“Hail to thee, poor little ship Mayflower, of Delft-Haven! poor, common-looking ship, hired by common charter-party for coined dollars; calked with mere oakum and tar; provisioned with vulgarest biscuit and bacon: yet what ship Argo, or miraculous epic ship built by the Sea-Gods, was other than a foolish bumbarge in comparison? Golden fleeces, or the like, these sailed for, with or without effect: thou, little Mayflower, hadst in thee a veritable Promethean spark, the life-spark of the largest nation on our earth,—so we may already name the Transatlantic Saxon Nation.”[374]
“Hail to thee, poor little ship Mayflower, of Delft-Haven! poor, common-looking ship, hired by common charter-party for coined dollars; calked with mere oakum and tar; provisioned with vulgarest biscuit and bacon: yet what ship Argo, or miraculous epic ship built by the Sea-Gods, was other than a foolish bumbarge in comparison? Golden fleeces, or the like, these sailed for, with or without effect: thou, little Mayflower, hadst in thee a veritable Promethean spark, the life-spark of the largest nation on our earth,—so we may already name the Transatlantic Saxon Nation.”[374]
There is no record of what passed on board the slave-ship, before the landing of the slaves. The wail of Slavery, the clank of chains, and the voice of the master counting his cargo, there must have been. But the cabin of the Mayflower witnessed another scene, of which there is authentic record, as the whole company, by solemn compact, deliberately constituted themselves a body politic, and set the grand example of a Christian Commonwealth,[375]—thus indicating the character which they had claimed for themselves, as “knit together as a body in a most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord, of the violation whereof we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we do hold ourselves straitly tied to all care of each other’s good, and of the whole by every one, and so mutually.”[376]And so these two voyages closed; but the two cargoes have endured, surviving successive generations.
The early social life of the two warring sections attests the prevailing influence. Virginia continued to be supplied with slaves, so that Slavery became part of herself. On the other hand, New England always set her face against Slavery. To her great honor, in an age when Slavery was less condemned than now, the Legislature of Massachusetts censured a ship-master who had “fraudulently and injuriously taken and brought a negro from Guinea,” and by solemn vote resolved that the negro should be “sent back without delay”;[377]and not long after enacted the law of Exodus, “If any man stealeth a man or man-kind, he shall surely be put to death.”[378]Thus at that early day stood Virginia and New England: for such, at that time, was the designation of the two provinces which divided British America by a line of demarcation very nearly coïncident with the recent slave-line of our Republic.
The contrast appears equally in the opposite character of their respective settlers. Like seeks like, and the Pilgrims of the Mayflower were followed by others of similar virtues, whose first labors on landing were to build churches and schools. Many of them had the best education of England; some were men of substance, and there was no poverty among them that could cause a blush; while all were most exact and exemplary in conduct. They were a branch from that grand Puritan stock, to which, according to the reluctant confession of Hume, “the English owe the whole freedom of their Constitution.”[379]We are told by Burkethat there is a sacred veil to be drawn over the beginnings of all governments, and that, where this is not happily supplied by time, it must be found in a discreet silence. But no veil is needed for the Puritan settlers of New England. It is very different with the early settlers of Virginia, recruited from the castaways and shirks of Old England, and mostly needy men, of desperate fortunes and dissolute lives, who cared nothing for churches or schools. Such naturally became slave-lords. I should not lift the veil which charity would kindly draw, if a just knowledge of their character had not become important in illustrating the origin of our troubles.
It is a common boast of these slave-lords that they constitute a modern “chivalry,” derived from the “Cavaliers” of England, and reinforced by the “ennobling” influences of African Slavery.[380]This boast has been so often repeated, that it has obtained a certain acceptance among those not familiar with our early history, and even well-informed persons allow themselves to say that the conflict in which we are now engaged is a continuance of the old war between Cavalier and Roundhead. So far as it is intended to say that the war is part of the ever-recurring conflict between Slavery and Liberty, there is no objection to this illustration. But if it be intended that the Rebels are cavaliers, or descendants of cavaliers, there is just ground of objection. I know not if the armies of the Union, now fighting the world’s greatest battle for Human Rights, may not be called “Roundheads”; but I am sure that Rebels nowfighting for Slavery cannot be called “Cavaliers” in any sense. They are not so in character, as their barbarism attests; and they are as little so historically.
The whole pretension is a preposterous absurdity, by which the country has been too much deceived. It is not creditable to the general intelligence that such a folly should play such a part. Unquestionably there were settlers in Virginia, as there were also in New England, connected with aristocratic families. But in each colony they were too few to modify essentially the prevailing population, which took its character from the mass rather than from any individual. The origin of Virginia is so well authenticated as to leave little doubt with regard to its population, unless you reject all the concurrent testimony of contemporaries and all the concurrent admissions of historians. There is nothing in our early history with regard to which authorities are so various and so clear. From their very abundance, it is difficult to choose.
