies, the interests, and
leanings of the American slave-holders and the
European monarchists being thus identical, it
remains for history proper to present what
evidence may reach the light concerning the
time and manner, the terms and the extent, of
obligations into wliich the latter entered to
sustain the former in their efforts to break up
this government.
It is already matter of history, that, almost
upon receiving the first intelligence that armed
traitors had assaulted the United States govern
ment, with a promptness and unanimity that.
demonstrate previous concert and collusion, the
leading powers of Europe vouchsafed belligerent
rights to the insurgents,' thereby preparing the
way for full recognition of their assumed nation
ality, menacing this government with that full
recognition, and advancing as far toward it as
they could and not incur a risk that amounts
almost to a certainty of involving themselves
219

220 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
in overt war, for breaking down the United
States government, and for giving existence,
strength, and character to the perfidious germ
of a slave-holders' despotism.
While these governments were thus ingen
iously approximating national alliance with the
Southern traitors, in England particularly, the
periodical press, as far as it could be controlled
by the governing class, was set at work with all
the infernal art and energy that money and
mendacious malice could infuse, to inoulpatie
and decry the government and people of this
country, and to extol and sanctify the perjured
crew who had undertaken <to trample out this
beacon light of liberty, and to erect their off'
shoot of Africa's barbaric despotism in its place.
This course Was adapted and designed to
discourage and weaken the loyal sentiment in
the Northern States, to intimidate and depress
the government, to embolden the northern allies
of the Rebels ; as far as possible to turn the
opinion of the civilized World against us, and
prepare the people of England and France to
sustain their governnients in farther steps in
the direction they had started, if need should
be, even to open war.
In England, the people had to be immediately
appealed to and controlled, and the queen was

EUROPE AIDING TREASON. 221
as one of them. Their inclination to the side
of freedom was strong, and their power to
thwart the monarchical party was indisputable.
In France, there was nothing to be feared
from the people, provided a general outbreak
and domestic revolution were effectually guarded
against ; and, by imperial dictation, the empire
was impoverished to send out and maintain an
army of observation on the borders of this
republic, ready to take advantage of the first
opportunity for interfering, under the pretence
of collecting a few millions of dollars, in bogus
accounts, said to be due French subjects in
Mexico. ,
It is matter of history, that the monarchical
party in England succeeded so well as to be able
to appropriate and spend between one and two
millions sterling in equipping a fleet, and in
Bending troops to Canada, for war with the
United States ; and to have precipitated that
war, had not our government, with more caution
than boldness, averted the impending collision
by releasing the captured emissaries of the
rebels. England's dependence on the Northern
States for grain to keep starvation from her
borders served also to defeat the hankering of
the monarchical party after war with the Unit
ed States.

22^ NATU3&AS, JHSTSEY OP SfeeESSlON.
It is matter of histoty, that, while the British
government confinied itself to the line of a
menacing and semi-hostile neutrality, membets
of the ruling class, in theil- individual capacity,
did all that wealth, energy, and industry could
do, with the connivance of the British govern
ment, and with no little success, to destroy
American commerce on the seas, and, by run
ning the blockade of Southern ports, to supply
the Rebels with all the war material they
needed. In the early stages of the War, a curious
smile must have passed over the countenances
of these silent partners of the Rebel firm, on
reading Secretary Seward's official predictions
of the early closing of the War, founded as
those predictions were on the Southern destitu
tion of arms and war material ; whereas they
had themselves taken effectual measures to have
this destitution supplied to satiety with the best
arms, ammunition, and material which modern
inventions, wealth, skill, and the workshops of
Europe could produce.
It appears to have been in the campaign of
our army in Mexico, during President Polk's
administration, that the authors of the present
rebellion, having effectually incorporated them
selves with the Jackson-Buchanan party, euc-

EUEOMAN POWERS EteSTEAINED. 223
cfeeded in appropriating that political organiza
tion to their exclusive use. It was probably at
the Ostend Conference, held by our diplomats
in Europe during President Pierce's administra
tion, that arrangements were perfected for in
corporating the monarchists of Europe, as far as
possible, into the same combination.
Nothing but the blast of the breath of the
Almighty, sent forth for his own purposes, and
for his people's sake, is rendering this Confed
eration abortive.
The reigning powers of Europe (the Emperor
of Russia never was with them in their hostility
to this government) are not to be exactly iden
tified with the monarchical class. The privi
leges and responsibilities of power, and consid
erations of state, served to modify the former,
and coerce them into a course of moderation
and hesitancy, with which the American traitors
had no sympathy at all, and their political allies
in Europe had scarcely more.
The concessions of our government, and the
demand for bread-stuffs from the Northern
States, deferred the consummation of active inter
ference for our dismemberment, until at length
President Lincoln's adoption of the emancipa
tion policy, taidy as it was, so stirred the love
of freedom in the minds of the European

224 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
masses that such interference became impracti
cable. Thus the European allies of the traitor crew,
next to their corrupted partisan supporters in
the Northern States, failed them in their hour
of need. And beyond the irritation, intimidat
ing, and partial and transient, though repeated
and frequent, embarrassment imposed on Presi
dent Lincoln's government, and the protracting
of the war and rendering it more exhausting to
the North, and more entirely ruinous to the
South, these allies have really contributed noth
ing to the success of the treason they under
took to aid.

XXXIX.

ROME AND tHB REBELLION.

The diabolical purposes of the European sup
porters of Secession in this country have found
a frequent and characteristic exercise in sending
across the ocean, at stated and well-timed inter
vals, a deluge of rumors and fabricated state
ments, complete and definite in circumstantial
detail, to the effect that France and England,
one or both, with, perhaps, other European pow
ers, had determined, beyond reconsideration, to
enforce the separation called for by their admired
and loving partners in the South. Hardly any
thing, during the course of the war, has been
more trying to the nerves of patriotic men, both
in and out of official station, than these repeated
and perpetual electro-infernal appliances. Rea
son and facts disproved their claims to truth or
sanity ; but, like some mysterious apparition,
that owes its disturbing power to its destitution
of substance, the possibility of a European com
bination to crush out democracy on this conti
nent would, ever and anon, present itself, vast.

225

226 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
threatening, and obscure. Still farther to conjure
down this boding apparition, and reduce this
source of disturbing apprehension to its real
substance and legitimate proportions, may well
occupy the space of one or two intercurrent
chapters that did not enter into the original
purpose of this work. And these, while the
printer is busy on other portions of the work,
by the light of the New York riots, the success
of the French in Mexico, and the confessions of
a prominent Roman Catholic reviewer, we now
attempt to supply.
The monarchical party in Europe, their deep
and vital sympathy with Secession, their col
lusion, counsel, and cooperation with its man
agers, from its inception onward, we have be
fore considered. But that the Roman Cathohc
church, " drunk with the blood of saints," and,
from the heights of power which it, once occu
pied, long since gone down under the universal
execrations of all who were unblinded by its
imbruting contact, should come forth, at this
late day, and complicate itself with the con
federate enemies of all civil freedom, was not,
till recently, supposed to be practicable.
It is true that the debauched Northern par
tisans of the Southern despots have long been
noticeably prompt and earnest to conciliate and

DESPOTIC ATTEACTIONS. 227
attach to themselves the foreign-born Romish
population. That the latter were numerous,
blind, passionate, and undivided, and, hence,
were eminently fitted to become stock in trade
for any unprincipled politician, was supposed to
be reason enough to explain the eagerness with
which they were sought. That the deep, dark
spirit of despotism in the presiding Southern
leaders of that party, drawn by the native sym
pathy of fellow-despots, fellows in guilt, was
yearning forth toward the papacy, like the
ascending toward the descending cone of a yet
unjoined waterspout, was not suspected, until,
in the hour of their greatest need, the papacy
in Europe, the papacy in Mexico, and the grov
elling hell of the papacy in New York, struck
simultaneously for the rescue of the confederate
enemies of freedom.
Two hundred years ago, in Bedford jail, a
famous dreamer, whose dreams possess a definite
ness and verity altogether surpassing the clear
est vision of the most of waking observers, thus
described the papacy, under the figure of a
decrepit giant : " Though he be yet alive, he
is, by reason of age, and also of the many
shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger
days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints that
he can do Uttle more than sit in his cave's

228 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION,
mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and
biting his nails because he cannot come at
them." A divinely-inspired writer, at a much earlier
date, uncovering the then historic future of the
world, presents the papacy in the form of " a
beast having seven heads and ten horns, the
body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the
mouth of a lion ; and receiving his power, his
seat, and great authority, from the dragon " that
represented civil despotism ; from which dragon,
also, the beast appears to have received the
healing of a " deadly wound." Now no fact in
modern history is more patent than that the
papacy and civil despotism have long been
leagued to support each other. So that it is not
to be expected that one of these should receive
a deadly wound, and the other would not writhe,
and strive, as far as in its power, to heal its
wounded partner. If Jeff! Davis & Co., the deal
perate and determined champions of new-born
despotism on this continent, after having- ex
hausted the applications of the most unscrupu
lous military tyranny, to extort farther assistance
from the impoverished, denuded, and devastated
South, are being badly whipped, and onthe point
of hopeless overthrow before the advancing
flushed, and stalwart armies of the North, poth-

DESPOTIC SYMPATHY. 229
ing is more natural, hardly anything more
necessary, than that the seven-headed beast, the
decrepit giant, should be in motion, to accom
plish what is possible to be done for their
deliverance. Hence we see that wily despot on the throne
of France, — who, in his Italian campaign, went
just far enough to receive the confidence of the
•popular masses, far enough to gain the credit of
yielding to just so much of the pressure in favor
of popular freedom as it was past his power to
resist, far enough to humble a dangerous rival'
and to reduce the papacy to a position in which
it must know and feel that the continuance of
its existence was an imperial gift, — now in the
hour of greatest peril to the slave-holders' des
potism, is found, by favor of the church of Rome,
establishing a military despotism in the city of
Mexico, and pouring along our Southern borders
a naval and military force limited by nothing
but his own discretion.
Simultaneously with this, evidently in obedi
ence to orders issued from the Confederate cap
ital, through the traitor leaders of the despotic *
party in the Northern States, New York City,
for successive days and nights, was committed
to the tender mercies of a Roman Cathohc mob,
* See Appendix B, at the close of the volume.
20

230 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
describing which, an eminent literary writer,*
who walked among them, hour after hour, uses
the following language : " Tipsy women and
boys (of whom the crowd was more than half
composed) — the whole air and behavior of this
wicked and dirty plurality expressed an exulting
lawlessness and defiance — hives of sickness and
vice. It is 'wonderful to see, and . difficult to
believe, that so much misery and disease and
utter wretchedness could be huddled together,
— lewd, but pale and sickly, young women,
scarcely decent in their ragged attire, were im
pudent, and scattered everywhere in the crowd ;
numbers deformed, numbers made hideous by
self-neglect and infirmity; numbers paralytics;
drunkards, imbecile, or idiotic, forlorn in their
poverty-stricken abandonment of the world —
hideous, with hope and vanity all gone — the
female form and features made frightful by sin,
squalor, and debasement There were no decent
Irish among them. Irish they all were, — every
one of them, — but they were the dirty, half
drunken, brutal rowdies. In ordinary life, such
fellows sneak about and hide from dayhght in
places where they can drink and debauch and
contrive wickedness ; but here, where this grand
fire made them feel like masteiig, and gave them
* N. P. Willis, of the Some JoumaL

EFFECTS OF EOMANISM. 231
impudence for the hour, they were pictures of
saucy beggars, half-drunken brutes, and robbers,
longing to put a clutch upon your throat, and
empty your pockets. One of our daily papers
estimates this class of New York population at
twenty thousand."
Outside the confines of the grossest heathen
ism, nothing but the debasing spiritual despotism
of the Romish church has power to produce the
subject for such a portraiture, — has power to
prepare and furnish the instrument for such a
desperate and dastardly assault on all that per
tains to human well-being. It is the peculiar
province and ability' of that " mother of harlots "
to reduce the worthiest races of the human fam
ily to a condition of depravity and vice and
suffering wretchedness, and to endow them with
dispositions of fiendish wantonness, to which not
the savage state, the brute creation, nor hardly
slavery itself, affords a parallel. Of all who have
enjoyed the precious advantages of mature de
mocracy, it is peculiar to the heart and habits of
the despotized and traitorous Northeru partisans
of Southern despots, to order, and control, and
put into active operation, the instrument which
the papacy had provided for desolating the city of
New York at the particular juncture when Lee,

232 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
the military leader of the Confederate hosts, was
invading Pennsylvania, Semmes, with his British
cruisers, was burning American commerce at the
mouths of Northern harbors, and the British
press and ministry, with the subtle Frenchman
joining in, were blowing their strongest, heartiest
blast in favor of recognizing as real the assumed
nationality and independence of the Confederate
slaveocracy. This was also the point of time at
which Napoleon III. first openly expressed him
self possessed of the power and the will, by
papal aid, to .erect Mexico into a permanent
despotism on our Southern border.
Read now a specimen of the style in which
the papal priests and periodicals pronounce in
sidious curses on all that remains of civil free
dom, and declare their admiration for the " gal
lant and noble " despots of the South who are
forcing their poor white population on, to be
slaughtered by hecatombs, to render their own
and negro slavery perpetual.
Says the " Metropolitan Record " of July 18th :
"The Washington despotism has at length de
termined "on testing its power over the people
of the Northern States. The conscription has
commenced ! For the first time in the history
of this Republic, American freemen are to be
drafted like the veriest slaves of the most
crushing European despotism.

