When the fact of the successful laying of the old Atlantic cable was known, there was no class of people in this country more surprised at the result than the electricians, engineers, and practical telegraphers. Meeting a friend of mine, an electrician, and who, by the way, is also a great mathematician, and, like all of his class, inclined to be very exact in his statements, I exclaimed, in all the warmth and exuberance of feeling engendered by so great an event,—
"Isn't it glorious, this idea of being able to send our lightning across the ocean, and to talk with London and Paris as readily as we do with New York and New Orleans?"
"It is, indeed," responded my friend, with equal enthusiasm; "my hopes are more than realized by this wonderful achievement."
"Hopes realized!" exclaimed I. "Why, I didn't consider there was one chance in a thousand of success,—did you?"
"Why, yes," replied my exact mathematical friend; "I didn't think the chances so much against the success of the enterprise as that. From the deductions which I drew from a very careful examination of all the facts I could obtain, I concluded that the chances of absolute failure were about ninety-seven and a half per cent.!"
For many of the facts contained in this article I am indebted to thevery clear and able address delivered by Mr. Cyrus W. Field before theAmerican Geographical and Statistical Society, at Clinton Hall, NewYork, in May last, upon the prospects of the Atlantic telegraph.
At the start, of course, every one was very ignorant of the work to be done in establishing a telegraph across the ocean. Submarine telegraphy was in its infancy, and aërial telegraphy had scarcely outgrown its swaddling-clothes. We had to grope our way in the dark. It was only by repeated experiments and repeated failures that we were able to find out all the conditions of success.
The Atlantic telegraph, it is said by some, was a failure. Well, if it were so, replies Mr. Field, I should say (as is said of many a man, that he did more by his death than by his life) that even in its failure it has been of immense benefit to the science of the world, for it has been the great experimenting cable. No electrician ever had so long a line to work upon before; and hence the science of submarine telegraphy never made such rapid progress as after that great experiment. In fact, all cables that have since been laid, where the managers availed themselves of the knowledge and experience obtained by the Atlantic cable, have been perfectly successful. All these triumphs over the sea are greatly indebted to the bold attempt to cross the Atlantic made four years ago.
The first Atlantic cable, therefore, has accomplished a great work in deep-sea telegraphy, a branch of the art but little known before. In one sense it was a failure. In another it was a brilliant success. Despite every disadvantage, it was laid across the ocean; it was stretched from shore to shore; and for three weeks it continued to operate,—a time long enough to settle forever the scientific question whether it was possible to communicate between two continents so far apart. This was the work of the first Atlantic telegraph; and if it lies silent at the bottom of the ocean till the destruction of the globe, it has done enough for the science of the world and the benefit of mankind to entitle it to be held in honored and blessed memory.
Now, as to the prospect of success in another attempt to lay a telegraph across the ocean. The most erroneous opinions prevail as to the difficulties of laying submarine telegraphs in general, and securing them against injury. It is commonly supposed that the number of failures is much greater than of successes; whereas the fact is, that the later attempts, where made with proper care, have been almost uniformly successful. In proof of this I will refer to the printed "List of all the Submarine Telegraph-Cables manufactured and laid down by Messrs. Glass, Elliot, & Co., of London," from which it appears that within the space of eight years, from 1854 to 1862, they have manufactured and laid down twenty-five different cables, among which are included three of the longest lines connecting England with the Continent,—namely, from England to Holland, 140 miles, to Hanover, 280 miles, and to Denmark, 368 miles,—and the principal lines in the Mediterranean,—as from Italy to Corsica and thence to Toulon, from Malta to Sicily, and from Corfu to Otranto, and besides these, the two chief of all, that from France to Algiers, 520 miles, laid in 1860, and the other, laid only last year, from Malta to Alexandria, 1,535 miles! All together the lines laid by these manufacturers comprise a total of 3,739 miles; and though some have been lying at the bottom of the sea and working for eight years, each one of them is at this hour in as perfect condition as on the day it was laid down, with the exception of the two short lines laid in shallow water along the shore between Liverpool and Holyhead, 25 miles, and from Prince Edward's Island to New Brunswick, 11 miles; the latter of which was broken by a ship's anchor, and the former by the anchor of the Royal Charter during the gale in which she was wrecked, both of which can be easily repaired.