The original “Cavaliers” were English; but it is an historical fact that the Rebel colonies were not settled exclusively from England. The blood of Scotch, Irish, Dutch, Germans, Swiss, French, and Jews commingled there, all of which is amply attested. Huguenots of France, cruelly banished by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, found a home in both the Carolinas. William Gilmore Simms, the novelist of South Carolina, in a history of his native State, after mentioning the arrival of the Huguenots, says:“Emigrants followed, though slowly, from Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; and the Santee, the Congaree, the Wateree, and Edisto now listened to the strange voices of several nations, who in the Old World had scarcely known each other, except as foes.”[381]From Hewit’s “Historical Account of South Carolina,” published in 1779, we have details of settlement by Dutch, French, Swiss, Scotch, and Germans, followed by the remark, “But of all other countries none has furnished the province with so many inhabitants as Ireland.”[382]A similar story is told of North Carolina.[383]Here is nothing of the boasted “chivalry”; and if we search the testimony with regard to the character and condition of these early settlers, the whole “cavalier” pretension becomes still more improbable, if not impossible.[384]
Even before English colonization had begun, and before Sir Walter Raleigh or Captain John Smith had landed on our coasts, the “temperate and fertile parts of America” had been proposed as a substitute for the prison and gibbet. I quote from a Dedicatory Epistle of Richard Hakluyt “to the right worshipful and most virtuous Gentleman, Master Philip Sydney, Esquire.”
“Yea, if we would behold with the eye of pity how all our prisons are pestered and filled with able men to serve their country, which for small robberies are daily hanged up in great numbers, even twenty at a clap out of one jail (as was seen at the last assizes at Rochester), we would hasten and further, every man to his power, the deducting of some colonies of our superfluous people into those temperate and fertile parts of America, which, being within six weeks’ sailing of England, are yet unpossessed by any Christians, and seem to offer themselves unto us, stretching nearer unto her Majesty’s dominions than to any other part of Europe. We read that the bees, when they grow to be too many in their own hives at home, are wont to be led out by their captains to swarm abroad, and seek themselves a new dwelling-place.”[385]
“Yea, if we would behold with the eye of pity how all our prisons are pestered and filled with able men to serve their country, which for small robberies are daily hanged up in great numbers, even twenty at a clap out of one jail (as was seen at the last assizes at Rochester), we would hasten and further, every man to his power, the deducting of some colonies of our superfluous people into those temperate and fertile parts of America, which, being within six weeks’ sailing of England, are yet unpossessed by any Christians, and seem to offer themselves unto us, stretching nearer unto her Majesty’s dominions than to any other part of Europe. We read that the bees, when they grow to be too many in their own hives at home, are wont to be led out by their captains to swarm abroad, and seek themselves a new dwelling-place.”[385]
This recommendation, associated with the names of Hakluyt and Sydney, was followed,—with what success you shall know.
I begin with the early patron of Virginia, Lord Delaware, who, after visiting the colony, described the people there, in a letter dated at Jamestown, July 7, 1610, as “men of distempered bodies and infected minds, whom no examples daily before their eyes, either of goodness or punishment, can deter from their habitual impieties or terrify from a shameful death.”[386]Little of chivalry here!
The colony, which began with bad men, was increased by worse. In November, 1619, King James wrote to the Virginia Company, “commanding them forthwith to send away to Virginia an hundred dissolute persons, which Sir Edward Zouch, the Knight Marshal, would deliver to them.”[387]Thus by royal command was this colony made a Botany Bay.
The Company, not content with the “hundred dissolute persons” supplied by the king’s order, entreated formore, until Captain John Smith, the hero of Virginia, was moved to express his disgust. He testified to the evil, when he wrote in 1622: “Since I came from thence, the Honorable Company have been humble suitors to his Majestyto get vagabond and condemned mento go thither; nay, so much scorned was the name of Virginia,some did choose to be hanged, ere they would go thither, and were.”[388]This was bad enough.
But the Virginia Company was insensible to the shame of such a settlement. Its agents and orators vindicated the utility of the colony. In a work entitled “Nova Britannia, offering most Excellent Fruits by Planting in Virginia,” published in London in 1609, and dedicated to “one of his Majesty’s Council for Virginia,” it was openly argued, that, unless “swarms of idle persons in lewd and naughty practices” were sent abroad, “we must provide shortlymore prisons and correctionsfor their bad conditions”; and that it was “most profitable for our state to rid our multitudes of such as lie at home, pestering the land with pestilence and penury, and infecting one another with vice and villany, worse than the plague itself.”[389]Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s, poet also, in a sermon “preached to the Honorable Company of the Virginian Plantation, November 30th, 1622,” thus sets forth the merits of the colony: “The plantation shall redeem many a wretch from the jaws of death, from the hands of the executioner.…It shall sweep your streets and wash your doors from idle personsand the children of idle persons, and employ them.”[390]Such were the puffs by which recruits were gained for Virginia.