EOMISH PATRIOTISM. 233
" WUl the men of the North submit to this
monstrous attempt to fasten upon them a per
manent military despotism ? Is it possible they
are ready to submit to the yoke ? We trust not.
" We have no hesitation in saying, that if the
people submit to be drafted, to carry out the
avowed policy of confiscation and emancipation,
that the last vestige of American freedom will
be swept away forever. We are heart and soul
opposed to the conscription.
"We shall never, under any circumstances,
raise an arm against the South. We do not
seek to disguise our admiration for that gallant
and noble people, and sooner than see them
subjected to the abolition yoke, (!) * we would
prefer perpetual separation."
In evasion (or defiance) of the law of Con
gress, punishing resistance to the draft, and of
the authorities on whom it devolves to execute
that law, such is the present uniform and con
tinuous utterance, not, of one organ only, but
of the class of Roman Catholic periodicals in
this country, of which the ordinary function is
to proclaim the dictates of infallibility to sev
eral millions of bhnd, unquestioning subordi-
*" Abolition yoke," — a solecism eminently fit to be uttered by the organ
of a power, of which John, the Revelator, said, that of old she trafficked in
" wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and
Bouls of men." 20»

234 NATURAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
nates, fllling the place and enjoying the privi
leges, and invested with the governing influence
of American freemen.
It may be recollected by many who will read
these pages, that a few years ago a thrill almost
of terror ran through the Roman Catholic com
munities of Europe, on waking to a conscious
ness of the fact that some one or two hundred
thousand of the unsuspecting and unsuspected
devotees of their religion were annually migrat
ing to this country, of whom a large proportion
became gradually alienated, and eventually re
nounced their allegiance to Rome's spiritual
despotism. No one who is at all acquainted with the
character or history of the papacy would be
backward to believe that such a leak as this,
running out from her numbers and her strength,
would be sure to be effectually provided against.
Neither would it be matter of surprise to such
a one, that no flourish of trumpets was sounded
over that effectual provision, as is likely to be
the case in a democratic community when any
thing of public importance is accomplished.
But after the lapse of quiet years, we now
have a glimpse of what has been undertaken to
check this out-go, and also of its success. In
addition to almost all possible appliances to

EOMISH VEEACITY. 235
retain among themselves the instruction of
their youth, to counteract the influence which
our free institutions naturally exert on them,
and to retain the membership of their commun
ion in devout and blind and degraded depen
dence on their appointed priests, an able corps
of priestly and editorial authorities have been
provided (native Americans, where such could
possibly be procured), upon the occurrence of
such a juncture in our nation's affairs as that
above described, so to put the authority, the
sanctity, and the powerful superstition of the
papal church in requisition as to insure from
the Roman Catholic millions of our Northern
population, an unqualified acceptance, as simple
truth, of a diabolical tissue of treason and false
hood like that before quoted.
The individual, or conclave, who framed the
statements quoted, dictate to those Romish mil
lions, to be received and acted on as true, that
the government of the United States as admin
istered by President Lincoln is a " despotism,"
because it is attempting to keep up its armies
b}^ conscription. The ground, and the only
ground, for this malignant falsehood, is the des
potic nature of the organization and measures,
without which military force does not and can
not exist for any purpose whatsoever. It is not

236 NATUEAL mSTOEY OF SECESSION.
only that said government does not dissolve it
self into non-existence at the first challenge of
armed and perjured traitors, but that, after
having exhausted the North by calling for, and
receiving, during the past twenty-eight months
of the war, a million and a half of men, of
whom perhaps one-half are lost to the service
by disease and casualties, and the rest are retir
ing by the expiration of their terms of enlist
ment ; and, after having exhausted the North
by an expenditure of money "quite in propor
tion to the number of men, now, at the com
bined summons of the bloody despots of the
South, their despotized and traitorous partisans
of the North, the lying and pirate-nursing aris
tocracy of Europe, and the crippled beast upon
the seven hills, the " Washington " government
does not perform voluntary suicide for the tech
nical objection to its necessary course, that it is
despotic to draft !
Military organization is despotic in form to
the highest degree. It is highly despotic to put
one man under the absolute and almost uncon
ditional authority of another, as is done in every
military company, and without doing which no
military command or power exists. It is des
potic to say to citizens outside the army ranks,
you shall so restrict your indulgence in freedom

THE "WASHINGTON DESPOTISM." 237
of speech, and of the press, as not to convey
military information to the enemy, nor create
insubordination in our army ranks, nor discour
age enlistments, nor resist a draft, when ordered.
Yet, all these featured of despotism are inci
dent to, and inseparable from, the first and sim
plest exercise of military strength. Jefferson
Davis and his perjured fellows, C. L. VaUandig
ham, the prince of Ohio Copperheads,* the edi
tors of the " Metropolitan Record " and " Boston
Pilot," and the Romish ecclesiastics who dictate
what these editors shall, and what they shall not
say, all knew and understood this perfectly well
when they first combined by military force to
attack the United States government. It was
an original part of their diabolical, contrivance,
first, by making an armed assault, to force upon
the administration the inevitable and perfectly
foreseen necessity of resorting to this formally
despotic exercise of power to defend its veriest
existence ; and then, as soon as this exercise of
power was resorted to, through the agency of
these Copperhead and Romish operators in the
loyal States, to raise a perfect hallabaloo about
the " despotism of the Washington government."
This is no fancy operation. It is a war measure
of the first importance. If, by this outcry
* See Appendix D.

238 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECES-SION.
against the government, a majority of the vo
ters can be deluded into disfavoring voluntary
enlistments, and into resisting a draft, then,
even at this late day, and after all our victories,
and our exhaustion, th^ national name and life
and hope expire by suicide in ignominious
chaos; and the leagued powers of Despotism
and Popery triumph by malignant guile.
During the self-same hour, in which military
power in the Southern Confederacy is forcing
every man within its reach, between the ages
of sixteen and forty-five, — or sixty, as some of
their edicts say, — to take up arms and lay down
their lives, if success should require, for the ex
tinction of free government, this accredited
mouth-piece of the papacy exhorts his followers
to aid and succor the same cause, by not sub
mitting to be drafted into the army which is
fighting for the only democratic government on
earth; which drafting he amuses hiiuself, and
attempts to deceive them, by calling " a mon
strous attempt to fasten upon them a permanent
military despotism."
In the same style of veracity he goes on not
only, to call the confiscation of the property
and the freeing of the slaves of Rebel despots,
"the sweeping away of the last vestige of
American freedom," — but he also goes farther to

PAPAL UNANIMITY. 239
say — what no one could doubt, unless it might
be those who were stupid enough to believe
what he had already stated — that "he would
never, under any circumstances, raise an arm
against the South."
He admires the "noble gallantry" of seven
and three-fourth millions of abject whites, driven
and slaughtered like sheep, by a few thousand
slave drivers, for their own purposes; and rather
than see the aims of these few cruel, bloody
despots defeated, he would "prefer perpetual
separation," which is all they ask us at present
to grant.
While these more secular organs of the pa
pacy are thus putting light for darkness, and
darkness for light, truth for falsehood, and false
hood for truth, despotism for democracy, and de
mocracy for despotism, with the sanction of
infallibility before the Catholic millions of our
Northern population, at the crisis of the strife,
the Pope himself and his highest American
prelate are with all earnestness addressing the
same class for the same end, but in less simple
terms. Their saintly lips do not say, with the
"Record," that they desire above all things, a
separation of the Union, assured, as they are, that
separation and destruction are in this connec
tion perfectly synonymous terms. But they ex-

240 NATURAL mSTOEY OP SECESSION.
hort to "peace," which, at this juncture in the
progress of the war, and in the ears of those
whom they address, they know perfectly well
means nothing else but resistance to the United
States government, and submission to whatever
despot traitors in arms see fit to demand.

XL.
ROME AND THE REBELLION  FRANCE, AUSTRIA, AND EN(J-
LAND AT A GAME IN MEXICO.
As, in speaking 'laf Europe's complications with
the Confederate enemies of free government on
this continent, we find it needful to discriminate
between the democratic and the despotic classes
where despotism is still dominant, so in speaking
of the part which papists are taking in this war,
we need to distinguish those in whom the love
of civil freedom has more controlling force than
papal dictation. These are in a position of per
plexing trial. They need, and are worthy to
receive, a double portion of the sympathy and
cordial countenance of freedom's less embar
rassed friends.
Whether they can make an extract of the
Roman Catholic church, which will bear any
traceable resemblance to the original, and will
yet be compatible with coexisting and cooperat
ing civil democracy, and which may be called
papacy Americanized, remains to be seen. The
probabilities are that the Roman Catholic church
is too deeply and durably identified with tempo-
21 241

242 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
ral and spiritual despotism to retain a cognizable
lineament of its former self, in any adapted form,
that will be endurable to a sincere and intelli
gent adherent of American democracy.
Roger B. Taney, though born and educated a
Romanist, was an American in principle ; and
though for thirty years a cooperator with those
whose plots against democracy ripened at last
into overt treason, yet it was his friendship for
slave-holders, and not his love of the papacy,
that made him such.
Major General Wm. S. Rosecrans, though said
to have been led by a professedly Protestant
chaplain of West Point Academy into the papal
communion, has not yet been inoculated with
papal politics, or induced to debase the native
nobleness of his nature, or abandon the dictates
of his superior judgment for the behests of a
polluted and suborned ecclesiastical authority.
Would that we knew as much were true of his
younger brother, the bishop ! Each of these
represents large classes entitled to our kindest
sympathy, and many of them to our gratitude
and our confidence, in whose bosoms, with more
or less consciousness of what is going -on, the
war between Democracy and Despotism must
rage till either their American politics, or their
Romish religion, is given to the winds.*
* See Appendix G.

MEXICO AND SOUTH AMERICA. 243
But what of the French in Mexico ? The
God of heaven and the revelations of time
aloue can inform us, save that the wearing
anguish of perpetual intestine strife appears
likely to mark the future, as it has absorbed the
past, of that unliappy country. The papacy,
and not slavery has there been and still is the
depository of despotic principles and purposes
The leading spirits of that hoary hierarchy have
ordained and ordered the forces on the side of
despotism, which have kept the portions of this
continent, south of the United States, in blood
and turmoil ever since their inhabitants attained
enough of freedom's fire to throw off the yoke
of Inquisitorial Spain. That those papal agen
cies will be less despotic, or less disturbing, now
that France and Austria have united their mate
rial military and naval resources in their support,
is not to be expected. The forces on the side of
freedom in those latitudes have not been nour
ished and guided, as in the North, by the accept
ed light and strengthening influence of divine
Revelation, and hence are blind and feeble com
pared with the Northern adherents of freedom's
cause. But that they will die out quietly under
the impact of the iron heel, after having sus
tained themselves under every disadvantage for
near half a century, is hardly to be expected ;

244 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
although the blinding, debasing contact of the
Romish religion is vastly more efficient to over
come popular resistance, by its paralyzing, fes
tering, infectious corruptions, than any monarchy
is to overcome such resistance by military force.
That the brace of first-class despots who have
now assumed by favor of the papacy to preside
over the destinies of Mexico should attempt to
amuse themselves and divert the attention of
their restive subjects by bringing on in that
neighborhood a first-class conflict upoh the stand
ing issue, — Despotism or Democracy, — is per
haps entirely within the limits of probability.
That the ruling intellect in European politics
is really aiming to demolish the British power,
and, as preliminary to this, with Britain's coun
tenance and Britain's aid, intends to reduce the
United States to a condition of feebleness which
will render the principal undertaking safe ; that
the continental powers are now being conciliated
and combined with that intent ; that, with the
same intent, secret emissaries are inducing Eng
land, under an ignored queen and a suborned and
dotaged ministry, to launch, equip, and sustain
an endless succession of first-class war vessels,
under color of a Rebel flag and a mocking pre
tence of neutrality, to threaten the ports and
prey upon the commerce of the United States j

NAPOLEON'S DESIGNS. 245
that the hastily-assumed and equivocally-main
tained neutrality of France and England was,
with the same intent, designed to allow this
country, as far as possible, to exhaust itself in
internal strife, preparatory to foreign assault, —
these are among the facts of current history
that appear to be fast passing from the stage of
occultation.* What the hand of Death or Des
tiny may do, meanwhile, to mar the perfect-
ness or still the activity of that master brain;
what the liberty-loving mass in its home em
pire may do to derange the projects of foreign
war ; what the exasperated venom of the
Mexican races may yet essay and achieve to
free themselves. a second time from a foreign
yoke and groundless usurpation, — these are ele
ments which time alone can supply for a cal
culation of final results. But that all which
* As well might an artist attempt to fix the form and color of each sum
mer cloud, as a historian to note the designs of European rulers. After
Louis Napoleon took armed possession of the city of Mexico, and offered
the crown of a conquered empire to Maximilian, the Archdulie of Austria,
with eveiy prospect of its being accepted, but a few weeks elapsed before,
according to one of our best newspaper authorities, the Austrian Emperor
found himself able to combine a European alliance against Napoleon, and
the offered crown was rejected; leaving Mexico, like the elephant drawn in
a lottery, on Napoleon's hands, to be retained, or disposed of as best it
might. Thus brightening, somewhat, the obvious prospect that the Ameri
can Union would yet survive, not because Europe's despots were less prin
cipled against democracy, but because the scheme their late leading intel
lect had concocted for giving effect to their common principles adverse to
democracy had been fiiistrated by the vuiilenoo of their old home jeal
ousies.
21* »

246 NATURAL raSTORY OP SECESSION.
the foregoing pages contain, respecting a des
potism upon our borders, will apply to the
offshoot of the French empire on a throne in
Mexico is undeniable ; although the boundary
between ourselves and Mexico is not so ut
terly impalpable as the boundary must needs
be between different segments of the severed
Union ; and the question of returning fugi
tive slaves would not be likely to be an open
ulcer all along that boundary in the case of a
despotism in Mexico, as it would be in the case
of a slave-holding despotism on the soil of the
former Union.

XLI.
GENERAL R^UM^
We have now completed the detailed presen
tation of the chief topics intended for the present
work. We here glance over them collectively.
The passing away of monarchy involves the
greatest change to which human society is liable.
The rise and establishing of popular government
is a delicate and exceedingly critical occurrence,
peculiar to the present age of the world. It is
necessarily opposed by all that remains of the
dying energies of hoary, and hitherto unantago-
nized, coercive government.
Each of these species of civil society, in its
nature, tends to become universal, — as a healthy
specimen of animal organization tends to the
attainment of its normal dimensions, — and con
suming conflict must occur on every border
where they come in contact
This continent was reserved practically vacant
for the theatre whereon the new form of social
life — "a Church without a Bishop, and a State
without a King " — should take its rise.
This new form of social life is spontaneous in
24r

248 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
its origin, continuance, and action. It is little
else than a negative, — the mere absence of
monarchy in a civilized community, with barely
latent, organic life enough to render that absence
perpetual. Its greatness, its importance, its prac
tical effects, and the points " wherein its great
strength lieth," are, to the present time, but
very imperfectly understood. The unparalleled
growth and affluence of this nation are its novel
and peculiar product The Constitution of these
United States is the first great, permanent ex
pression of its new existence.
Defended by surrounding oceans, — which
steam and electricity, harnessed by the inventive
genius which its own generous nourishings de
veloped, had not yet reduced to insignificance, —
it rose to maturity and strength before the fam
ily of ancient monarchies became aware of its
dangerous antagonism; and, by tlie time they
began to take alarm, their subject millions had
become so permeated with the leaven of its
presence as to paralyze the arm with which
those monarchies would otherwise have struck
for its destruction.
But it is not the order of divine procedure
that anything designed for universal spread and
perpetual prevalence should rise and reign
wholly unresisted. Like the hardy oak, this

WHEEB SECESSION BEGUN. 249
new form of civil life needed a trying blast to
give it consistency and strength, to cause its
roots to strike down graspingly beneath the sur
face soil, and to purge its texture from the ele
ments of premature decay.
At an early day in the history of the planting
of civilized colonists on this continent, a few
ebon seeds of African social life — than which
earth has produced none more vicious — were
transported, and planted in the rich soil of the
watered garden of American freedom. Here
they nestled quietly till the first crisis of our
nation's birth and infant feebleness were passed ;
all the time multiplying luxuriantly and combin
ing themselves with elements of power which
the old world could not have produced. The
sunshine and the showers of this most peaceful
and prolific clime gave them colossal proportions
and giant strength. Africa supplied the servile
mass, and, by its j)resence, American freemen,
who would otherwise have scorned to exercise an
authority to which they would not themselves
submit, were turned into masters, tyrants, des
pots. The strongest, most vital, most excellent
material which unfettered, bounteous America
could produce became quickened with the en
venomed life of the darkest, vilest despotism
that ever cursed the most barren and remote
extremity of the Eastern continent

250 NATUEAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
Democracy, which affords such unexampled
privileges to the individual, presents the lowest,
least organic form of civil life. It has neither
eyes nor ears nor any other sense by which to
take alarm, until it has long felt the pangs of
protracted injury.
The viperous despotism, called into existence
by the presence of that abject mass from Africa,
had already taken into its ravenous maw, digest
ed, and incorporated into itself the whole poor
white population of the slave-holding States —
had broken their bones, charmed or magnetized,
and slabbered over, ready to devour, a vast polil>
ical party in the North, — part of whom, like the
poor whites in the South, prove to have been al
ready digested and appropriated, — and its gory
fangs were already darted at the carotid artery
of our nation's life, before serious alarm was
taken, or any effort made in national self-
defence.