Where failures have occurred in submarine telegraphs, the causes are now well understood and easily to be avoided. Thus with the first Atlantic cable, its defects have all been carefully investigated by scientific men, and may be easily guarded against. When this cable was in process of manufacture in the factory of Messrs. Glass, Elliot, & Co., in Greenwich, near London, it was coiled in four large vats, and there left exposed, day after day, to the heat of a summer sun, which was intensified by the tarred coating of the cable to one hundred and twenty degrees. This went on, day after day, with the knowledge of the engineer and electrician of the company, although the directors had given explicit orders that sheds should be erected over the vats to prevent the possibility of such an occurrence. As might have been foreseen, the gutta-percha was melted, so that the conductor which it was desired to insulate was so twisted by the coils that it was left quite bare in numberless places, thus weakening, and eventually, when the cable was submerged, destroying the insulation. The injury was partially discovered before the cable was taken out of the factory at Greenwich, and a length of about thirty miles was cut out and condemned. This, however, did not wholly remedy the difficulty, for the defective insulation became frequently and painfully apparent while the cable was being submerged. Still further evidence of its imperfect condition was afforded when it came to be cut up for charms and trinkets.
The first cable was, to a great extent, an experiment,—a leap in the dark. Its material and construction were as good as the state of knowledge at that time provided, and in many respects not unsuitable; but the company could not avail itself, at that time, of the instruments or apparatus for testing its conducting power and insulation, in the manner since pointed out by experience. The effects of temperature, as we have seen, were not provided for. The vast differences in the conducting power of copper were discovered only by means of that cable, when made. The mathematical law whereby the proportions of insulation to conduction are determined had not been fully investigated; and it was even argued by some of the pretended electricians in the employ of the company, that, the smaller the conductor, the more rapidly the current could pass through it. No mode of protecting the external sheath from oxidation had then been discovered; and the kind of machinery necessary for submerging cables in deep water could only be theoretically assumed.
Looking back to that period, and granting that there was too much haste in the preparations, and that other mistakes were committed which could now be foreseen and avoided, it is not too much to say, that, if that cable could be laid and worked, as was done, after one failure in 1857, and the consequent uncoiling and storage of it in an exposed situation, and after three attempts in 1858, under the most fearful circumstances as to weather, it would be an easy task to lay a cable constructed and submerged by the light of present experience.
[Illustration: The Cable laid in 1858.]
[Illustration: The proposed New Cable.]
The above cuts, representing sections of the cable laid in 1858 and the proposed new cable, will serve to show the difference between the two, and the immense superiority of the latter over the former. In the old Atlantic cable the copper conducting-wire weighed but ninety-three pounds to the mile, while in the new cable it weighs five hundred and ten pounds to the mile,or more than five times as much. Now the size, or diameter, of a telegraphic conductor is just as important an item, in determining the strength of current which can be maintained upon it with a given amount of battery-force, as the length of the conductor. To produce the effects by which the messages are expressed at the end of a telegraphic wire or cable, it is necessary that the electric current should have a certain intensity or strength. Now the intensity of the current transmitted by a given voltaic battery along a given line of wire will decrease, other things being the same, in the same proportion as the length of the wire increases. Thus, if the wire be continued for ten miles, the current will have twice the intensity which it would have, if the wire had been extended to a distance of twenty miles. It is evident, therefore, that the wire may be continued to such a length that the current will no longer have sufficient intensity to produce at the station to which the despatch is transmitted those effects by which the language of the despatch is signified.But the intensity of the current transmitted by a given voltaic battery upon a wire of given length will be increased in the same proportion as the area of the section of the wire is augmented. Thus, if the diameter of the wire be doubled, the area of its section being increased in a fourfold proportion, the intensity of the current transmitted along the wire will be increased in the same ratio. The intensity of the current may also be augmented by increasing the number of pairs of the generating plates or cylinders composing the galvanic battery.
All electrical terms are arbitrary, and necessarily unintelligible to the general reader. I shall, therefore, use them as sparingly as possible, and endeavor to make myself clearly understood by explaining those which I do use.