History records the unquestionable result, and here authorities multiply. Sir Josiah Child, in his “Discourse of Trade,” published in 1694, says: “Virginiaand Barbadoes werefirst peopledby a sort of loose, vagrant people, vicious, and destitute of means to live at home, … such as, had there been no English foreign plantation in the world, could probably never have lived at home to do service to their country, but must have come to be hanged or starved, or died untimely of some of those miserable diseases that proceed from want and vice, or else have sold themselves for soldiers, to be knocked on the head or starved in the quarrels of our neighbors.”[391]Dr. Douglass, in his “British Settlements in North America,” printed in 1749, is very positive, saying, “Virginia and Maryland have been for many years, and continue to be, a sink for transported criminals.”[392]“Our plantations in America,New England excepted, have been generally settled, (1.) by malcontents with the Administrations from time to time; (2.) by fraudulent debtors, as a refuge from their creditors; (3.) and by convicts or criminals, who chose transportation rather than death.”[393]Grahame, the Scotch historian, who has written so conscientiously of our country, speaking of the first settlers, says of Virginia: “A great proportion of the new emigrants consisted of profligate and licentious youths, sent from England by their friends, with the hope of changing their destinies, or for the purpose of screening them from the justice or contempt of their country, … with others like these,more likely to corrupt and prey upon an infant commonwealth than to improve or sustain it.”[394]The historian of Virginia, William Stith, whose work was published at Williamsburg in the last century, is not less explicit. “I cannot but remark,” he says, “how early that custom arose of transporting loose and dissolute persons to Virginia, as a place of punishment and disgrace, which, although originally designed for the advancement and increase of the colony, yet has certainly proved a great prejudice and hindrance to its growth; for it hath laid one of the finest countries in British America under the unjust scandal of beinga mere hell upon earth, another Siberia, and only fit for the reception of malefactors and the vilest of the people; so that few people, at least few large bodies of people, have been induced willingly to transport themselves to such a place, and our younger sisters, the Northern Colonies, have accordingly profited thereby.”[395]But this is not all. Another historian of Virginia, of our own day, whose work was published at Richmond in 1848, while showing that pride in his State which would change every settler into a “cavalier,” is compelled to make the following most rueful confession:“Gentlemen, reduced to poverty by gaming and extravagance, too proud to beg, too lazy to dig; broken tradesmen, with some stigma of fraud yet clinging to their names; footmen, who had expended in the mother country the last shred of honest reputation they had ever held; rakes, consumed with disease and shattered in the service of impurity; libertines, whose race of sin was yet to run; and unruly sparks, packed off by their friends to escape worse destinies at home: these were the men who came to aid in founding a nation, and to transmit to posterity their own immaculate impress.”[396]And this same historian confesses that social life in Virginia, beginning in such baseness, after more than a century, had developed “an aristocracy neither of talent nor learning nor moral worth, but of landed and slave interest.”[397]So much for the testimony of history, even when written and printed in Virginia. In harmony with this testimony was the honest exclamation of a Virginian in 1751: “In what can Britain show a more sovereign contempt for us than by emptying their jails into our settlements, unless they would likewise empty their jakes on our tables?”[398]
I know not the number of desperate persons shipped to Virginia; but there were enough to leave an indelible impress on the colony, and to give it a name in the literature of the time. It was this colony which suggested to Bacon the most pregnant words of one of his Essays, which furnished to De Foe several striking passages in one of his romances, which furnished a confirmatory article in the Dictionary of Postlethwayt, and which provoked Massinger to a dialogue in one of his dramas. Glance for a moment at these illustrations.
It is in the Essay on “Plantations” that Bacon thus brands the early settlement of Virginia:“It is a shameful and unblessed thing to takethe scum of people and wicked condemned mento be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but itspoileth the plantation, for they will ever live like rogues.” Surely there is nothing in this out of which to construct a “cavalier.”
In the narrative of Moll Flanders, the author of “Robinson Crusoe,” who gives to all his sketches such life-like character that they seem to be sun-pictures, exhibits this same colony. Here is a glimpse. “The greatest part of the inhabitants of that colony came thither in very indifferent circumstances from England. Generally speaking, they were of two sorts: either, first, such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants; or, second, such as are transported, after having been found guilty of crimes punishable with death. When they come here, we make no difference; the planters buy them, and they work together in the field till their time is out.… Hence many a Newgate bird becomes a great man; and we have several justices of the peace, officers of the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have been burnt in the hand.… Some of the best men in the country are burnt in the hand, and they are not ashamed to own it. There’s Major ——, he was an eminent pickpocket; there’s Justice Ba——r, was a shoplifter; and both of them were burnt in the hand; and I could name you several such as they are.”[399]Nothing is said here of “cavaliers.”
The author of the “Dictionary of Commerce,” quoted often in courts, confirms the testimony of Moll Flanders, when he says:“Even your transported felons, sent to Virginia instead of Tyburn, thousands of them, if we are not misinformed, have, by turning their hands to industry and improvement, and, which is best of all, to honesty, become rich, substantial planters and merchants, settled large families, and been famous in the country; nay, we have seen many of them made magistrates, officers of militia, captains of good ships, and masters of good estates.”[400]Here, again, is nothing said of “cavaliers.”