XLII.
SKETCH OF EVENTS INITIATING THE REVOLT.
In approaching some conclusions from the
preceding, — conclusions bearing on our future
civil duty as loyal citizens, — the connecting of
events with causes will not be avoided.
Where there are slaves, there must be mas
ters. Where there are masters, there must,
presently, be despots. Wherever there is a des
pot, there must be a great and growing sub
mission to his dictation, or else there will be war,
one or the other, every time the experiment
is tried, " now, from henceforth, and forever-
more." When, by the rapid influx of Northern popu
lation into California, the Southern despots
found themselves baffled in their attempts to
add that State to their peculiar dominions, they
saw that the time was drawing near at which
they must quietly relinquish their usurped con
trol of the general government, or break up the
Union. Quietly to relinquish usurped power, is
one thing that despots never do. . Popular free-
261

252 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
dom in the North was so absorbing the influx of
foreign immigration, and was proving itself so
prolific of all that constitutes the resources of a
nation's strength, that it became apparent no
time was to be lost They were fast sinking
into a powerless minority. Judging others by
themselves, they knew of no reason why the
gross abuses of power which they and their po
litical coadjutors had been practising toward
their opponents should not soon be practised
back on themselves in turn.
They repealed the Missouri Compromise, and
inaugurated the politico-military strife in Kansas,
with some hope of adding that State to their
relatively waning minority ; and with the inten
tion of turning the strife into a general civil
war, in case of failure. They failed in both the
main and substitute design. The "Yankees"
were too shrewd to fight while the general gov
ernment was yet in the hands of their antago
nists. Nothing was left them but to strike for
separation, by all means, and at all hazards.
Their corrupted partisans at the North, acting
under the blasphemed name of Democracy,*
enabled them to retain usurped control of
the general government until its army and
navy had been rendered useless, its treasury
* See Appendix B.

teeason's CRISIS. 253
robbed and bankrupted, its arsenals rifled, and
all but two of »its fortifications in the Southern
States clearly within their reach. The hour had
come for decisive action. On the peaceable sur
render of these two forts hung the momentous
sequence of peace or war. Thus near had the
Southern despots come to the accomplishment
of the first great act in their programme, — sepa
ration, without resorting to the arbitrament of
the sword. All this had been accomplished dur
ing the administration of that prince of Loco-
focos, James Buchanan, who lay in the hands of
his Southern advisers ^as a pine-knot lies in the
maw of an alligator, till everything but the least
digestible part of its woody fibre, has been ex
tracted. James Buchanan, who had done every
other thing that the Southern despots had desired
of him, did not actually issue orders for Forts
Sumter and Pickens to surrender, and the trai
tors, somewhat unexpectedly, found these two
places in the hands of men who did not see fit
to surrender them unordered, without having a
fight first As Buchanan's administration drew
near its close, the traitors, — with whpm it had
been the main business of his term to cooper
ate, — having completed all that they could ex
pect to accomplish covertly, having thrown off
disguise, confessed their perjury^ (and, in "seced-
22

254 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
ing," the several Southern States allowed their
real character and design to ' become appar
ent,) judged it prudent, one by one, to resign
their offices, leave the capital, and go South;
thus leaving the old knot — from which they
lacked the chemistry to make any farther ex
tract, and which still represented the vital head
of the government — to fall into other hands.
And thus the nation was stayed up from falling
to pieces through Buchanan's unfathomable inef'
ficiency, or treason, as the case may be.
Had Buchanan, like his immediate predeces
sor, been subject to the influence of strong drink,
probably the traitors could have accomplished
all that they could have desired, in his name,
and by his presidential authority ; and the com
manders of Forts Sumter and Pickens would
have received orders to evacuate. But when
Buchanan was placed in nomination as the presi
dential candidate of the Loco-foco party, Fremont,
the opposing candidate, was so popular, and the
accumulated iniquities of the party, under the
then existing administration, had become so.
enormous, as to make the result of the election
extremely doubtful ; and, in order to secure the
vote of the great State of Pennsylvania, it be
came necessary for the party to accept her fa
vorite son as their candidate, although in thia

WHAT MOBS ARE FOE. 255
respect — his not being liable to be influenced
by strong drink — he was not exactly the man
that was suited to the purpose for which the real
leaders of the party designed to make use of
him. They did not dare to restrain him of his
liberty, and carry him South with them, because
this course would have alienated his and their
political coadjutors of the Buchanan stripe in
the North.
One trait of the despot, peculiar to the Amer
ican branch of that family, is, that when he has
in hand an enterprise which he likes not to at
tempt himself, by personal violence, he has a
way of raising a mob of the worthless and the
desperate, to carry out his plans for him. It
appears to be a part of their regular policy, by
the absence of schools, and the discouragement
of regular industrial avocations for whites, to
keep on hand a class of this kind of characters,
for such particular occasions. This mode of
action gives additional plausibilitj^ to their pre
tence of being Democrats. Some of the most
important transactions in the process of seceding
the Southern States were carried through by
this mode of operating.
But twice in the interim between the presi
dential terms of Jackson and Buchanan, has

256 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
their party failed to elect its presidential candi
date. And neither of these two only successful
candidates who opposed that party survived his
inauguration more than a few weeks or months,
before he fell in death, — a victim, as the people,
in their democratic simplicity supposed, of ordi
nary disease.
Sure, one there was, who suspected foul play
in the first of these instances, and who never
doubted it in the second. And now, viewing
the cases of sudden demise, so opportune for
the party which was aided by them, in the light
of their immense importance to the plans which
have since been developed, and in the light of
the means which have since been resorted to by
their authors, to carry these plans into execu
tion, no candid mind, competent to comprehend
the evidence in the case, can doubt but that the
deaths of those presidents in office were pro
cured by a quiet mode of assassination. Presidents
Harrison and Taylor were the only two who
ever died in office, and were the only two who
succeeded in interrupting the reign of that party
dynasty, whose otherwise unbroken prevalence
for thirty years has matured in the scenes of
treason, desolation, and blood, that now crush
our afflicted land.
But aside from the connection in which the

AMEEICAN DESPOTISM. 257
attempt stands catalogued, it is matter of noto
rious history that a band was leagued, and a
mob prepared, to waylay and dispose of the
present chief magistrate of the nation as he
approached the capitol for inauguration ; at the
same time beleaguering that city and cutting
off communication from the North, taking pos
session of the city of Baltimore, and forcing the
State of Maryland out of the Union.
Despots of the American type are accustomed
to succeed in whatever they think it worth their
effort seriously to attempt. When they fail, it
is generally safe to conclude that no subtlety,
however acute, no watchfulness, however unre
mitting, no code of morals, however lax, no ap
plication, however assiduous, no exertion, how
ever desperate, and no scheme, however diaboli
cal, could have secured success. The fierceness
of the throes of dying despotism consume the
fountains of whatever is just or gentle in the
individual supporters of that doomed cause.
22*

XLIII.
SEPARATION OF THE DESPOTIC FROM THE DEMOCRATIC ELE
MENTS IN THE LONG-DOMINANT PARTY  CONDITIONS OF
PEACE. By moving with celerity on an unusual line
of travel, the. President elect arrived in Wash
ington unassassinated, unseized. President Bu
chanan, in the new hands into which he had
fallen wl^en the traitors let him drop, even fa
vored the peaceful inauguration of his lawfully-
elected successor ; and Mr. Lincoln was duly and
peaceably inaugurated at the usual time, though
in the presence of an efficient military guard.
Thus the shattered and almost extinguished
remnant of the United States government passed
from the usurping grasp of the political party
which, headed and handled by a few slave-hold
ing despots, had used that government for their
own selfish and sinister purposes, with little in
terruption, for the last thirty years ; and, during
the last eight of these years, with the scarcely
disguised intention of compassing its destruc
tion. This relinquishment of power was not at this
25^

PAEXY SPLIT DESIGNED. 259
time necessary, but voluntary, at least on the
part of leaders of that long-dominant party.
They supposed they had effectually destroyed
the power, and were relinquishing only the shad
ow of its form. They little doubted that their
party adherents in the North were so thoroughly
corrupted,* and that the Middle States would
find themselves so distracted, that they who laid
and launched the plot, with the extreme South
already under their undisputed despotism, could
dispose of the rest at pleasure ; at least, could
cast them off at will, and by the aid of their
friends, the despotic classes in Europe, could es
tablish a concentrated government that would
defy reaction.
On the 23d of April, 1860, the Convention of
the long-dominant party met at Charleston,
South Carolina, to select a candidate to be voted
for by the party, as Mr. Buchanan's successor.
The leaders of that party, there assembled, con
trolled the majority — almost the entire vote — of
every Southern State except a trifling defection
on the border, and they controlled enough of
the Northern States to make the election of
their candidate reasonably certain, had they
chosen to harmonize and act together as form
erly. A few formal compliments, paid by the
* See Appendix 0.

260 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SECESSION.
Southern despots to prominent Northern parti
sans, would have secured this harmony, and
another Frank Pierce or James Buchanan could
have been made president But such was not
the result desired. One Frank Pierce, succeeded
by one James Buchanan, had accomplished all
that the Southern despots had for such men to
do, namely, to put the country in a state of
complete preparedness for dissolution. The des
potic principles and tastes of the Southrons had
become matured. They could no longer endure
a fettering combination with even corrupt, ve
nal, traitorous, or deceived Democracy.* If their
Northern friends would join them and arm for a
consuming conflict with the mother of repub
lics, well and good. If they would go home,
and in the several wards and counties manfully
resist all efforts to arrest the movements about
to be entered on in the South, this service
would also be very acceptable. But the unnat
ural and mutually-loathed union of despotism
and democracy that had prevailed ever since
* Robert Toombs publishes a letter in a Georgia paper, saying, — "I can
conceive of no extremity to which my country could be reduced in which I
would for a single moment entertain any proposition for aijy union with the
North on any terms whatever. When all else is lost, I prefer to unite with
the thousands of our own countrymen who have found honorable deaths, if
not graves, on the battle-field." As Mr. Toombs is a favorite among the
peace men of the North, it might be well that they make a note of his sen
timents  Boston Jourmd, 8e,pl6mhe.r liik, 1B08.

WHY THE PAETY WAS SPLIT. 261
the rise of the cotton-trade infused vitality and
sti'ength into the slave system was now drawing
near its termination. The set time* for launch
ing a plot for its dissolution had arrived. The
old Jackson-Buchanan, or " Ipaves-and-fishes " par
ty as it was termed by an early critic of its
course, had answered well its end ; but, like the
typical dispensation in religion, at the coming
of the great Antitype, was to pass away, or lin
ger out an anomalous and effete existence, op
posed alike to the clear light and decisive action
of the two great political verities, which, like
Paganism and Christianity, were thenceforth to
divide the field between them, till the one or
the other became extinct.
The separation of the two great elements
must of necessity take place in the long-domi
nant party, as well as in the government proper.
As the sundering of the party did not involve
the crime of perjury or treason, and would not
necessitate war, it was resolved to initiate the
grand separation in that party, and the Conven
tion at Charleston was selected as the occasion
for doing it. The plan was, by preventing unity
of action, to necessitate a plurality of candi
dates, a division of the party vote, and the con
sequent success of the opposing candidate, who,
as the South were a unit in the hands of their

262 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
leaders, must of necessity be a sectional candi
date, elected by a combination of sectional par
ties, — this %ectional feature must perfect and
insure the Southern political unanimity, — then
make war on the successful candidate, whoever
he might be, before or after his inauguration,
as chance might offer.
The separation in the party, then and there,
took place according to the design and purpose
of the despot Southrons. They refused longer
to consult the interests or to conserve the wel
fare of the party. In vain the Northern mem
bers of the party offered a continuance of their
venal services. They were rejected. The sep
aration was so natural, fit, and timely, — espe
cially since the Secession of the States it has ap-,
peared so, — that any effort to restore the party-
union has been as unnatural and monstrous as
would be the attempt to reverse the operation
of nature in animal propagation, and endeavor
to restore the breathing offspring to its former
union with the parent from which it had been
separated. The union of slave-mastership and
the policy of the Jackson-Buchanan party pro
duced Secession by a process that admits not of
being reversed.
If such be the case with the political party
that so long held the government in its custody

CONDITION OF REUNION. 263
that the two almost became one, what ground, it
will be asked, is there to hope that the union of
the States can ever be restored ? There is no
ground for such a hope, not the slightest, so
long as Despotism rules the South or any other
portion of the States. The first and only, the
indispensable and all-sufficient, condition of a
restitution of the Union of the States in perpet-
ua,l harmony, is a revolution of the South from
despotism to democracy. All the fighting which
the present War has produced or may yet pro
duce, that brings near this result, advances us
by legitimate progress toward the attainment
of permanent peace. All that fails of bringing
near this result, is gratuitous self inflicted chas
tisement. It may make us more wise and mod
est, but in no other way than this can it have
any special tendency to terminate the strife.

XLIY.
CONDITIONS INDISPENSABLE TO PEACE, AND PROGRESS TO
WARD THEIR ATTAINMENTS.
Among the popular masses at the South, the
absence of sagacity to perceive, and of courage
and promptitude to resist, the usurpations of a
military despotism at the commencement of
their secession movement proves those masses
to be devoid of democratic principle, and radi
cally conformed to the condition of the subject
masses of a despotism.* Are their despotic lead
ers so secure in the rear that they can be reach
ed oiTly by the military destruction of these
masses ? Are these masses so devoted to their
leaders that they will not consent to survive
them ? If either of these conditions obtain (and
they really are but one), then must the war go
on with unabated destructiveness till the South
is wellnigh consumed, and the North shall have
paid in full the meet penalty for having allowed
a despotic corrupting of the half of its own
home population, and for according the unction
* For a vivid and veracious description of the process of seceding see
The Conspiracy Unveiled. Hunnicutt. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippinoott
& Co., 1863. 261

THE WAR NECESSARY. 265
of its tolerance and the shield of national pro
tection to the deadly asp of Despotism, till its
own life's blood had well-nigh paid the forfeit in
curred by its indolent credulity.
In view of the enormous cost and suffering
which this war is inflicting. North and South, it
may be asked whether prompt decisive action,
at its origin, could not have arrested and hung
its authors, and have left the Southern as well
as the Northern masses undecimated and the
homes of the former undevastated. Decisive
governmental action could probably have ar
rested the leaders of revolt, and thereby have
prevented the progress of the present war ; but
this would have been only a perilous postpone
ment, — a damming up of a river that would
only have increased its strength and fury, as
long as the cause continued to act which made
despots of the leaders of this revolt. Though
the Southern people had been spared their pres
ent sufferings, the same causes, continuing to
act, would soon produce and place at their head
a set of leaders more despotic and desperate
than those who are now consigning them to
wholesale immolation.
If a bloody or a bloodless revolution could
have been instituted in the South, that would
have brought the seven and three-fourths mil-

266 NATURAL mSTORY OF SECESSION.
lions of non-slave-holding white population in
successful conflict with the despot few, who now
govern that section with a rod of iron, the pres
ent war would have been averted. But such
was the amount of power which slavery put
into the hands of the despot few, — such. was
the disadvantage at which slavery placed the
seven and three-fourths millions of non-slave-
holding whites, — above all, such was the vassal
sympathy with the ruling few, into which these
non-slave-holding millions were brought by their
chronic fear and hate of slaves set free, that
nothing but a war which prostrates alike the
despot leader and his millions of abject whites
can ever clear the soil for the planting of a gen
uine democracy. Nothing less than the suffer
ing and humihation which this war is infficting
on the North could have brought its corrupted
majority to consent to the establishing of that
degree of political equality at the South which
is indispensable to the continued existence of
democratic, or, in common terms, republican
institutions on this continent
The question here intrudes itself. Must ne
groes vote ? It is impossible to precalculate at
what time the elective franchise will become of
any practical value to them ; or at what time it
will be best for us that they should exercise it.

NEGRO ELEVATION. 267
Where there is no compression, there can be no
explosion. Where there is an arbitrary depriva
tion of the practically valuable rights, which, by
the equal rule of democratic government, per
tain to any class, then and there comes into ex
istence a reacting, explosive force. This force,
perpetually conflicting with the original, arbi
trary, depriving dictation, the two mutually irri
tate and strengthen each other till an explosive
revolutionary outbreak is the result.
The premature conferring of elective fran
chise on an abject race, as the negroes now are,
and must long be, would only reproduce and
multiply ten thousand fold the corrupting and
disastrous results of conferring that franchise
on the green, ignorant, and politically unprinci
pled serfs that throng to us from the shores of
monarchical Europe.
The prospect of thereby weakening the mil
itary strength of the Rebellion, together with
the pressing menace of European powers, which
could thereby be parried, appear to have induced
Mr. Lincoln to proclainj emancipation to the
greater part of the Southern slaves.* The dem
onstrated impracticability of his schemes of de
porting the freed negroes, the difficulty of sup
plying his lack of troops, and the unhealthiness
* Sea Appendix A.