All telegraphic conductors offer a certain resistance to the passage of an electric current, and the amount of this resistance is proportional to the length of the conductor, and inversely to its size. In order to overcome this resistance, it is necessary to increase the number of the cells in the battery, and thus obtain a fluid of greater force or intensity.
On aërial telegraph-lines this increase in the intensity of the battery occasions no particular inconvenience, other than by tending to the more rapid destruction of the small copper coils, or helices, employed; but upon submarine lines it has the effect of increasing the static electricity, or electricity of tension, which accumulates along the surface of the gutta-percha covering of the conducting-wire, in the same manner as static electricity accumulates on the surface of glass, or of a stick of sealing-wax, by rubbing it with a piece of cloth. The use of submarine or of subterranean conductors occasions, from the above cause, a small retardation in the velocity of the transmitted electricity. This retardation is not due to the length of the path which the electric current has to traverse, since it does not take place with a conductor, equally long, insulated in the air; but it arises from a static reaction, caused by the passage of an intense current through a conductor well insulated, but surrounded outside its insulating coating by a conducting body, such as sea-water or moist ground, or even by the metallic envelope of iron wires placed in communication with the ground. When this conductor is presented to one of the poles of a battery, the other pole of which communicates with the ground, it becomes charged with static electricity, like the coating of a Leyden-jar,—electricity which is capable of giving rise to a discharge-current, even after the voltaic current has ceased to be transmitted. Volta showed in one of his beautiful experiments, that, in putting one of the ends of his pile in communication with the earth, and the other with a non-insulated Leyden-jar, the jar was charged in an instant of time to a degree proportional to the force of the pile. At the same time an instantaneous current was observed in the conductor between the pile and the jar, which had all the properties of an ordinary current. Now it is evident that the subaqueous wire with its insulating covering may be assimilated exactly to an immense Leyden-jar. The glass of the jar represents the gutta-percha; the internal coating is the surface of the copper wire; the external coating is the surrounding metallic envelope and water. To form an idea of the capacity of this new kind of battery, we have only to remember that the surface of the wire is equal to fourteen square yards per mile. Bringing such a wire into communication by one of its ends with a battery, of which the opposite pole is in contact with the earth, whilst the other extremity of the wire is insulated, must cause the wire to take a charge of the same character and tension as that of the pole of the battery touched by it.
These currents of static induction are proportional in intensity to the force of the battery and the length of the wire, whilst an inverse relation is true as regards the length of the conductor with the ordinary voltaic current.
Professor Wheatstone proved, by actual experiment, that a continuous current may be maintained in the circuit of the long wire of an electric cable, of which one of the ends is insulated, whilst the other communicates with one of the poles of a battery, whose other pole is connected with the ground. This current he considers due to the uniform and continual dispersion of the statical electricity with which the wire is charged along its whole length.
It was mainly owing to the retardation from this cause that communication through the Atlantic cable was so exceedingly slow and difficult.
I will now endeavor to show why the new cable will not be liable to this difficulty, to anything like the same extent.
I have alluded to the resistance offered by the conductor of a telegraph-cable to the passage of an electric current, and to the retardation of this current by static induction. The termsretardationandresistanceare not considered technically synonymous, but are intended, as electrical terms, to designate two very different forces. The resistance of a wire, as we have seen above, is proportional to its length, and inversely to its diameter. It is overcome by increasing the number of cells in the battery, or, in other words, by increasing the intensity or force of the current. The retardation in a telegraphic cable, on the contrary, is proportional to the length of the conducting-wire and the intensity of the battery. In the former case, by increasing the electrical force you overcome the resistance; while in the latter, by augmenting the electrical force you increase the retardation.