Another writer, who travelled through the colonies in 1742-3, says, in the same vein, that “several of the best planters, or their ancestors, have in the two colonies [Virginia and Maryland] been originally of the convict class, and therefore are much to be praised and esteemed for forsaking their old courses.”[401]
While all this cumulative evidence shows that the settlers did better in Virginia than in England, it fails to support the Rebel pretension of to-day.
I have referred to Massinger. Here is a curious bit from a grave comedy of that poet dramatist.
“Luke.It is but to Virginia.“Lady Frugal.How? Virginia?High Heaven forbid! Remember, Sir, I beseech you,What creatures are shipped thither.“Anne.Condemned wretches,Forfeited to the law.“Mary.For the abomination of their life,Spewed out of their own country.”[402]
“Luke.It is but to Virginia.“Lady Frugal.How? Virginia?High Heaven forbid! Remember, Sir, I beseech you,What creatures are shipped thither.“Anne.Condemned wretches,Forfeited to the law.“Mary.For the abomination of their life,Spewed out of their own country.”[402]
“Luke.It is but to Virginia.
“Luke.It is but to Virginia.
“Lady Frugal.How? Virginia?High Heaven forbid! Remember, Sir, I beseech you,What creatures are shipped thither.
“Lady Frugal.How? Virginia?
High Heaven forbid! Remember, Sir, I beseech you,
What creatures are shipped thither.
“Anne.Condemned wretches,Forfeited to the law.
“Anne.Condemned wretches,
Forfeited to the law.
“Mary.For the abomination of their life,Spewed out of their own country.”[402]
“Mary.For the abomination of their life,
Spewed out of their own country.”[402]
Thus from every quarter the testimony accumulates. And yet, in face of these impartial and unimpeachable authorities, we are constantly told that Virginia was settled by“cavaliers.”
The territory now occupied by South Carolina originally constituted part of Virginia. Out of Virginia it was carved into a separate colony. Although differing in some respects, the populations seem to have been kindred in character. Ramsay, the historian of the State, in a work published at Charleston in 1809, says that “the emigrants were a medley of different nations and principles,” and that among them were persons “who took refuge from the frowns of Fortune and the rigor of creditors,” “young men reduced to misery by folly and excess,” and “restless spirits, fond of roving.” To these were added Huguenots from France.[403]But Grahame tells us that “not a trace of the existence of an order of clergymen is to be found in the laws of Carolina during the first twenty years of its history.”[404]And another historian says that “the inhabitants, far from living in friendship and harmony among themselves, have been seditious and ungovernable.”[405]Such a people were naturally insensible to moral distinctions, so that, according to Hewit, pirates “were treated with great civility and friendship,” and “by bribery and corruption they often found favor with the provincial juries, and by this means escaped the hands of justice.” All of which is declared by the historian to be “evidences of the licentious spirit which prevailed in the colony.”[406]Grahame uses still stronger language, when he says,“The governor, the proprietary deputies, and the principal inhabitants degraded themselves to a level with the vilest of mankind by abetting the crimes of pirates, and willingly purchasing their nefarious acquisitions.”[407]Such is the testimony with regard to South Carolina. To call such a people “cavaliers” is an abuse of terms.
I hope I do not take too much time in exposing a vainglorious pretension, which has helped to give the Rebellion a character of respectability it does not deserve. I dismiss it to general contempt, as one of the lies by which Slavery, the greatest lie of all, is recommended to the weak who can be deceived by names. But you will not fail to remark how naturally Slavery flourished among such a congenial people. Convicts and wretches who had set at nought all rights of property and all decency were the very people to set up the revolting pretension “of property in man.” If these were called “cavaliers,” and if their conduct was called “chivalry,” it was only under the ancient rule of opposites, because they were in no respect “cavaliers,” nor had they even the semblance of “chivalry.”
Not in Slavery or its battles is “chivalry” found, not in vain pretension, not in any indignity to the poor and lowly. From one who has studied it in its deeds, we learn that it is “that general spirit or state of mind which disposes men to heroic and generous actions, and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual and moral world.”[408]How little of this in our Rebel slave-masters!