268 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
of many of the locations where troops were
necessary to be used, seem to have induced the
tardy determination to arm the negroes.
But, whatever may have been the motive
which induced the course of action, the first
efficient step taken toward preserving the gov
ernment from the assault made on it from the
South was the abolishing of masters,* brought
about by emancipating the slaves ; and the first
step taken toward preventing a recurrence of
* Though there may be men and women in the ranks of those partisans
of treason who are voting against President Lincoln's administration, who
are ignorant, and hence piutially innocent, of the real aim of their party-
leaders, yet, beyond dispute, that aim is, singly and solely, by all possible
means, to prevent the Emancipation Proclamation from taking effect.
Thereby redeeming tho institution of slavery from the boiling, burning gulf
into which its Southern possessors had thrown it, restoring the Loco-foco or
ganization, with all the Southern slave-holders gratefully owing their preser
vation to their Northern friends. To accomplish this result, all the infernal
zeal that can be expended, all the falsification of facts and principles that
may be necessary, and the blood and treasure requisite for two or three
years' prolongation of the war, appear to be a moderate price, in the estima
tion of these precious graduates of the political school in which they have
been educated. " To the victors belong Hie spoils."
Reubea Stout, 60th Indiana Infantry, was shot on Johnson's Island for
desertion. He was allowed to go home on furlough. In a confession, made
just before his death, he says : —
" After I had been there about two weeks, I was advised by several per
sons not to go back to the army ; they said this was only an ' Abolition
war.' I was induced to go to a meeting of the so-called ICnights of the
Golden Circle, and was made a member of that organization. The obliga
tions of the order bound us to do all we could against tho war, — to resist
the draft, if one sliould be made, and likewise to resist and oppose all confis
cation or emancipation measures, in every possible way. We were pledged
to do all we could to prevent auother man or dollar going from <he State for
the further prosecution of the war."
When a squad attempted to arrest him he killed one of the party

EFFECT OF NEGRO ELEVATION. 269
the same assault was conferring manhood and
elevation of character on the blacks, by admit>
ting them into the army ranks, to fight for their
own independence. Failing of either of these
two necessary steps, the present war might have
continued to the end of time without producing
any decisive result in favor of the Union cause.
And now, if through their Northern confeder-
ates, the Secessionists can succeed in reversing
either of these measures of President Lincoln's
administration, they have a fair prospect of be
ing the ultimate winners, however the tide of
victory may turn in the field.
If the negroes prove to be so effectually freed,
and so far elevated above their former condition,
that no class of men can again make political
use of them as their former masters have hith
erto done, doubtless the masses of the Southern
whites, freed from their former trammels, and
from the powerful presence of the slave-holding
class, will adequately educate themselves and
put on democracy spontaneously. Especially
may this result be expected, when free inter
communication with the North shall have been
established.

XLV.
THE STATE OF THE SOUTHERN MASSES  THE DEMONSTRATED
AIM OF THEIR LEADERS  INEVITABLE RESULTS OF SEP
ARATION. Let us now attempt to gather into focal
proximity the leading phenomena of Seces
sion. Apart from their blind and mad affection for
the condensed despotism which slavery presents,
and their cringing, suicidal, though unconscious,
servility to the leading conservators of this des
potism, the non-slave-holding millions of white
population in the South had no motive, and
could have had no inclination, to engage in the
present onslaught against the United States
government. The victory now being contended for by the
Southern leaders is a victory over democratic
equality, democratic principles, and democratic
institutions, and is as much against the rights,
prosperity, and prospects of the masses of the
people at the South as at the North. And noth
ing but the arts and coercive power peculiar
to successful despots ever placed those South-
270

AIM OF SECESSION. 271
em masses in the ranks of the slave-holders'
army, or still retains them there.
Some light is thrown on the real nature and
aim of Secession — an aim and a nature which
must fashion its future, if it succeeds in prolong
ing its existence — by the fact that its authors,
and those in behalf of whom these authors act,
prior both' to the inception and execution of
their nefarious plan, were in the secure posses
sion of every right, privilege, and power which
democracy could either confer or permit, and
more. They possessed every right, privilege, and
power they or any other set of sane men in their
places could desire or ask, except the privilege
and power of making war and concluding peace
on their own sole, unadvised, unembarrassed
motion, and of adding to the millions of their
slaves at pleasure, b}'' importation or conquest.
This evinces to a demonstration that the true
and real aim of the authors, the leaders, and the
champions of the Secession movement is no
other than to divide their despotism from its for
mer incongruous, embarrassing copartnership
with democracy, — to place it on a basis of its
own, free to pursue its own peculiar aims and
tendencies, by its own peculiar modes of actioni„
In doing this, they are sure that the iron or
ganization, and the solitary, changeless head of

272 NATURAL HISTOET Oy SECESSION.
despotism, will give them incalculable advantage
over the loose and changeable executive of a
democracy, in the interminable wars that must
necessarily follow the achievement of separation.
They are also sure that a despotism can always
surround itself with its native element, — a state
of war, — and that this is so adverse to its antago
nist, that, as a democracy, though physically
unconquered, it must eventually perish wherever
this element permanently prevails.
Slavery is known and admitted to be the cor
ner-stone of the new government to be reared
on the Southern fragment of the divided Union.*
The strong and growing determination of the
Northern Democrats, after the rupture of the
obligations that have hitherto bound them, never
again to become the ministers or the menials of
a despot in controlling his refractory slaves, is
perfectly known, and matter that may be pre-
calculated on.
The fact that Southern slaves will be constantly
fleeing to the North for protection and freedom
is also a matter in respect to which there is no
doubt or uncertainty, in case a slave-holding
government ever stands by itself on Southern
soil. * See speech of Alexander H. Stephens (Vice-President of the Southern
Confederacy, as he is called). George Livermore'a Historical Regearoh.
A. Williams & Company. Boston: 1863. p. 4.

DESIGNS ON THE NORTH. 273
We have, then, the inevitable conclusion, that
the men who are striving to establish this slaver
holding kingdom in the South depend for its
continuance on perpetual military success, sur
veillance of the North, and such an extended ap
plication of their present policy of "retaliation " *
as wiU compel the ever unwilling democrats of
the Northern fragment of our former nation, to
guarantee the integrity of their slave system.
By how much this state of things will fall short
of the military subjugation of the North, it is
worth little time or trouble to calculate. An-d
how much is to be done by the Northern parti
sans of the Southern despots, in bringing about
this state of compulsory vassalage, — in substi
tuting the former voluntary cooperative Union,
* It is reported that the Rebels, in view of an immediate bombardment of
Charleston, have removed all the Union prisoners taken at Morris Island
and Sumter to that city, and also that prisoners have been sent from Rich
mond that they may be exposed to the danger of the bombardment. —
Journal. Baltimokb, Oct. 30. The Americam has a letter from a, responsible
correspondent dated Annapolis, Md., 29th, which says the flag of truce boat
New York arrived at the Naval School Wharf this morning from City Point,
with 180 paroled men ; eight of the number died on the boat on its way
here. They actually starved to death. Never, in the whole course of my life,
have I seen such a scene as there was presented. They were living skele
tons. Every man of them had to be sent to the hospital, and the surgeon's
opinion is that more than one-third will die, being beyond the reach of
nourishment or medicine. I questioned several of them, and all state that
their condition has been brought on by the treatment they have received at
the hands of the Eebels. They have been kept without food, and exposed
a large part of the time without shelter of any kind.

274 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
' by a severed state, and a compelled rendering
of such subordinate help as is indispensable to
the preservation of their slave property, — is
also unimportant, and of no modifying influence
on the final result. The bitterness of final mili
tary subjugation will be little alleviated by the
reflection that the Southern despots, who im
posed it, could not have succeeded without the
aid of corrupted and traitorous partisans in our
midst* * There is something damningly dishonest in the professions and the prac
tices of those Northern men, of the VaUandigham, Wood, and Seymour
school, who are unfriendly to the United States government as now admin
istered, and yet refuse to put their necks directly under the yoke that Jeff.
Davis is imposing on the people of his realm. Thoy are, obviously, aiming
to barter tlieir countrymen, and their country, to that modern Nero, for
positions near the throne which he is wading through " blood to the horses'
bridles" to establish.

XLVI.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS — THE CONTEMPLATED COST OF
THE REBELLION  THE AIM THIS COST WAS FITTED TO
SUBSERVE — RIGHT-MINDED MEN AT FAULT  THE NO-
PUNISHMENT CLASS — ABUSE OF THE TERM DEMOCRATIC —
DISJOINTING THE SOUTHERN MASSES FROM THEIR DES
POTIC LEADERS.
Something more than appears at first view can
be learned respecting the true nature and aims
of Secession, by looking at the deliberate sacri
fices by which its authors, from the first, pro
posed to attain their ends.
When we look at the movement in the light
of these sacrifices, their extent, their deliberate-
ness, the unreserved freedom with which they
are offered, and the comparative insignificance
and doubtful worth of the proposed returns, —
it may almost be doubted whether the move
ment had really any other motive than a dispo
sition, on the part of its authors, to destroy
everything that they had the opportunity and
the power to reach and ruin.
The first great item in this bill of sacrifices is,
our nationality. It was held in common by North
and South. It had a history, radiant with the
276

276 NATJEAL mSTORY OF SECESSION.
wisdom and prowess of our common patriot sires.
It had a prospective future, glowing with a gor-
geousness of promise almost beyond belief
Though young in years, and novel in the polit
ical basis on which it rose, it had attained a
respectability and influence abroad which we
would have exchanged with no other nation.
It was unconquerable by any external force
that could be brought against it An easy
exercise of its mihtary strength was sufficient to
defend and vindicate the rights of itself and of
its citizen, wherever threatened. The benefits
it conferred on its citizens at home were more
ample, rich, and costless than had ever before
been conferred by any human government. It
made our country the desired home and refuge
of the oppressed of every land. It was the
beacon-light of popular liberty to a tyrant-ridden
world. Add to these considerations the unutter
able affection with which every virtuous patriot
cleaves to the institutions, as well as to the soil,
of his native land, and multiply the sum by the
tens of millions of its blessed and contented
population. All this is utterly and certainly
destroyed by the first act of the purposed sepa
ration. Large fragments of the ruin may, or
may not, remain ; may, or may not, retain some
traces of the great original ; no one knows,

PECUNIARY COST OP THE WAR, 277
and, of all others, no one appears to care less
than the Secessionist, how this may be.
To the destruction of our nationality add the
individual pecuniary sacrifice at which this War
has hitherto been, and is yet to be, carried on.
Nine hundred millions of dollars is the computed
war debt of the Union government at the end
of the first two years of war. Add to this the
millions that have been raised by war-tax, the
many millions that have been voluntarily con
tributed for hospital and other necessary war
expenses, the loss of income suffered by abstract
ing an average of nearly a million and a half
of Northern men from their customary indus
trial avocations, add a proportionate outlay for
the remaining years of the War, of whatever
number they may be, and you have, approxi
mately, the Northern half of the pecuniary sac
rifice at which this fratricidal strife is carried on.
Instead of estimating the Southern portion of
the cost as nearly parallel, you might as well
consider that the Southern army is made up, to
a great extent, of men who were accustomed to
earn very little by their industry, before the
war begun, and are accustomed to receive
little- or nothing of real value for their coerced
services in it, while it lasts. But to balance
this reduction of the expenses of the war to
24

278 NATURAL mSTORY OP SECESSION.
the Southern party, reflect that their section
has to sustain the havoc and deviistation of both
armies present on their soil; that all commer
cial intercourse with the outer world is absolutely
cut off, except what is carried on by blockade
running, — a process in which three ventures cut
of four are captured, and the successful one has
to demand and receive a price that will pay for
the whole; that industrial avocations and the
productions of the soil are reduced to the limits
of what will barely sustain life ; that their
slaves, whom they valued so highly as to stake
everything else on the chance of preserving
them in slavery, have already been, or must
soon be, emancipated to a man, and you will
perceive that there was more truth than poetry
in the statement of " Vice-President " Stephens
to the planters, that, " in case they did not suc
ceed in securing their independence, nothing
which they possessed would be worth anything."
In other words, it will be seen that the War, as
planned by its Southern authors, was designed,
if unsuccessful, to involve the blank annihilation
of the property value of everything possessed
by Rebel owners.
Two considerations modify the first view of
the incalculable pecuniary sacrifice so freely of'
fered up by the authors of Secession. First, they

SOUTHERN DISESTEEM FOE PROPERTY. 279
put a very light estimate on all pecuniary con
siderations. One efficient means, by which the
Southern mind has been excited to war upon
the North, has been the ridicule and contempt
thrown on the " Yankees " for their overween
ing love of property. This contempt for pecun
iary considerations in the Southern mind, arises
first, from the natural recklessness of one who,
from never having earned property, has little
appreciation of its worth; second, from a bar
baric indifference to that elevated civilization
of which property is the basis, — this trait hav
ing been derived by the whites from their social
participation in the uncivilized character of the
blacks; third and last, but not least, it is the
exhibition of that contempt for all other consid
erations, which naturally occupies the mind de
voted to the pursuit, exercise, and enjoyment of
despotic power.
In making, then, a just estimate of the incal
culable pecuniary sacrifice at which the authors
of this Rebellion proposed to purchase their
triumph over our republican institutions, let us
make all due allowance for their peculiar dises-
teem for the pecuniary value of what all other
claimants for the rank of civilized people esteem
as highly valuable.
Second : A second consideration that modifies

280 NATURAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
the first view of this incalculable pecuniary sac
rifice, is the shade of uncertainty that rested on
the fact of its being finally, and wholly, exacted.
If Mr. Buchanan, as there was doubtless very
strong reason to expect he would do, had or
dered the evacuation of Forts Sumter and Pick
ens, if, as there was perhaps every possible
assurance would be the case, Mr. Buchanan's
party in the North had stood up boldly and
blindly for the destruction of the Union, and
the erection and immunity of a Southern Des
potism, then the negro property would not all at
once have been lost, and perhaps much of the
present war expenses of the North and South
would have been for a time postponed.* But
giving due weight to this peradventure, we have
still the absolute certainty that the original de
sign and determination of the despot originators
of the revolt was, if they could not attain their
end at less expense, to sacrifice the whole.
This last qualifying consideration, and, per-
• Had the authors of this Rebellion succeeded in reducing the people of
the whole country to the condition of abject dependence in which the
Southern masses have found themselves, and had they succeeded in doing
this before the torpid democracy of the Northern States became alarmed,
and before blood had been shed, then, according to the logic of all past
time, whatever of disaster and suffering might have been incurred in ren
dering their usurped supremacy perpetual would have been chargeable, not
to the despots themselves, who should fight " to maintain necessary and
wholesome government," but to the "rebellious turbulence " of their subjects
who should fight to rid themselves of ' wholesome and necessaiy restraints.'

the sacrifice OP life. 281
haps, to some extent, the one preceding it, ap
ply also to the third great item in the bill of
sacrifices deliberately offered by the authors of
the present war, which is, the sacrifice of human
life which it involves.
The data are not at hand from which to esti
mate the expense in human life at which this
terrible War has been thus far prosecuted, much
less can we now calculate the bill of mortality
which will be presented at its close.
The Union government has called for and
received for military and naval service a million
and a half of men, perhaps a few more or less,
but very nearly that number. During the two
years and two months of the War already pass
ed, an average of about 800,000 men must have
been in the field. The Rebels, by their sweeping
conscriptions, without regard to past precedent
or future prospects of keeping their number
good, have kept up a force two-thirds as large
as the Union force, and for a part of the time
exceeding that proportion. Modern implements
of war have been destructive to life and limb
beyond a parallel. The fighting has been fre
quent and severe, though often undecisive. The
larger number of our men has of course ex
posed us to a heavier loss than the Rebels. A
lack of acchmation in the Southern fields which
24*

282 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
they have occupied has acted against the health
and lives of our men. The improved and per
fected sanitary regulations and appliances of the
Union army have been of immense effect in
saving our men. The necessary or needless
lack of these, on the Rebel side, has brought the
actual loss to the two about equal. Perhaps
our assaulting of their Mississippi fortifications
is turning the balance in their favor. The li
censed slaughter of all Union men within the
reach of Rebel marauders adds an item to the
whole. From a quarter to half a million of the
most valuable lives, men in their early prime,
have doubtless already been destroyed in the
progress of this War. Multiply by this the dis
tress and sorrow of a circle of loving hearts that
ached and bled for each. If figures, or words
can be found, adequate to express the footing of
these three items of this bill of the sacrifices,
then can we approximate the cost at which the
perjured leaders of this inhuman treason pro
posed to purchase their exemption from all in
cumbering contact with the mildest and most
humane and liberal form of civil society ever
realized. What light does this computation of their
deliberate, intelligently preconcerted sacrifices
throw on the nature of their aim. The two of

DEVASTATION THE CONTINGENT AIM. 283
necessity are consonant and accordant What
is the aim that accords with such means of at
taining it ? What is the proposed diversity from
their former civil state that justifies the outlay
of this unutterable cost in arriving at it ? The
picture before us exhibits tho infuriate spirit of
all relict barbarity, committing wholesale demo
lition on the producers, and the products, of
modern civilization. It is the demon of ancient
Despotism, long driven from his throne, return
ing, " with seven other spirits more wicked than
himself," to reduce the outgrowth of all modern
principles to that condition of narrowness and
poverty that suits a restoration of his reign.
The annihilating destruction of property, and
of national character, strength, and resources,
and the fiend-gloating oblation of life and love
and hope, are not so much the dreaded but ne
cessary means of attaining a precious end that
compensates the cost, as they are themselves the
end, subordinate in ultimate importance, only, to
the restoration of a despotism designed and
fitted to perpetuate the desolation its advent
has induced.
The bill of inexpressible costs, deliberately
incurred by those who laid and launched the
plot for the destruction of the United States
government, proves that the present war is no

284 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
aecid^ent, the dictate of no mere caprice. Men
do not consign their own country, their own sec
tion, and their own homes, to devastation, and
their own friends and neighbors and sons to
wholesale immolation, from mere caprice, un
less their African associations have reduced
them to the level of Dahomians. The present
War is taking place under the action of the
deepest principles and the most abiding laws
that govern man's individual or associate action.
In case of Southern success, and the achieving
of Southern independence, the same law that
induced the present War and the transpiring sac
rifice would prompt a continual repetition of
the war and sacrifice, till the last remnant of
the hated democratic government shall have
been eradicated from the continent. In case of
Rebel failure, under the action of the same abid
ing law, of inimical antipathy to all democratic
rule, as little almost as possible, besides bones
and ashes, is designed to be left, to grace the
triumph, or requite the outlay, of the friends of
civil freedom.
It is not more the cause of this country and
of this generation than it is the cause of all
nations and of all time, that is now being fought
out on American soil, between the friends and
the enemies of civil freedom ; therefore . this

FATAL FASCINATIONS. 285
ignoring of all human ties, on the part of the
latter, this insatiate greed to ruin all that they
cannot permanently rule.
We are told that some serpents have the abil
ity to fascinate their prey. Few facts in natu
ral life fail to exemplify some active principle in
the moral and social world. So we see this spir
it of fiendish destructiveness, this unmitigated
antagonist, not only of democratic equality of
rights, but of all human happiness and prosper
ity, fascinates into an insane fondness for itself,
first, and most naturally, the female portion of
its master-class ; second, and most fatally, the
poor Avhite portion of its own Southern com
munity, whom it has kept in permanent depri
vation of everything but naked existence on the
cheapest rations ; third, last, and least excus
ably, those political partisans at the North,
drunk from the orgies of former political tri
umph and partisan excesses, beyond the possi
bility of ever conceiving a purer desire, or a
nobler design, than to achieve the overthrow
of those whom they elect to treat as political
enemies, though patriotism and peace, prosper
ity, national existence, and the star of hope, go
down in bloody chaos and eternal night at their
discomfiture. It is the necessary infirmity of all democ-

286 NATURAL mSTOEY OP SECESSION.
racy, that the most ignorant and incompetent,
the constitutionally selfish, incapacitated, ma
lign, and perversely active, as well as the able,
devoted, and patriotic, must have an equal
chance of acting on the destinies of the civil
State. But that the former classes should com
bine, with no other creed, doctrine, or political
principle than that of dividing the incomes and
patronage of civil employment among them
selves, and to this end the electing at every cost
of the candidate of their own nominating,-^ this
is a misfortune, so far as history shows, pecul
iar to the American Republic.
That, after thirty years of success and consol
idation, this ruling combination, under the blind
and fatuitous assumption that they are thereby
to perpetuate their power,, should sell them
selves, and their hitherto ruling influence, to a
chque of the boldest despots, professing to aim
at nothing but the enslavement of subordin
ates, and exultingly gloating at the repast, as
they clutch the vitals and drink the life-blood
of the nation, — this results from criminal delin
quency on the part of better men than them
selves, -^ a delinquency which they, who are
guilty of it, and their unoffending sons and
daughters are now atoning for in tears and
treasure, and are washing out with blood.

CAUSES OP SECESSION. 287
Good and evil originate and abide together in
every human community. But that, among the
rich privileges which republican government
confers upon its possessors is the privilege of
perpetually postponing with impunity all polit
ical strife between the evil and the good, is a
fundamental error, and leads to the accumula
tion of the arrearages of that unpleasant and
neglected duty, into an avalanche like that
which is pouring on the virtuous portion of the
nation at such an hour as this.
It is not transcending the legitimate bounda
ries of political, historic inquest to note that no
small encouragement has been given to the
present onslaught on the government and life
of the nation, by those infidel diddlers who
have so industriously inoculated the Northern
mind with non-resistant and no-punishment sen
timents that it was matter of military calcula
tion that a certain portion of the Northern peo
ple would "lie supinely" still, while despots
" bound them hand and foot," and cut the
throats of such as they did not see fit to con
sign to active servitude.
The permitted self-appropriation of the terms
" Democracy," and " Democratic ". by the pro-
slavery, pro-southern politicians of the North,
has exerted an immense influence with the un-

288 NATURAL mSTORY OP SECESSION.
informed and the unreflecting at home and
abroad, in bringing the country to its present
imperilled and distressed condition. And every
man professing Union sentiments, who by his
practice still sanctions that appropriation of
those terms, to that extent becomes accessory
to the traitor's crime.
The artful orators and editors of the South
have, from the first, used only that form of
speech which ignores entirely the possible dis
solving of the joints and bands by which their
subordinates are incorporated into one living,
acting organism, under its despotic head. North
ern partisans of the despots, of course, adopt the
same rule of utterance, and the Union people,
and the government itself, have been too ready
to allow this form of expression respecting the
Southern people. Those despot leaders speak
of "subjugation or success as their only alter
native," and say that "annihilation and subju
gation mean the same thing." Their views
in this regard are doubtless correct, so far as
themselves individually and their own domi
nating class are concerned. And their anni
hilation is probably the first indispensable step
toward a restoration of peace. But that the
seven and three-fourths millions of Southern
white population, who occupy the place, and

DEMOCRACY AT THE SOUTH. 289
participate in the spirit, only of the subject
masses of a grinding despotism would con
sign themselves to annihilation rather than
become reformed into a community of equal
rights, — a sincere democracy, — is an unde-
monstrated proposition which no one believes
to be true, not even those who never speak
as if its falsity were possible. The absence,
root and branch, of the whole system of ne
gro slavery, and the annihilation of the des
potic master-class from among them, will work
wonders in preparing the way for vast, radi
cal, rapid, and enduring changes in the polit
ical faith and practice of the masses of white
population at the South.
26

XLVII.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS  THE DEMOCRAT ASD DESPOT DI
VERSE  GRADES OF DESPOTISM  DEVELOPMENTS OF 
DEMOCRACT SPONTANEOUS IN ITS SPREAD  IF IT DEVEL
OPS IN THE SOUTH, ITS TRIUMPH UNIVERSAL.  CONTRAST
OF ADMINISTRATIONS  DELINQUENCY OP THE OLD WHIG
STATESMEN  FINAL SUCCESS.
We now glance back, prepared to estimate
more perfectly than at any previous point the
true value of what will have been found to be a
leading doctrine in what this book contains;
namely, that the despot and the democrat are
two distinct kinds of being in the civil world, as
irreconcilably and unconvertibly different as it
is possible to make those who possessed origi
nally the same natural physical and mental con
stitution. In other words, as stated at first, the
change from despotism to democracy, or the
reverse, is the greatest secular change to which
the human constitution is liable, whether the
individual or the community be the subject on
which the change is considered to have passed.
So that the democrat and the despot, the friend
and advocate of democracy on the one hand,
and the friend and advocate of despotism on
the other hand, are as inconvertibly different, as
290

CLASS DIVERSITIES. 291
irreconcilably antagonistic to each other, in the
civil world, as it is possible for two individuals
to become, each of whom started with the same
conformation of body and of mind.
We use the qualifying term secular, in speak
ing of this difference, this change, in order to
distinguish it from the change of character
which separates between the individual who
does, and the individual who does not, volunta
rily submit himself to the moral government of
God. We would here, without discussing its merits,
suggest the inquiry, whether there is not, in this
age and section of the world, a marked dispar
ity between the friends of democracy and the
friends of despotism, in respect to the propor
tion which each class contains of those who be
lieve in, and aim sincerely to obey, the revealed
Scriptures. -
We would still bear in mind that the despotic
class are of two grades, — the governing and the
governed; the ambitious and selfish and po
tent few, and the foiled and defeated and cir
cumvented, -but still undemocratic, many.
We would here reflect on what needs no ex
tended discussion, such is its obviousness, — that

292 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
any considerable aspiration after office, power,
or perhaps after permanently accumulated
wealth,* is essentially a despotic exercise, radi
cally inimical to democracy, inimical to that
consenting equality of privilege which is the
soul and essence of dembcracy — and consti
tutes the nascent struggle by which the radical
ly despotic member of the abject grade in a des
potism breaks the shell of his chrysalis, to come
forth a full-fledged, breeding specimen of the
ruling class, as inconvertibly fixed in despotic
principles as devils are in sin.
Here, evidently, is one of the greatest perils
of a maturely democratic State, namely, in the
natural aimbition of the individual to possess
himself of a fragment from the crumbling pre
rogative of despotic power, especially as the
vigilant, restless, persevering, and persistent en
terprise which this ambition produces, stands
out in uncompensated contrast, and destructive
antagonism, against the modest, unambitious
self-restraint which characterizes, and constitutes
the leading element in, true democracy.
Thus in the ordinary routine of electing civil
officers in a democratic State, the most despoti
cally inclined come to the surface naturally, and
* That " cursed love of gold," which the Father of our Couniry foresaw,
would be a chief source of peril to the permainency of Our government.

OFFICE-SEEKERS DESPOTIC. 293
those employed in the activity peculiar to the
nascent despot are almost the only ones that
stand any chance of being elected. Thus the
indiscriminated and the indiscriminating attach
ment to principles of popular freedom and dem
ocratic equality, on the one hand, becomes pitted
against the restless energy of the individual
despot, on the other hand ; and hence arises an
element of strife, if not the leading element of
strife, in the greater number of our popular
elections, unless it be when two candidates who
are both more aspiring than democratic get to
contending with each other over the coveted
preferment And every succeeding success of
candidates thus procuring themselves to be elect
ed leaves their kind and class encouraged and
strengthened, and leaves the indiscriminating
lovers of popular liberty, over whom they tri
umph, more cowed and abject. Thus the demo
cratic community, under the modem self electing
agency of office-seekers, yearly approximates
more and more nearly to the constitution of a
despotic state of society, which is characterized
by a division into the ruling few and the abject
many. I find myself sometimes instinctively calling
for some coercive force wherewith to extend the
25*

294 NATURAL HISTORY OP SECESSION.
principles of democratic freedom. But such an
idea is absurd. It is but a lingering remnant
of despotic life enlisting itself in favor of a
changed and, to it, an unnatural aim. Democratic
principles, the love and practice of popular free
dom, are of their own essential nature, necessarily
self-propagating, purely spontaneous in their
spread. To curb and curtail the usurping pow
er of despots, to afford to popular masses time
and space and facilities for selfeducation and
elevation, and to set before them present ex
amples of an imperative demand for, and a self-
restrained contentment with, democratic equality
of civil position and privilege, appears to be all
that can be done for propagating principles of
democracy beyond the sphere in which an indi
vidual or a people is alone responsible.*
This kind of protection and encouragement
may be given to the subordinate classes in the
Seceded States, in the absence of slavery, and
if a rising spirit of democracy and self-improve
ment appears and develops itself, as, aided by
something of immigration, doubtiess will be the
case, then this continent is secure and sacred
to democracy. Otherwise, and especially if sla-
* All the democratic principles or practices propagated.by dictation, are
only such as are received by the. abject class in a despotic state of society
over which that dictating power presides.

TREASON IN LEGISLATION. 295
very is permanently replanted, the seeds and
source of civil despotism remain, consuming
conflict is inevitable, and the 'pining anguish of
intestine strife, or fratricidal war, is perpetuated
and must prevail, till the sickened nationality
rots away. For if these seeds and this source
of despotism survive their present low and im
perilled predicament, there is little hope that
they will ever become extinct ; and as for the
spirit of freedom which is inimical to all despot
ism, there is no reason to believe that it will die
out from this its Heaven-prepared birth-place
and home, until it shall have died out elsewhere
from off Jehovah's footstool.

As the war progresses, and, more especially
since the military power of the " Confederacy "
begins to show exhaustion, and Southern Union
ists begin to speak out, and tell what they
know, as R. S. Donnell, of the " Raleigh State
Journal," has recently [August 20th, 1863] done,
it becomes undeniable as a matter of history,
that the plan to divide the Union was formed
by leading Southerners many years ago, and
that many measures of government and legisla
tion, like the repeal of the Missouri Compro
mise, the framing of the Fugitive Slave Law, —

296 NATURAL HISTORY OF SECESSION.
even back to the building of the forts that guard
the Southern ports, — and especially leading
measures adopted *by the ruling political party,
and the final -rupture of that party at its con
vention at Charleston, were steps taken with di
rect reference to the intended separation, and
with the design to make that separation easy
and certain.* As matter of history, independent
of any argument this work elsewhere contains,
I now desire to refer to this admitted fact, and
to make it the basis of the following argument
To form a plan of operations so momentous
and so vast, to impress the disposition and pur
pose of its execution on an extensive and ruling
class of men, in many and diverse States, to
transmit the plan and purpose from generation
to generation, as these Southern leaders have
done ; to interlock their damnable treason in
disguise with the most important acts of the
government and of the people of the nation
through a course of tens of years, to say noth
ing of the herculean strength and almost su
perhuman activity which these leaders have
developed and displayed since the War began,
— and this, too, with only the passive support of
popular masses whose every real interest was in
point blank hostility to the course their leaders
* See Mason's letter to Davis, — Appendix C.