I come back to the postulate with which I began, that the present war is simply a conflict between Slaveryand Liberty. This is a plain statement, which will defy contradiction. To my mind it is more satisfactory than that other statement, often made, that it is a conflict between Aristocracy and Democracy. This in a certain sense is true; but from its generality it is less effective than the more precise and restricted statement. It does not disclose the whole truth; for it does not exhibit the unique and exceptional character of the pretension which we combat. For centuries there has been a conflict between Aristocracy and Democracy, or, in other words, the few on one side have been perpetually striving to rule and oppress the many. But now, for the first time in the world’s annals, a people professing civilization has commenced war to uphold the intolerable pretension ofcompulsory labor without wages, and that most disgusting coïncident, the whipping of women and the selling of children. Call these pretenders aristocrats or oligarchs, if you will; but be assured that their aristocracy or oligarchy is the least respectable ever attempted, and is so entirely modern that it is antedated by the Durham bull Hubbuck, short-horn progenitor of the oligarchy of cattle, and by the stallion Godolphin, Arabian progenitor of the oligarchy of horses, each of which may be traced to the middle of the last century. And also know, that, if you would find a prototype in brutality, you must turn your back upon civilized history, and repair to those distant islands which witnessed an oligarchy of cannibals, or go to barbarous Africa, which has been kept in barbarism by an oligarchy of men-stealers.
Thus it stands. The conflict is directly between Slavery and Liberty. But because Slavery aims at the life of the Republic, the issue involves our nationalexistence; and because our national death would be the despair of Liberty everywhere, it involves this great cause throughout the world. And so I would not for one moment lose sight of the special enemy; for our energies can be properly directed only when we are able to confront him. “Give me to see!” said the old Greek; and this must be our exclamation now.
Slavery, from the beginning, has been a disturber, as it is now a red-handed traitor. I do not travel back before the Revolution, but, starting from that great event, I show you Slavery always offensive, and forever thrusting itself in the path of national peace and honor. The Declaration of Independence, as originally prepared by Jefferson, contained a vigorous passage denouncing King George for patronage of the slave-trade. The slave-masters insisted upon striking it out, and it was struck out; and here was their first victory. At the adoption of the National Constitution, they insisted upon recognition of the slave-trade as a condition of Union; and here was another victory. In the earliest Congress under the Constitution they commenced the menace of disunion, and this menace was continued at every turn of public affairs, especially at every proposition or even petition touching Slavery, until it triumphed signally in that atrocious Fugitive Slave Bill which made all the Free States a hunting-ground for slaves. Throughout these contests Slavery was vulgar, brutal, savage, while its braggart orators and chaplains heralded its claims. Hogarth, in his famous picture of Bruin, painted Slavery, when he portrayed an immense grizzly bear hugging, as if he loved it, an enormous gnarled bludgeon, with a brand of infamy labelled onevery knot, such asLie Twelve,Lie Fifteen, and about his throat a clerical band, torn, crumpled, and awry. In the States where it flourished speech and press were both despoiled of freedom, and the whole country seemed to be fast sinking under its degrading tyranny. Everything in science, or history, or church, or state, was bent to its support. There was a new political economy, teaching the superiority of slave labor,—a new ethnology, excluding the slave from the family of man,—a new heraldry, admitting the slavemonger to the list of nobles,—a new morality, vindicating the rightfulness of Slavery,—a new religion, recognizing Slavery as a missionary enterprise,—a new theodicy, placing Slavery under the sanctions of Divine benevolence,—and a new Constitution, installing Slavery in the very citadel of Liberty. By such strange inventions the giant felony fortified itself. At last it struck the pioneers of Liberty in Kansas. There was its first battle. The next was when it took up arms against the National Government, and rallied all its forces in bloody rebellion. Thus is this Rebellion, by unquestionable pedigree, derived from Slavery, and the parent lives in the offspring.
Therefore, if you are in earnest against the Rebellion, you must be in earnest, also, against Slavery; for the two are synonymous, or convertible terms. The Rebellion is nothing but belligerent Slavery. It is Slavery armed and equipped in deadly grapple with Liberty.
Only when we see the Rebellionas it is, in its true light, face to face, do we see our whole duty. Then must the patriot, whatever his personal prejudices or party associations, insist, at all hazards, that Slavery shall not be suffered to escape from that righteous judgment whichis the doom of the Rebellion. No false tenderness, no casuistry of politics, must intrude to save it anywhere; for you cannot save Slavery anywhere without just to that extent saving the Rebellion. Show me anywhere a sympathiser with Slavery, and I show you a sympathiser with the Rebellion.
Our duty is clear. In the sacred service of patriotism nothing can be allowed to stand in the way. Fortress, camp, citadel, each and all, must be overcome; but the animating soul of every fortress, camp, or citadel throughout the Rebellion is Slavery. Surely, when the country is in danger, there can be no hesitation. And as the greater contains the less, so this greatest charity of country embraces for the time all other charities.
In striking at Slavery, there is another advantage not to be forgotten. Such a blow is in strict obedience to the laws of Nature; and we are reminded by the great master of thought, Lord Bacon, that only through such obedience can victory be won,—vincit parendo. It is in conformity, also, with all the attributes of God; so that His Almighty arm will give strength to the blow. Thus do we bring our efforts in harmony with the sublime laws, physical and moral, which govern the universe, while every good influence, every breath of Heaven, and every prayer of man, is on our side. We also bring ourselves in harmony with our own Declaration of Independence, so that all its early promises become a living letter, and our country is at last saved from that practical inconsistency which has been a heavy burden in her history.
To do all this seems so natural and so entirely according to the dictates of patriotism, that we may well be astonished that it should meet opposition. But there isa wide-spread political party, which, true to its history, now comes forward to save belligerent Slavery,—even at this last moment, when it is about to be trampled out forever. Not to save the country, but to save belligerent Slavery, is the object of the misnamed Democracy. Asserting the war, in which so much has been done, to be a failure,—forgetting the vast spaces it has already reclaimed, the rivers it has opened, the ports it has secured, and the people it has redeemed,—handing over to contempt officers and men, living and dead, who have waged its innumerable battles,—this political party openly offers surrender to the Rebellion. I do not use too strong language. It is actual surrender and capitulation that are offered, in one of two forms: (1.) by acknowledging the Rebel States, so that they shall be treated as independent; or (2.) by acknowledging Slavery, so that it shall be restored to its old supremacy over the National Government, with additional guaranties. The different schemes of opposition are all contained in one or the other of these two propositions.
Examining these two propositions, we find them equally flagitious and impracticable. Both allow the country to be sacrificed for the sake of Slavery: one by breaking the Union in pieces, that a new Slave Power may be created; and the other by continuing the Union, so that the old Slave Power may enjoy its sway and masterdom. Both pivot on Slavery. One acknowledges the Slave Powerout of the Union; the other acknowledges the Slave Powerin the Union.
Glance, if you please, at these two different forms of surrender.
And, first, of surrender by acknowledging the Rebel States, so that they shall be independent. How futile to think that there can be any consent to the establishment of a Slave Power taken from our Republic! Such a surrender would begin in shame; but it would also begin, continue, and end in troubles and sorrows which no imagination can picture.
1. I do not dwell on the shame that would cover our Republic, but I ask, on the threshold, how you would feel in abandoning to the tender mercies of the Rebellion all those who, from sentiment or conviction or condition, now look to the National Government as deliverer. This topic, it seems to me, has not been sufficiently impressed upon the country. Would that I could make it sink deep into your souls! There are the Unionists, shut up within the confines of the Rebellion, and unable to help themselves. They can do nothing, not even cry out, until the military power of the Rebellion is crushed. Let this be done, let the Rebel grip be unloosed, and you will hear their voices, as joyously and reverently they hail the national flag. And there, also, are the slaves, to whom the Rebellion is an immense, deep-moated, thick-walled, heavy-bolted Bastile, where a whole race is blinded, manacled, and outraged. But these, again, are powerless, so long as Rebel sentinels keep watch and ward over them. To these two classes in the Rebel States we have owed, from the beginning, a solemn duty, which can be performed only by perseverance to the end. The patriot Unionists, who have kepttheir loyalty in solitude and privation, like the early Christians concealed in catacombs, and also the slaves, who have been compelled to serve their cruel taskmasters, must not be sacrificed.
Perhaps there is no character in which the National Government may exult more truly than that of Deliverer. Rarely in history has such a duty, with its attendant glory, been so clearly imposed. The piety of early ages found vent in the Crusades, those wonderful enterprises of valor and travel, which exercised a transforming influence over modern civilization. But our war is not less important. It is a crusade, not to deliver the tomb, but to deliver the living temples of the Lord, and it is destined to exercise a transforming influence beyond any crusade in history.
2. If you agree to abandon patriots and slaves in the Rebel States, you will only begin your infinite difficulties. How determine the boundary-line to cleave this continent in twain? Where shall the god Terminus plant his stone? What States shall be left at the North in the light of Liberty? What States shall be consigned to the gloom of Slavery? Surely no swiftness of surrender can make you abandon Maryland, now redeemed by votes of citizen soldiers,—nor West Virginia, received as a Free State,—nor Missouri, which has been made the dark and bloody ground. And how about Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana? There also is the Mississippi, once more free from source to sea. Surely this mighty river will not be compelled again to wear chains.
These inquiries simply open the difficulties in this endeavor. If there were any natural boundary, in itselfa barrier and an altar, or if during long generations any Chinese wall had been built for three thousand miles across the continent, then perhaps there might be a dividing line. But Nature and civilization, by solemn decree, have fixed it otherwise, marking this broad land, from Northern lake to Southern gulf, for one Country, with one Liberty, one Constitution, and one Destiny.
3. If the boundary-line is settled, then will arise the many-headed question of terms and conditions. On what terms and conditions can peace be stipulated? Exulting Rebels, whose new empire is founded on the corner-stone of Slavery, will naturally exact promises for the rendition of fugitive slaves. Are you, who have just emancipated yourselves from this obligation, ready to renew it, and to commit again an inexpiable crime? If you do not, how can you expect peace? Then it will remain to determine the commercial relations between the two separate governments, with rights of transit and travel. If you think that Rebels, flushed with success, and scorning their defeated opponents, will come to any practical terms, any terms which will not leave our commerce and all engaged in it victims of outrage, you place trust in their moderation which circumstances thus far do not justify. The whole idea is little better than an excursion to the moon in a car drawn by geese, as described by the Spanish poet.