TALENTS PECULIAR TO DESPOTS AND VILLAINS. 297
induced them to pursue, — demonstrates these
Southern leaders of the Rebellion to possess exec
utive talents and governing abilities which never
have been, or can be, either produced or perpet
uated in individual democrats, or in a democratic
community. The confiding quiet of a' democratic state of
society, while it affords the amplest scope for
self elevation by the arts of peace and useful
industry, affords neither cause nor opportunity for
developing talents parallel to those which the
Southern leaders have displayed.*
The absence of these talents, and the absence
of the aims and avocations which constitute their
peculiar exercise, — the absence of a fiery ambi
tion that would consume every endeared thing
but its naked self, wo^ld immolate its country
men, and leave its native land a blackened waste,
in the pursuit of despotic power, — this is the
great deficiency in "Yankee" constitution and
character, which renders the democratic popu
lation of the North so insufferably offensive in
modern times to the nostrils of Southern men.
But thanks be to God, there are more than seven
* The nearest approach that is made to this win probably beintheoaseof
some stray villain who makes it his business to prey upon the possessions
and rights of others, and defy the law. In this line of action, extraordinary
abilities are sometimes developed; after the manner of the Kansas Quautrell,,
and the guerrilla, John Morgan.

298 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
and a half millions of Southern men who are in
capable of appreciating, or even perceiving, this
offensiveness, — men to whom a taste of demo
cratic equality of rights and privileges, and an
introduction to the arts of peace and industry
as they have become developed in the truly
democratic North, in the absence of slaves and
their despot masters, and of fear of servile in
surrection, will be as life from the dead.*
If the present War succeeds in emancipating
these millions of Southern whites from the grind
ing despotism under which they have been
crushed from generation to generation, till they
had become so conformed to their impoverished
and depressed condition as to be hopelessly un
conscious of their wrongs, it will have added
another brilliant wreath to the diadem of Lib
erty, — will have given that turn to the tide of
victory which must render her dominion on
this continent perpetual and supreme.
The exhaustless resources and massive pop
ular strength which gather spontaneously to
democracy must be relied on, in the yet un-
ended conflict between the two, to counterpoise

* Tyrants hate democrats, their subjects never, except so far as they have
been trained like apes to imitate the very sentiments and sensations of their

POEECAST, NOT AEMS, THE AEBITEE. 299
the talent for command peculiar to the cham
pions of despotism.
A moiety of the peculiar ability that, in the
space of a few weeks, successfully commanded
the millions of Southern whites, who supposed
themselves to be democratic members of a dem
ocratic community, into the subordinate ranks
of a consolidated despotism of the most bloody
and inhuman kind, had that moiety been pos
sessed on the other side, would have frustrated
the current treason in somewhat the style in
which its prelude, nullification, was brought to
nought. The issue, in the existing War, is between
Despotism and its supporters on the one hand,
and Democracy and its adherents on the other
hand. These two belligerents have each the
seat of its power and the body of its forces,
mainly, but not entirely, the former at the
South, the latter at the North. Each belligerent
has some friends on the territory controlled by
its antagonist ; and the one that, by the aid of
its absent friends, succeeds in raising an impor
tant diversion (producing a permanent revolt)
on the soil and among the adherents of its an
tagonist, must be the final winner. The same
was true before the strife at arms commenced,
is true while that strife lasts, and will continue
to be true when that strife is over.

300 NATUEAL mSTOEY OP SECESSION.
Each belligerent has its forces mainly on the
section of this country which it controls, but
Europe, Africa, and Asia, heaven, earth, and hell,
are all interested and taking active part in the
conflict Every month the contest approaches,
and the combatants divide, more and more obvi
ously near upon the line that separates between
righteousness and iniquity.
The successful artifice by which John Morgan,
after such a course as he had run, succeeded in
surrendering himself, unhurt, a prisoner of war
in the interior of Ohio, the inhuman plan, and
still more inhuman execution of that plan, by
which Davis rids his dominions of those who are
unfriendly to him, putting them in the van of
the hottest fights, and hanging as traitors all
who object to being thus disposed of, the style
in which Generals Baker, Lander, McCook, and
others of whom Davis was afraid, have been put
out of the way, the African style in which
Lawrence, Kansas, was treated, * — these in con
trast with the guilelessness that is ever permit
ting the success of such artifices as that of
Morgan and the rest, together with the self
restraint that leaves Davis's dominions so long
and so extensively uninterfered with, give the
* The Richmond Examiner justifies the Lawrence massacre as a " gallant
and perfectly fair blow at the enemy." — Boston paper.

CONTRAST OP ADMINISTEATIONS. 301
characteristic lineaments of the two belliger
ents.* The idea of destroying Davis's government in
the estimation and confidence of the Southern
people appears never to have entered into Presi
dent Lincoln's plan of operation. Perhaps it
would have availed nothing if it had. Even if
it had entered into that plan, and had been
availing, the despotic organism over which
Davis presides, like polyps of certain species,
when beheaded, would spontaneously supply its
deficiency, and live on. But the idea of destroy
ing the present administration in the esteem
and confidence of the Northern people, and the
(to them at least) apparent feasibility of the
project, have doubtless presented a prominent
object of aspiration and effort, and a prominent
source of hope and encouragement to the Rebel
leaders. According t6 the light we now possess, had
the present administration shown itself to any
considerable extent more feeble and hesitating
than it did, the loyal masses of its supporters
would have become so doubting and disheart
ened, and the Northern friends of treason would
have become so bold and active, that Secession
would have had an early triumph ; or the War
* See Appendix D.
26

302 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
»
would have been protracted to a point at which
reunion would not have appeared worth con
tending for.
On the other hand, had the present adminis
tration, at an early period of the struggle, rung
out a clear analysis of the situation, and a
decided policy, after the manner of Gen. Rose
crans' letter to the Ohio legislature; had it
adopted and pursued a military course, obvi
ously, inexorably, with ever-deepening stress,
and by the use of all availing means, bent on
the achieving of its proper aims, instead of coun
termanding the orders of Fremont, Hunter, and
Burnside, and catering to the semi-secessionists
of the Border States till the exhaustion and
havoc of eighteen months of war, apparently
spent in demonstrating the mildness of the
government, had quenched the fervor of united
patriotism which was kindled by the first attack
on Fort Sumter, — thus leaving the stagnant
and discouraged feelings and opinions of the
people to be tampered with by such demagogues
as C. L. VaUandigham, D. W. Voorhees, Fer
nando Wood and the Toucey Seymours, — might
not this administration have so led the Northern
people, instead of waiting to be led by them,
as to have diminished the blood-and-treasure ex
penses of the War by one or two years' expen-

DELINQUENCY OF STATESMEN. 303
ditures? This is a question for later days to
answer. And the right and final answer, it may
be, will not be given before another century
has shed its light on the points in which a vir
tuous monarch and an equally virtuous chief
magistrate of a democratic people agree to differ.
Something of the same light, perhaps, also,
should be allowed to fall on the inquiry, whether
the statesmen of the old Whig school, in their
unrelaxed and undying antagonism to the pro
gressive corruption and traitorous depravity of
their opponents, instead of allowing themselves
to be finally discomfited and laying themselves
down in quiet graves, either beneath or above
the sod, should not, one and all, have left their
homes at Bladensburg, if need required it, sooner
than have left the envenomed progeny of Cal
houn and his political party thus to immerse
the nation in its self-shed blood, and thus to
precipitate a peril to the cause of Liberty more
to be dreaded than the sacrifice by which the
threatening disaster is being turned away.
But the delinquency of these statesmen, and
the resulting sacrifice and peril, are putting a
purer and more grateful song in the lips of those
who, with something of the faith of ancient Mi
riam, are disposed to praise their people's Great
DeHverer.

304 NATUEAL HISTOEY OP SECESSION.
When this dreadful War shall have ended, —
when this conspiracy of home-born traitors shall
have been effectually put down, and this con
federation of foreign despots, potentates, and
powers, shall have been defeated, — then will
there go up one general shout of joy, — joy
more heartfelt, more wide-extended and endur
ing, than human hearts ever before experienced,
or human tongues ever uttered before. " Ethi
opia shall stretch out her hands unto God," and
the emancipated millions of our Southern white
population wUl soon send back the sound.

APPENDIX.

A. (Page 267.)
The following extract from a letter addressed, March 25th,
1862, to a Senator who had moved in the Senate of the United
States the compensated emancipation of slaves in the District
of Columbia, presents one feature of the process of emancipa
tion : —
Sir: — A preposition to emancipate the slaves of the unse-
ceded States, with a compensation to masters, being prominently
before Congress, having had extended acquaintance among
Southern men, and some experience in the management of
slaves, and having been for the sis years last past a voter in
your State, I ask leave to lay before you briefly a few reflec
tions on this subject.
I believe it to be admitted as true, among those whose experi
ence best entitles them to know, that slave-labor is unprofitable,
except where employed in the producing of some one great
staple commodity readily marketable for cash.
Since the introduction of tobacco-culture into the new States
of the West, slave-holding in the northernmost of the Slave
States has been decidedly unprofitable ; and must have been
abandoned, had it not been for the profit derived by selling oflT
the increase of the slave population to the Cotton States.
Now, the present War either wUl, or wUl not, destroy the
slave-market in the far South. If that market is destroyed, slave
property ki the other States thereupon becomes, with few and
seeming exceptions, utterly and notoriously worthless ; and any
proposal to pay masters out of the United States treasury for
26* 306

306 APPENDIX.
relinquishing their claim on it, is little else than fraudulent. If,
on the other hand, slavery in the Cotton States is not destroyed,
then slaves in the Border States have still a pecuniary value ;
and by proposing to compensate masters for releasing them, gov
ernment simply enters the market as a competitor, to keep up
the price. ........
All that is vital to our national existence and prosperity, is
involved in the prompt and utter extinction of slavery in the
cotton latitudes.

B. (Page 252.)
The following article on political nomenclature, was published
in the " Portland Press," of July, 1863 : —
A more damning falsehood never was palmed off on a pack of
fools, than that the pro-southern, pro-slavery politicians of the North
are not the radical and necessary enemies of all democracy.
No two things in nature are more irreconcilable, invariably
and eternally antagonistic, than despotism and democracy. One
or the other must perish, wherever they come in contact.
Slavery is the darkest, densest form of despotism.
The Southern Confederacy, founded on slavery, begotten of
slavery, living for, a:iming at, tendnig toward, and ending in,
nothing else but slavery, already presents the world, in this third
year of its nascent existence, with the fiercest and most unmit
igated form of despotism that there is this side of Dahomey.
Its European abettors, with Louis Napoleon at the head and the
" London Times," at the tail, are the dregs of Europe's effete des
potic class. But these Northern sympathizers with, and aiders
of, the precious combination, forsooth we are told are "Demo
crats " !
Now the mere sound of the words democrat and democratic
sways the opinion of large masses of European minds, controls
the political faith and action of the principal portion of our im-

APPENDIX. 307
migrants and of immense multitudes of our home-bom voters ;
and as long as Union men, democratic supporters of a demo
cratic government, allow and aid the bald and brazen advocates
of everything that pertains to despotism to adorn themselves
and delude their dupes with the pui-loined and self-appropriated
title, " Democrats," so long will conclusive reasoning on political
subjects before the public mind be impracticable ; out of the re
sulting fog and confusion, designing demagogues will have an
easy task to make the worst appear the better ai-gument ; if our
armies are victorious in the field, wavering multitudes will join
the side of victory, without any apprehension of the nature or
importance of the principles that win ; and while the war contin
ues, hundreds of thousands of honest and r^ht-minded men like
Butler and Corcoran will have to fight and toil >nd suffer for
years, before they will begin to see that Jeff. Davis and his
comrades are not entirely innocent, while they call themselves
" Democrats" and Abraham Lincoln a "despot," — and all this
because our political writers and speakers and thinkers lack the
grace and courage to call things by their right names.
Abraham Lincoln is a democrat. His administration is a
democratic administration. The only opposite of democratic is
despotic. Jefferson Davis is a despot. His administration is
a despotism. The men who support and favor it are in favor of
despotism. When they shall have done with the United States,
if they do not get used up before that time, the United States
will be a despotism, and all — as many as dwell within its boun
daries — who are not in favor of despotic government wiU be
compelled to keep their mouths shut, or. do worse. T. S. G.

C. (Page 259.)
The following is a letter from Frank Pierce to Jeff. Davis,
which was originally published in Concord about a week ago.

308 APPENDIX.
As its authenticity has not been disputed, we may safely con
clude that it is genuine.

C1.AEENDON HoTBL, January 6, 1860.
Mt Dear Fkiend : — I wrote you an unsatisfactory note a
day or two since. I have just had a pleasant interview with Mr.
Shepley, whose courage and fidelity are equal to his learning
and talents. He says he would rather fight the battle with you
as the standard bearer in 1860 than under the auspices of any
other leader. The feeling and judgment of Mr. S. in this rela
tion is, I am confident, rapidly gaining ground in New England.
Our people are looking for the " Coming Man," one who is
raised by all the elements of his character above the atmosphere
ordinarily breathed by politicians, — a man really fitted for this
emergency by his ability, courage, broad statesmanship and
patriotism. Colonel Seymour (Thomas H.) arrived here this morning and
expressed his views in this relation in almost the identical lan
guage used by Mr. Shepley. It is true that in the present state
of things at Washington and throughout the country, no man
can predict what changes two or three months may bring forth.
Let me suggest that in the morning debates of Congress, full
justice seems to me not to have been done to the Democracy
of the North. I do not believe that our friends at the South
have any just idea of the state of feeling hurrying at this mo
ment to the pitch of intense exasperation between those who re- ¦
spect their political obligations, and those who have apparently
no impelling power but that which fanatical passion on the sub
ject of domestic slavery imparts.
Without discussing the question of right, — of abstract power
to secede — I have never believed that actual disruption of the
Union can occur without blood ; and if, through the madness of
Northern Abolitionists, that dire calamity must come, the fight-

APPENDIX. 309
ing laiU not be along Mason and Dixon's line merely. It
WILL BE WITHIN OUK OWN BORDERS, IN OUR OWN STREETS,
BETWEEN THE TWO CLASSES OS CITIZENS TO WHOM I HAVE RE
FERRED. Those who defy law and scout constitutional obliga
tions will, if we ever reach the arbitrament of arms, find oc
cupation ENOUGH at HOME. Nothing but the state of Mrs.
Pierce's health would induce me to leave the country now, al
though it is quite likely that my presence at home would be of
little service. I have tried to impress upon our people, espe
cially in New Hampshire and Connecticut, where the only elec
tions are to take place the coming spring, that while our Union
meetings are all in the right direction and well enough for the
present, they wiU not be worth the paper upon which their reso
lutions are vnitten, unless we can overthrow political abolitionism
at the polls, and repeal the unconstitutional and obnoxious laws
which, in the cause of " Personal Liberty," have been placed
. on our statute books. I shall look with deep interest and not
without hope for a decided change in this relation.
Ever and truly your friend,
FRANKLIN PIERCE.
Hon. Jeff. Davis, Washington, D. C.
It was such assurances as those ^ven in the above letter that
emboldened the Rebel leaders to war upon the government, and
there is a singular harmony between the assertions of Pierce
with regard to the course of events at the North and the views
of tbe Rebel newspapers at the South before the bombardment
of Fort Sumter. It wUl be recollected that they, too, predicted
civil war and bread riots at the North, showing that the assuran
ces of Northern traitors had been credulously swallowed. — Bos
ton Journal: Supplement, September 25, 1863.
The followmg from the " Boston Journal " of October 19th and
20th, 1868, presents a glimpse of the true attitude and charac
ter long possessed and maintained by this " Dear Friend "

310 APPENDIX.
to whom Mr. Pierce was then and appears yet to be so "ever
and truly" attached.
More of Jeff. Davis's Intercepted Correspondence. — The
following is a copy of a letter from Mason to Jeff. Davis, and
was found among the intercepted correspondence of the latter.
Sblma, neae Winchester, Va., I
September 30, 1856. j
Mt Dear Sir: — I have a letter from Wise, of the 27th,
full of spirit. He says the governments of North and South
Carolinas and Louisiana have abeady agreed to the rendezvous
at Raleigh, and others will. (This in your most private ear.)
He says further that he had officially requested you to exchange
with Vir^nia on fair terms of differences, percussion for flint
muskets. Don't know the usage or power of department in
such cases, but if it can be done soon by Kberal constructions I
hope you will accede. Was there not at the last session an appro
priation for converting flint into percussion arms ? If so, would
it not furnish good reason for extending such facilities to the
States ? Virginia probably has more arms than the other South-
em States, and would divide in case of need. In a letter yes
terday to a committee in South Carolina, I gave it as my judg
ment, in the event of Fremont's election, the South should not
pause, but proceed at once to immediate, absolute, and etemal
separation. So I am a candidate for the first halter. Wise says
his accounts from Philadelphia are cheermg for old Buck in
Pennsylvania. I hope they be not delusive. Vale et salude.
Mason's Letter. — This letter is one of the most valuable
yet drawn from the treasure-house of the captured Jeff. Davis
correspondence. It incontestably establishes, what has been ex
tensively impressed upon the public mind, that the Southern
leaders were prepared to ante-date the Rebellion four years, in
case Fremont had been elected. They were resolved in 1856 to
break up the Union the moment they could not hold its chief

APPENDIX. 311
offices. The John Brown movement and other pretexts are thus
proved to be utterly devoid of any foundation. The letter also
shows that Floyd's thieving exploit with the public arms was not
original with him, but had been hit upon four years earlier by
Hemy A. Wise, and commended by Mason to Jeff. Davis,
Thus started and patronized, it was not likely to be forgotten
whenever the time should come for putting it into execution.