Long before the war, and especially in the discussions which preceded it, these Rebels were fiery and most unscrupulous. War has not made them less so. The moral sense which they wanted when it began has not been enkindled since. With such a people there isno chance of terms and conditions, except according to their lawless will. The first surrender on our part will be the signal to a long line of surrenders, each a catastrophe. Nothing too unreasonable or grinding. If our own national debt is not repudiated, theirs at least must be assumed.
4. Suppose the shameful sacrifice consummated, the impossible boundaries adjusted, and the illusive terms and conditions stipulated, do you imagine that you have obtained peace? Alas, no! Nothing of the sort. You may call it peace; but it will be war in disguise, ready to break forth in perpetual, chronic, bloody battle. Such an extended inland border, over which Slavery and Liberty scowl at each other, will be a constant temptation, not only to enterprises of smuggling, but to hostile incursions, so that our country will be obliged to sleep on its arms, ready to spring forward in self-defence. Every frontier town will be a St. Albans.[409]Military preparations, absorbing the resources of the people, will become permanent instead of temporary, and the arts of peace will yield to the arts of war. The national character will be changed, and this hospitable continent, no longer the prosperous home of the poor and friendless, thronging from the Old World, will become a repulsive scene of confusion and strife, while “each new day a gash is added to her wounds.”
Have we not war enough now? Are you so enamored of funerals, where the order of Nature is reversed, and parents follow their children to the grave, that you are willing to keep a constant carnival of Death? Oh, no!You all desire peace. But there is only one way to secure it. So conduct the present war, that, when once ended, there shall be no remaining element of discord, no surviving principle of battle, out of which future war can spring. Above all, belligerent Slavery must not rear its crest as an independent power.
5. There is another consequence not to be omitted. War would not be confined to the two governments representing respectively the two hostile principles, Slavery and Liberty. It would rage with internecine fury among ourselves. Admit that States may fly out of the Union, and where will you stop? Other States must follow, in groups or singly, until our mighty galaxy is broken into separate stars or dissolved into the nebular compost of a people without form or name. Where then is country? Where then those powerful States, the pride of civilization and the hope of mankind? Handed over to ungovernable frenzy, without check or control, until anarchy and chaos are supreme,—as with the horses of the murdered Duncan, which, at the assassination of their master,
“Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,Contending ’gainst obedience, as they would makeWar with mankind. ’Tis said they eat each other.”
“Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,Contending ’gainst obedience, as they would makeWar with mankind. ’Tis said they eat each other.”
“Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending ’gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind. ’Tis said they eat each other.”
The picture is terrible; but it hardly exaggerates the fearful disorder. Already European enemies, looking to their desires for conclusions, predict a general discord. Sometimes it is said that there are to be four or five new nations,—that the Northwest is to be a nation by itself, the Middle States another, the Pacific States another, and our New England States still another, so thatRebel Slavery will be the predominant power on this continent. But it is useless to speculate on the number of these fractional governments. If disunion is allowed to begin, it cannot be stopped. Misrule and confusion will be everywhere. Our fathers saw this at the adoption of the National Constitution, when, in a rude sketch of the time, they pictured the Thirteen States as so many staves bound by the hoops into a barrel. Let a single stave be taken out, and the whole barrel falls to pieces. It is easy to see how this must occur with States. The triumph of the Rebellion will be not only the triumph of belligerent Slavery, but also the triumph of State Rights, to this extent,—first, that any State, in the exercise of its own lawless will, may abandon its place in the Union, and, secondly, that the constitutional verdict of the majority, as in the election of Abraham Lincoln, is not binding. With these two rules of conduct, in conformity with which the Rebellion was organized, there can be no limit to disunion. Therefore, when you consent to the independence of the Rebel States, you disband the whole company of States, and blot our country from the map of the world.
I have said enough of surrender by recognition of the Slave States, or, in other words, of the Slave Power,out of the Union. It remains now that I ask attention to that other form of surrender which proposesrecognition of the Slave Power in the Union. Each is surrender. The first, as we have already seen, abandonspart of the Union to the Slave Power; the other subjects the whole Union to the Slave Power.
It is proposed that the Rebel States shall be tempted to lay down their arms by recognition of Slavery in the Union, with new guaranties and assurances of protection.Slavery cannot exist, where it does not govern.Therefore must we beg Rebel slave-masters back to govern us. Such, in plain terms, is the surrender proposed. For one, I will never consent to any such intolerable rule.
The whole proposition is not less pernicious than that other form of surrender; nor is it less shameful. It is insulting to reason, and offensive to good morals.
1. I say nothing of the ignominy it would bring upon the Republic, but call attention at once to its character as a Compromise. In the dreary annals of Slavery it is by compromise that slave-masters have succeeded in warding off the blows of Liberty. It was a compromise by which that early condemnation of the slave-trade was excluded from the Declaration of Independence; it was a compromise which surrounded the slave-trade with protection in the National Constitution; it was a compromise which secured the admission of Missouri as a Slave State; and, without stopping to complete the list, it is enough to say that it was a compromise by which the atrocious Fugitive Slave Bill was fastened upon the country, and the Slave Power was installed in the National Government. And now, after the overthrow of the Slave Power at the ballot-box, followed by years of cruel war, another compromise, greatest of all, is proposed, by which belligerent Slavery, dripping with the blood of murdered fellow-citizens,shall be welcomed to more than its ancient supremacy. Where is national virtue, that such a surrender can be entertained? Where is national honor, that the criminal pettifoggers are not indignantly rebuked?
The proposition is specious in form as baleful in substance. It is said that Rebel slave-masters should have their “rights under the Constitution.” To this plausible language is added that other phrase, “the Constitution as it is.” All this means Slavery, and nothing else. For Slavery men resort to this odious duplicity. Thank God, the game is understood.
2. But any compromise recognizing Slavery in the Rebel States is impossible, even if you are disposed to accept it. Slavery, by the very act of rebellion, ceased to exist, legally or constitutionally. It ceased to exist according to principles of public law, and also according to just interpretation of the Constitution; and having once ceased to exist, it cannot be revived.[410]
When I say that it ceased to existlegally, I found myself on an unquestionable principle of public law, that Slavery is a peculiar local institution, without origin in natural right, and deriving support exclusively from the local government; but if this be true,—and it cannot be denied,—then Slavery must have fallen with that local government.
When I say that it ceased to existconstitutionally, I found myself on the principle that Slavery is of such a character that it cannot exist within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution, as, for instance, in the National territories, and that therefore it died constitutionally, when, through disappearance of the localgovernment, it fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution.
The consequences of these two principles are most important. Taken in conjunction with the rule, “Once free, always free,” they establish the impossibility of any surrender to belligerent Slaveryin the Union.
3. If, in the zeal of surrender, you reject solemn principles of public law and Constitution, then let me remind you of the Proclamation of Emancipation, where the President, by virtue of the power vested in him as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, ordered that the slaves in the Rebel States “are and henceforward shall be free,” and the Executive Government, including the military and naval authorities, are pledged to “recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.” By the terms of this instrument, it is applicable to all slaves in the Rebel States,—not merely to those within the military lines of the United States, but to all. Even if the President were not in simple honesty bound to maintain this Proclamation according to the letter, he has not the power to undo it. The President may make a freeman, but he cannot make a slave. Therefore must he reject all surrender inconsistent with this Act of Emancipation.
It is sometimes said that the Court will set aside the Proclamation. Do not believe it. The Court will do no such thing. It will recognize this act precisely as it recognizes other political and military acts, without presuming to interpose any unconstitutionalveto,—and it will recognize this act to the full extent, as was intended, according to its letter, so that every slave in theRebel States will be free. Even if the Court should hesitate, there can be no hesitation with the President, or with the people, bound in sacred honor to the freedom of every slave in the Rebel States. Therefore against every effort of surrender the Proclamation presents an insuperable barrier.
4. If you are willing to descend deep down to the fathomless infamy of renouncing the Proclamation, then in the name of peace do I protest against any such surrender. So long as Slavery exists in the Union, there can be no peace. The fires which seem to be extinguished will only be covered by treacherous ashes, out of which another conflagration will spring to wrap the country in war. This must never be.
It is because Slavery is not yet understood, that any are willing to tolerate it. See it as it is, and there can be no question. Slavery is guilty of every crime. The slave-master is burglar, for by night he enters forcibly into the house of another; he is highway robber, for he stops another on the road, and compels him to deliver or die; he is pickpocket, for he picks the pocket of his slave; he is sneak, for there is no pettiness of petty larceny he does not employ; he is horse-stealer, for he takes from his slave the horse that is his; he is adulterer, for he takes from the slave the wife that is his; he is receiver of stolen goods on the grandest scale, for the human being stolen from Africa he foolishly calls his own. When I describe the slave-master, it is simply as he describes himself in the code he sanctions. All crime is in Slavery, and so every criminal is reproduced in the slave-master. And yet it is proposed to bestow upon this whole class notonly new license for their crimes, but a new lease of their power. Such surrender would be only the beginning of long-continued, unutterable troubles, breaking forth in bloodshed and sorrow without end.
5. Lastly, this surrender cannot be made without surrender to the Rebellion. Already I have exhibited the identity between Slavery and the Rebellion; and yet it is proposed to recognize Slavery in the Union, when such recognition will be plain recognition of the Rebellion.
The whole thing is impossible, and not to be tolerated. Alas! too much blood has been shed, and too much treasure lavished, for this war to close with any such national stultification. The Rebellion must be crushed, whether in the guise of war or under thealiasof Slavery. It must be trampled out, so that it can never show itself again, or prolong itself into another generation. Not to do this completely is not to do it at all. Others may act as they please, but I wash my hands of this great responsibility. History will not hold such surrender blameless.