D. (Page 301.)
The " New York Express " says there is riot one word of tmth
in the statement about confessions, etc., and gives the following
account of this "victim to Rebel vengeance : —
Mr. Spencer Kellogg Brown, whose case is here mentioned,
was the son of 0. C. Brown of Jefferson county. New York.
He enlisted in the army under General Lyon in 1861, and re
mained in active service untU he was taken prisoner off Port
Hudson, August 14th, 1862. He had been in the service of
the government under Admiral Foote, and was on board the
gunboat Essex, Commodore Porter, when that vessel committed
such a havoc upon the Rebel ram, the Arkansas. He was cap
tured as a prisoner of war while destroying a Rebel ferry-boat
near Port Hudson, August 14th, and while under protection of
a boat's crew of forty men, through whose cowardice, it is al
leged, he was taken and made prisoner. There was an unnatu
ral hatred felt toward all on board the Essex, and young Kel
logg Brown was treated with such great indignity that Commo
dore Porter held five Rebel officers as hostages for his good treat
ment and release. On the solemn assurances of Ex-Governor
Wickliffe of Louisiana that Brown should be treated as a pris
oner of war, these five men were set free and have been ex
changed, while a gallant officer is hung on the unfounded charge
of being a spy. For over a year he has been kept as a close

312 APPENDIX.
prisoner at Castle Thunder, in Richmond, and to-day his father,
now in this city on business, hears through the Richmond pa
pers, that his son was executed on Friday last.
What adds to this outrage and calamity, is the assurance of
General Halleck, given as late as Monday last to the father of
the murdered man, that his son should be protected, as there was
no ground for his execution, and it was therefore impossible.
Notice was given at once by a flag of truce that retaliation
would follow such an act of brutality ; but the assurance came
too late, as the officer was executed on Friday last, three days
before the interview.

E.
The following extracts of news, current while this volume is in
press, verify the old proverb, " It is hard to teach old dogs new
tricks;" also that other proverb of sacred origin, "Can the
Ethiopian change his skin? etc."
A special despatch to the " Chicago Tribune," dated at Indi
anapolis, Indiana, October 9th, says, —
" The Provost Marshal at Richmond, Indiana, arrested nine
teen persons this morning, all armed with revolvers, en route
for Dayton, to vote for VaUandigham. After their arrest, two
of the party confessed the facts and stated that many more were
expected to follow. They came to Richmond by different routes,
and each had in his possesssion a rough map showing the differ
ent railroads leading through Indiana, to Dayton, Ohio. The
leader of the party first gave his name as John Brown, but af
terward said it was Webster Cassel, and that they all hailed
from Chicago, Illinois."
The " Cincinnati Gazette " has a special despatch from Chicago
which says, — <
" The friends of Brough must be on the lookout for imported

APPENDIX. 813
votes, it is believed that a wide-spread scheme to colonize thou
sands of Copperheads from this State into Ohio is being carried
out. The unlawful and neferious work is being done under the
auspices and management of the K. G. C.'s. The Copperhead
organs of Chicago and Springfield advise Democrats to visit
Ohio to see that VaUandigham has fair play. The nature of the
visit and sort of fair play meant, your readers can guess. Many
of those colonists from hereabout will strike for Cincinnati,
where they expect to hide from sight and swear in their votes.
The penalties for perjury or fear of detection wUl not restrain
them from attemping to vote. Each is a repeater, and will vote
early and often, but every town under Copperhead control will
receive its share."
The " Philadelphia Bulletin," in commenting upon the result
of the election, says, —
" The canvass for governor in Pennsylvania was one of the
most spirited ever known. The Copperhead managers resorted
to eveiy trick, every deception, and every falsehood to cai'ry the
State for Woodward. He himself abandoned his former ex
pressed opinions in order that he might obtain votes, and on the
day before the election, Gen. McClellan, in a weak moment, was
persuaded to abandon his very proper reserve and write a letter
in favor of Woodward, which, it was hoped, would influence many
votes. Colonizing was attempted on a stupendous scale, and
even soldiers of the Rebel army were brought into Pennsylvania,
placed on the assessors' rolls, and their taxes paid by Demo
cratic politicians, in order to make a majority against Curtin.
These, and all their other desperate expedients, have failed miser
ably. Andrew G. Curtin has been reelected, and we believe
that the legislature of the State will show a handsome Union
majority." If any one can show sufficient cause why a law should not
be, first made, and then executed, defining as treason, and pun-
ishmg with the death-penalty, every wilful connipting of the civil
27

314 APPENDIX.
ballot, every counterfeiting of the national currency, and every
wUful fraud on the national treasury, by making his reasons
known, such person will relieve a somewhat prevalent and pain
ful sense of deficiency in our national government.

The proposition proposed to "be supported by what is appended
here, is, that the great majority of the masses of the Jackson-
Buchanan party had been so acted on, by the principles and
practices of that party, tending to deprave and' despotize them,
that up to the fall elections of 1868 they stiU adhered to the
cause of Davis and their former chiefs. The foUowing, from
the "Boston Journal " of October 16th, demonstrates the real,
which was the scarcely disguised, character of a man, ,of whose
perjury and treason those masses previously had all the evi
dence of which the nature of the case admitted, and for whom
they stUl cast their votes for governor in Ohio to the extent of
150,000. We append a letter from VaUandigham which was recently
captured in Tennessee among the baggage and private papers of
the rebel officer to whom it was addressed. It was the most
striking proof yet adduced of the treason of the man who has
been so emphatically repudiated by the people of Ohio, although
it is in perfect keeping with his whole course since the outbreak
of the Rebellion. We can say that Ohio has made a decided and
happy escape from being turned over into the hands of a traitor.
Dear Colonel: — Your kind note and invitation of yester
day was this morning handed me by your brother-in-law who will
hand you this in return. It would give me much pleasure to
visit you and your command before leaving the Confederacy, but
it is now impossible to do so, as I have made arrangements to
start this a. m. with the earliest train for Wilmington.

APPENDIX. 315
You surmise correctly, when you say that tou believe me
TO BE THE FRIEND OF THE SoUTH IN HER STRUGGLE FOR
FREEDOM. My feelings have been publicly expressed in my own
country, in that quotation from Lord Chatham — " BIy Lords,
you cannot conquer America." There is not a drop of Puritan
blood in my veins. I hate, despise and defy the ty
rannical government which has sent me among you, for my
opinion's sake, and shall never give it my support in its
CRUSADE UPON TOUR INSTITUTIONS. But you are mistaken
when you say there are but few such in the United States,
North. Thousands are there who would speak out but for
the military despotism that strangles them.
Although the contest has been, and wUl continue to be, a
bloody one, you have but to persevere and the victory
WILL SURELY be TOURS. You MUST STRIKE HOME ! The de
fensive pohcy lengthens the contest. The shortest road to peace
is the boldest one. You can have your own terms by gain
ing THE BATTLE ON YOUR ENEMy's SOIL.
Accept my kind regard for your personal welfare, and sin
cere thanks for your kind wishes in my behalf, and hoping and
PRAYING FOR THE ULTIMATE CAUSE IN WHICH YOU ARE FIGHT
ING, believe me as ever your friend,
C. L. VALLANDIGHAM.
Col. D. D. Inshall, 8th Ala. Vols.
A few weeks earlier, upwards of 50,000 of the same masses
in Maine gave their votes for a gubernatorial candidate that stood
pledged to cooperate with VaUandigham in carrying out his prin
ciples and pohcy ; and on the same day of the election in Ohio,
249,865 of the same depraved and despotized masses, out of a
whole votmg population of 515,003 in Pertnsylvania, put forth
their utmost effort to elect for that State a govemor of the same
principles and aims with VaUandigham.
Reverses to the national arms, or the desperate exertions of

316 APPENDIX.
their old leaders, were and stUl are, liable fiwm the old stock of
that party to raise those numbers to ruling majorities in either
and each of the above-named States, as they did last year in
New York and Indiana.
Thus near had Democracy in America, and the last hope of a
tyrant-ridden world, been brought to extinction, by the operation
of the principles and practices of the above-named political par
ty, acting on the masses of the population that had been directly
and fully under their influence.
In the light of recent developments, we wiU here glance at
another source of peril to the same cause that arose from a some
what different quarter. The following, from the " Portland Cou
rier " of October 22d, 1863, is a Stand reUable commentary on
the letter that succeeds : —
Everybody who reads the "Boston Joumal," knows that Bur
leigh, who writes the New York and Saratoga gossip for that pa
per, has always been partial to General McClellan, and has writ
ten many sentences in his favor. The late letter of General
McCleUan, however, has wrought a change, and Burleigh speaks
of it as follows : —
The poUtical letter of Gen. McCleUan, intending to aid in the
defeat of Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, has been read with
profound sorrow by thousands of his friends. When it was an
nounced that such a letter had been written by him, few believed
it. His long silence under the heavy charges preferred against
him by the Congressional Committee — his patient waiting under
what many supposed were wrongs inflicted upon him — his man
ly submission to the decree which condemned him to semi-dis
grace — the belief that in due time he would vindicate himself
— gave him a strong hold on the pubUe sympathy. His silence
when his military ability and honor were assaUed, and the
promptness vrith which he defends his political opinions are not
the least remarkable things in this letter. But the character of

APPENDIX. 317
the letter itself has probably done the work for Gen. McCleUan,
It justifies what his enemies have long charged upon him in his
method of conducting the war. He comes, uncaUed for, a vol
unteer witness in Court to aid his enemies, and to enable them to
do what, without his efforts, they could never have done. He
shows that his heart was never in the war ; that he intended to
carry on a defensive, and not an offensive war ; that he would
defend the capital and all the soU held by the loyal North, beat
back the Rebels, m every attempt to advance out of the seceding
States, to hold them in check tUl the Northern elections should
change the administration, and so secure peace by compromise,
and not by the sword. The letter justifies the President in the
removal of McCleUan from the command of the army. All tes
timony concedes that McCleUan was a great favorite with the
President. While his headquarters were in Washington the
President saw him every day, and passed most of his evenings
with him. He generaUy called him " Georgie," and was tender
ly attached to him. To give him up cost him a long and painful
straggle. It was not untU he was thoroughly convinced that
the policy of Gen. McCleUan, which he would not change, was
irreconcilable with the preservation of our national life, that he
gave the order for his removal. Such a letter as this of
McClellan would have kUled Junius.
Oeange, New Jersey, Oct. 12th, 1863.
Hon. Charles J. Biddle.
Dear Sir : — My attention has been called to an article in the
"Philadelphia Press," asserting that I had written to the manag
ers of the Democratic meeting at AUentown, disapproving of the
objects of the meeting, and that if I voted and spoke, it would
be in favor of Govemor Curtin.
I am informed that simUar assertions have been made through
out the State. It has been my earnest endeavor heretofore to
avoid participation in party politics, and I had determined to ad-
27*

318 APPENDIX.
here to this course ; but it is obvious that I cannot long maintain
silence under such misrepresentations. I therefore request you to
deny that I have written any such letter, or entertained any such
views as those attributed to me in the " PhUadelphia Press."
I desire to state clearly and distinctly that having some few
days ago had a full conversation with Judge Woodward, I find
that our views agree, and I regard his election as GfOvemor of
Pennsylvania called for by the interest of the nation.
I understand Judge Woodward to be in favor of the proseeu-
Jon of the war with all the means at the command of the loyal
States, until the military power of the Rebellion is destroyed.
I understand him to be of the opinion that while war is waged
with all possible decision and energy, the policy directing it
should be in consonance with the princ^les of humanity and civ
ilization, working no injury to private rights and property not de
manded by military necessity and recognized by military law
among civilized nations. And finally,
I understand him to agree with me in the opinion that the
sole great objects of the war are the restoration of the Union of
the nation, the preservation of the Constitution and the suprem
acy of the laws of the country.
BeUevIng that our opinions entirely agree. upon these points,
I would, were it in my power, give to Judge Woodward my
voice and my vote. I am, very respectfully, yours,
George B. McCuillan.
Three historic characters here present theauselves. Judge
Woodward, Gen. McCleUan, and President Xincoln.
Judge Woodward, but for his insignificance, mi^t with pro
priety be termed James Buchanan No. 2, and appears justly to
merit all the increase of odium that attaches to the character that
term describes at the present, in comparison with a former day.
There appears to have been scarcely anything, short of the overt

APPENDIX. 319
act of treason which would have condemned hun to the gallows,
which he has not done, in the fore-front of the Rebel sympathiz
ers, to aid the traitor's cause. Of what he had said and done in
this direction, he had swallowed, contradicted, and undone noth
ing, more than would have been swallowed, contradicted, and un
done by any man of his pohtical school, to gain the votes of men
less traitorous than himself.
All this was perfectly known to McClellan. It was known to
him that the positions occupied by Woodward and VaUandigham,
and the measures resorted to to sustain these positions at the same
time in the several States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, were sub
stantially parallel.* And yet McClellan could not restrain him.
self from coming out at the last decisive hour, io a carefully
worded but desperate effort to throw Pennsylvania and the Un
ion back into the hands of such men as Judge Woodward, f
James Buchanan, Isaac Toucey, John B. Floyd, Franklin
Pierce, Jefferson Davis; and to subject Pennsylvania and the
Union again to the operation of the political principles, which
these names represent.
From July 27th, 1861, to November 9th, 1862, George B.
McCleUan commanded the army of the Potomac, and, during
several months of this time, the armies of the United States.
When first called to that position of unpaxaUeled importance and
* See Appendix D.
t Judge Woodward, the opposition candidate for Govemor of Pennsylva
nia, has been convicted, on the strongest authority, of having publicly de
clared in the spring of 1861 that if these States are to be separated he hoped
Pennsylvania would go with the South, which was then Etbout to take
arms to break down the government.
Mr. George W. Hart of Philadelphia, always a Democrat hitherto, saj't
in a letter that he travelled tlnree days with Judge Woodwai-d, the Demo
cratic candidate for Govemor of Pennsylvania, and heard him say often
that this " was an unconstitutional war and an abolition war, and that he
had no interest whatever in the result, let this result be what it might ; that
it was a contest in which the North could gaiu neither credit nor honor, and
this he believed would be the verdict of history." — Boston Joamal, Se,pl,
28 amd Oct. 3d, 1863.

320 APPENDIX.
responsibility, he was hailed with a universal welcome. The
talents he displayed in organizing a vast army, and in inspiring
his men with hope and confidence, commanded universal admira
tion. The loyal millions breathed freer at his advent, introduced
and endorsed as he was by the retiring veteran of peerless re
nown, who had preceded him. The friends of Free-government
throughout the world were glad that theuc cause had fallen into so
able hands.
Had the sun stood stiU, and aU human events and actions sus
pended progress, at the point at which General McClellan ma
tured the recruiting and organizing of his army, then might his
name have remained illustrious, — at least, with some dawning
beams about it. But on no other condition could he be spared
the necessity of acting out, on a transcendently important and
conspicuous arena, the principles of his heart.
What was the record ? Delay in advancing to Manassas —
defeated by Fabian tactics — delay at Yorktown — 80,000 men
consumed by the heat of summer in the malarious swamps of the
Chickahominy, and in the overwhelming assaults which his de
lays obtained for him — Pope and his army immolated at the sec
ond battle of Bull Run, through the obstinate tardiness, or wilful
refusal of McCleUan and his crony commanders, to forward the
needed succor as commanded. Next came the terrible day of
Antietam, on which McCleUan refrained from firing a shot, more
than was indispensable to prevent Baltimore, Philadelphia, and
Washington from falling immediately into the enemy's hands.
'What does aU this mean ? — the astonished, bewildered, dis
heartened and stricken loyaUsts in this country, and the friends
of Uberal government throughout the world, have been asking;
and never, tiU George B. McClellan signed and sent that letter,
to turn if possible the Pennsylvania election in favor of the Rebel
sympathizers,* has hght enough been accumulated to enable any
* Philadelphia, Nov. 11. Judges Lonrie, Woodward and Thompson of
the Svipreme Court of Pennsylvania, in session at Pittsburg, being a majori-

APPENDIX. 321
one who was at liberty to do so, reliably to interpret this page of
appalling history.
ty of the Court, gave a decision on Monday relative to certain drafted men,
in effect declaring the conscription act nnconstitutional.
The Riots- in the Coal Districts. — A special correspondent of the
Philadelphia Press writes from Mauch Chunk, Pa., on the 7th instant, as
follows ; —
" Several accounts appeared dm-ing the last few days in Philadelphia and
New York papers of the ' riots ' in this region, and the murder of Mr. G. K.
Smith, one of our best and most valuable citizens. The accounts given are,
as far as they go, substantially correct. The murders committed, however,
are not ' riots,' but the work of assassins, extensively organized throughout
the coal region ; and the leading Copperheads are the chief instigators.
"The murderers are all Irish, organized nndor the nameof Buckshots' for
the avowed purpose of resisting the draft. They number probably several
thousand ui the mines of Beaver Meadow, Colerain, Jeanesville, Hazleton,
Audenried, Torktown, Frenchtown, Spring Mountain and Mount Pleasant,
They are all armed either with shot-guns, rifles, muskets, or revolvers. The
most notorious Copperheads of our place counselled them to arm themselves
' to defend their liberties,' and to ' resist the tyranny of the Lincoln despot
ism.' The beasts, duped by these demagogues, declare their determination to
drive out of the mines every one who is not of their own stripe ; and a number
of Welshmen, Englishmen, Protestant Irish, Germans, and Americans have
been waylaid and nfltrdered by them during the last two or three months.
About two months ago, one of these Buckshots was airested near Beaver
Meadow, and lodged in our jail, on a charge o^ assault and battery with in
tent to kill. On the following night, over one hundred Buckshots marched
iuto town well armed, an-iving here about- one o'clock in the morn
ing, surrounded the jail, and rescued the prisoner. No effort was made by
the civil authorities to an-est the offenders, although the grand jury, last
month, presented the names of a number of persons who participated in the
outrage. The district attorney, being of the most malignant stamp of Cop
perheads, refused, and continues to refuse, any steps calculated to bring
these villains to justice. The high sheriff of the county, it is believed,
would prefer doing his duty; but he being in the Copperhead boat cannot do
so. He has made no effort to raise a posse comitatus for the arrest of these
or any other outlaws in our county. Even one of the associate judges of
our court, and leading officer of one of the most prosperous and respectable
local corporations, it is .said, discountenanced any effort to arrest 'Buck
shots,' simply because they (the Democracy) 'need their votes, and must not
offend them.'
" Thus encouraged by our local authorities, these outlaws frequently de
clared then: determination to not only kill every officer who would mndertake

322 APPENDIX.
In the war of the American Revolution, Great Britain failed
to subdue the revolted colonies for lack of miUtary commanders
who heartily undertook the task assigned them. The policy of
McClellan and of the poUtical school to which he lent himself
appears to have been, to defeat the efforts of \la.e present ad
ministration through the operation of a similar cause, to keep the
losses, exhaustion, and bloodshed of the present war about equal
ly divided between the two contending sections, call it a drawn
game, and submit the questions at issue back to the operation
of the same causes that first brought them under the arbitration
of the sword! In other words, that poUcy was, so to. conduct
the existing war, that its cost, its sufferings, and its slaughtered
thousands, should just avaU as a judicious blood-letting to re
duce the Southern leaders to the position they occupied before
they bolted from their fellow partisans at the Charleston Conven
tion, and thus enable the old poUtical party to revaUdate its old
usurpation, and handle its old opponents with aU the greater ease
by as much as they had been impoverished and decimated in
the war ! ! ^
Let him, if such an one there be, who is competent to the
task, do justice to the events, and fitly characterize the actors
presented on this page of history !
If General George B. McCleUan failed to fulfil the expecta
tions entertained of him as Commander-in-Chief of the Union
forces, or as Commander of the magnificent army of the Poto
mac, those expectations appear to have been disappointed, not
because he lacked the power, but because he lacked the wiU,
that was requisite for their fulfilment. The reticence with which
he suppressed his real sentiments and aims, and the success
ful address with which he kept the administration at his chariot-
to enforce the draft, but also to put out of the way every one suspected of
sympathy with the government. They openly declare now their determi
nation to secure entu:e control of all the mines, and to stop the shipment of ".
coal, and thus deprive the navy of this indispensable article." — Boston Jcmr-
nal. Nob. 12th, 1863.

APPENDIX. 323
wheel, whUe he carried those sentiments into effect, and advanced
those aims towards their final achievement, on so vast a scale, in-
doctrinatmg his generals and attaching to himself the rank and
file of his army, prove General McClellan to be well endowed
with executive abUity to accompUsh anything that he has the
moral elevation to attempt.
The peril that arose, to the cause of popular government in
general and to the United States in particular, from the course
of General McCleUan while in command of United States forces,
may be traced to its primal source in the causes that had despo
tized the masses of the Jackson-Buchanan party. He is an emi
nent individual specimen of what elsewhere appears in depraved
masses. But it is another source of perU displayed in this
connection, to which we here glance briefly.
Whatever was wanting in tenderness was made up in strength,
in the composition of that man who could see more than one
hundred thousand of his fellow-citizens consumed before his face
in fifteen months by disease and casualties, from the ranks under
his command, — to say nothing of the nearly equal waste that oc
curred simultaneously just across the Une in his front, — and per
sist in regarding the whole as an ordinary, and perhaps-to-be-re
peated sacrifice to the Moloch of his poUtical party ; and, at the
end put forth his earnest effort to prevent the disaster from avail
ing for any higher end. Far less extensive views than General
McCleUan had, of the disaster and soitow brought upon their
countrymen by the nefarious originators of this war, had availed
to turn the judgments and the hearts of tens of thousands of Mc-
Clellan's feUow-partisans who went into the war as honest and as
earnest in their allegiance to his poUtical party as himself. But
out of it aU McCleUan came with an obdurate few, unable to see
any object to be accomplished by the incomputable costs, higher
or holier than the restoration of the policy of Pierce, Buchanan,
and Toucey with its attendant benefits, to "the interest of
the nation" — unable to aspire to any higher or holier political

324 APPENDIX.
vocation than, with men like these, to grind in the prison^
house of that foul sect, with a view to keeping m subjection
under them all those of their remaining fellow-citizens who aspire
to the attainment of a political destiny less ignominious than
their own. ' ' Join our poUtical party, and follow the leaders or
be left out in the cold " — " to the victors belong the spoUs " —
is the language with which they prepare to greet us, the moment
that any kind or amount of poUtical fraud or villany enables
them to elect the candidate of their nominating.
That the inaugural address of President Lincoln seemed defi
cient in boldness, was attributed at the time to a sagacious, but
not the less decided, pradence. That no prompt, decisive steps
were taken to arrest the progress of insurgent fortifications
around Charleston, and to reinforce Fort Sumter, sickened the
loyal heart. That seventeen months of the war, with their slaugh
ter and their cost, went by without the administration having
adopted any principle or policy that appeared adequate to secure
a beneficial result, or even to end the fight, appalled the thought
ful friends of popular government in this country and in Europe.
It was presumed that the diplomatic member of President Lin
coln's Cabinet, with undue influence was inducing his chief to
found his plans and expectations, not so much on the rock of
any particular civil truths or principles, as on the fathomless
abyss of diplomacy. That President Lincoln, during much of this
time was spending his evenings in the fascinating company of a
man, who, after passing through the war-experience of that com
manding general, would put his name to such a letter as was ad-
di-essed to Charles J. Biddle on the eve of the late Pennsylva
nia election, was a calamity, a tremendous peril, — a verging
of the car of Liberty along the brink of chaos, — which free
dom's friends at the time wore spai'ed the misery of contem
plating. Now that we see it in the Hght of accompUshed facts,
it reminds one of Marshal Grouchy on the eve of Waterlop, in
conference with the emissary of the AUies. To subject him-

APPENDIX. 325
self and his country's cause to the effect of such a perilous
temptation displayed President Lincoln's sad trait. To extricate
himself and his cause fi'om the impending ruin, almost unharmed
— to rebound into the line of cleai-, decisive, necessary, and glori
ously successful policy which his former fascinator is now strug
gling to resist, displays President Lincoln's redeeming excellence
in its tardy but ultimate ascendency, — displays perhaps the
"grace of God that was given unto him" in answer to the
prayers of God's imperilled, beUeving people.

G.
In a letter to the General Assembly of Ohio, acknowled^g
the receipt of a resolution of thanks fi-om that body to the Army
of the Cumberland and its officers. Gen. Rosecrans employs the
following emphatic language : —
" This is indeed a war for the maintenance of the Constitution
and the laws — nay, for national existence against those who
have despised our honest friendship, deceived our just hopes, and
driven us to defend our country and our homes. By foul and
wilful slanders on our motives and intentions, persistently repeat
ed, they have arrayed against us our own fellow-citizens, bound
to us by the triple ties of consanguinity, geographical position,
and commercial interest.
" Let no man among us be base enough to forget this, or fool
enough to trust an oUgarchy of traitors to their friends, to civU
Uberty, and human freedom. Voluntary exUes from home and
fiiends, for the defence and safety of aU, we long for the time
when gentle peace shall again spread her wings over our land ;
but we know no such blessing is possible whUe the unjust and
arbitrary power of the Rebel leaders confronts and threatens us,
Crafty as the fox, crael as the tiger, they cried ' No coercion,'
while preparing to strike us. BuUy-like they proposed to fight
us because they said they could whip five to one ; and now,
28

326 APPENDIX.
when driven back, they whine out ' no invasion,' and promise us
of the West permission to navigate the Mississippi, if we wiU be
' good boys,' and do as they bid us.
" Whenever they have -the power, they drive before them into
their ranks the Southem people, and they would also drive us.
Trast them not. Were they able, they would invade and destroy
us without mercy. Absolutely assured of these things, I am
amazed that any one could think of ' peace on any terms.' He
who entertains the sentiment is fit only to be a slave ; he who
utters it at this time is, moreover, a traitor to his country, who
deserves the scorn and contempt of all honorable men. When
the power of the unscrapulous Rebel leaders is removed, and the
people are free to consider and act for theu> own interests, which
are common with ours under this government, there will be no
great difficulty in fraternization." — Boston Journal, Feb. \Qth,
1863 Of the above extract from Gen. Rosecrans's letter it may be
said that an equal amount of sagacious statesmanship and patri
otic faithfulness has not been expressed in the same space, —
has not been compressed into any one document, — (it may al
most be said) has not been expressed in all the documents and
speeches which the present war has brought out. It presents
Gen. Rosecrans himself, simply, unsubverted, unsophisticated,
an American Democrat in the true and proper meaning of the
term. The following, translated from the "Oourrier des Etats Unis,"
which professes to have obtained it from a Cincinnati correspon
dent, represents Gen. Rosecrans in the shape to which he would
be reduced, and in the attitude and light in which he would be
placed by his spiritual advisers, the emissaries of the " decrepit
giant " who, as seen from Bedford jaU two hundred years ago,
was "biting his nails" for lack of power to commit the
devastation he desired ; provided said emissaries succeed to
their minds in accomplishing the mission on which they have
been sent.

APPENDIX. 327
" Persons who are on intimate terms with Gen. Rosecrans de
clare that he is greatly discouraged about the war. This is not
because he considers the Southem armies invincible, but because
he beUeves that the seceded States can never be brought back by
the rigorous poUcy which the government has adopted. He has
never taken any part in the proceedings of Andrew Johnson, the
miUtary govemor of Tennessee, who has succeeded in converting
to Secession all people who had any hopes of the Union. Him
self perfectly disinterested, he looks with disgust upon the
shameful traffic which is going on under the mask of patriotism.
When he looks around him, he sees men moved by aU sorts of
motives, more or less decent, except honor and the love of coun
try. Some are fighting from ambition, others from avarice ; to
the latter the conquest of country means only pUlage and cheap
cotton ; the former are jealous of their superiors and their
equals, and are delightod with any reverse which may overtake
them. " Profoundly honest and rehgious, Rosecrans regards these
spectacles with bitter aversion. His religious feelings have grown
upon hinn in proportion to the excesses and intrigues which he is
impotent to prevent; and, in mystical hopes of another world, he
seeks reUef from the corruptions of the present. He no longer
fights with any ardor, but simply from a sense of duty, consider
ing each victory a useless waste of blood. He has no confi
dence in his successes, considering that they are foUowed by the
swoop of birds of prey whose rapacity makes hopeless the pacifi
cation of the country. .... All these details come to me from
a person yerj dear to Rosecrans, to whom the General wrote that
he saw in the defeat of Chickamauga the finger of God." — Bos
ton Joumal, Oct. 27th, 1863.

S28 APPENDIX.
TO THE BAFFLED DESPOTS OF THE SOUTH.

TSi are going down whence ye rose at first,
From the face of the Land your lust has cursed ;
From the li^t of your hope, and your Ued-'for crown,
In darkness and blood ye are going down.
Ye chose you a corner whereon to rear
The throne of your power, a realm of fear ;
Te swore to rule with a despot's rod
O'er the Land, the People, and the Saints of Grod.
The sable sons of a heathen race
Long bowed to your mandates with abject grace ;
And your slaveless kindred, bereft of dOWer,
Have quailed and bled 'neath your crushing power,
Tin the voice of their blood, from the Wreaking sod,
Has entered the ears of an incensed God,
And beneath the blight of his burning frown,
To the despot's doom ye are going down.
" Hell from beneath is moved for thee,*
The despot dead thy coming greet, —
' Art thou also become weak as we ? '
The defiinct kings of the nations shriek.
" In glory each in his house they lie,
But thou, cast out, art keenly scanned.
And trampled down by each passer-by,
Because thou hast destroyed thy land.
" The whole earth is at rest once more.
The trees and the fields rejoice 'gainst tiiee.''
And wide and deep as Ocean's roar.
Goes up the song of slaves set firee.
The despots slain mid Freedom's Home,
The boldest, bloodiest of their kind,
We trust may be the last that come.
Their shackles on our limbs to bind.
jAlrUABT 16, 1864. * Isoiab, xiv.

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