From the foregoing law it will be seen that there are two ways of lessening the resistance upon telegraphic conductors,—one by reducing the length, and the other by increasing the area of the section of the conducting-wire. Now, as already remarked, the copper conducting-wire in the old cable weighed but ninety-three pounds to the mile, while in the new cable it weighs five hundred and ten pounds to the mile, or more than five times as much. If, then, by comparison, we estimate the resistance in the old Atlantic cable to have been equal to two thousand miles of ordinary telegraph-wire, the increased size of the conducting-wire of the new cable reduces the resistance to one-fifth that distance, or four hundred miles. And while it required two hundred cells of battery to produce intensity sufficient to work over the two thousand miles of resistance in the old cable, it will require but one-fifth as much, or forty cells, to overcome the four hundred miles of resistance in the new cable. The retardation which resulted from the intense current generated by two hundred cells will be also proportionately reduced in the comparatively small battery of forty cells. Thus we perceive, that, while the length of the cable is, electrically and practically, reduced to one-fifth of its former length, the retardation of the current is also decreased in the same proportion. Therefore, if, with the old cable, three words per minute could be transmitted, with the new cable we shall be able to transmit five times as many, or fifteen words per minute. This is not equal to our Morse system on the land-lines, which will signal at the rate of thirty-five words per minute, still less to the printing system, which can signal at the rate of fifty words per minute; but, even at this rate, the cable would be enabled to transmit in twenty-four hours one thousand despatches containing an average of twenty words apiece. Mr. Field, however, claims for the cable a speed of only twelve words per minute, which would reduce the number of despatches of twenty words each that could be transmitted in twenty-four hours to eight hundred and sixty-four. We will suppose, however, that the cable transmits only five hundred telegrams per day; this number, at ten dollars per message, would give an income of five thousand dollars per diem, or one million five hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars per annum. Quite a handsome revenue on an outlay of about one million of dollars!
The only instrument which could be used successfully in signalling through the old cable was one of peculiar construction, called the Marine Galvanometer. In this instrument, momentum and inertia are almost wholly avoided by the use of a needle weighing only one and a half grains, combined with a mirror reflecting a ray of light, which indicates deflections with great accuracy. By this means a gradually increasing or decreasing current is at each instant indicated at its due strength. Thus, when this galvanometer is placed as the receiving-instrument at the end of a long submarine cable, the movement of the spot of light, consequent on the completion of a circuit through the battery, cable, and earth, can be so observed as to furnish a curve representing very accurately the arrival of an electric current. Lines representing successive signals at various speeds can also be obtained, and, by means of a metronome, dots and dashes can be sent with nearly perfect regularity by an ordinary Morse key, and the corresponding changes in the current at the receiving end of the cable accurately observed.
A system of arbitrary characters, similar to those used upon the Morse telegraph, was employed, and the letter to be indicated was determined by the number of oscillations of the needle, as well as by the length of time during which the needle remained in one place. The operator, who watched the reflection of the deflected needle in the mirror, held a key in his hand communicating with a local instrument in the office, which he pressed down or raised, according to the deflection of the needle; and another operator deciphered the characters thus produced upon the paper. This mode of telegraphing was, of necessity, very slow, and it will not surprise the reader that the fastest rate of speed over the cable did not exceed three words per minute. Still, had the old cable continued in operation a few months longer, experience and practice would have enabled the operator to transmit and receive with very much greater facility. On our land-lines, operators of long experience acquire a dexterity which enables them not only to transmit and receive telegrams with wonderful rapidity, but to work the instruments during storms, when those of less experience would be unable to receive a dot. There is no occupation in which skill and experience are more necessary to success than in that of telegraphing, and at the time the Atlantic cable was laid no experience had been obtained upon similar lines, or with the instruments employed. Now, however, the company can avail itself of experienced operators from lines of nearly equal length, and who will require no time for experimenting, but may commence operations as soon as the two ends of the cable are landed upon the shores of Europe and America.
In the old cable the copper wire was covered but three times with gutta-percha, while in the new it is covered four times with the purest gutta-percha and four times with Chatterton's patent compound, by which the cable is rendered absolutely impenetrable to water. The old cable was covered with eighteen strands of small iron wire, which, as they had no other covering, were directly exposed to the action of the water. The new is covered with thirteen strands, each strand consisting of three wires of the best quality, and covered with gutta-percha, to render it indestructible in salt water. By this new construction, it has double the strength of the old cable, at the same time that it is lighter in the water, a very important matter in laying it across the ocean.
The risk of loss in laying the new cable would be very much diminished by the fact that it would be of such strength, that, even if broken, it could be recovered, as has been done in the Mediterranean; and besides, the principal and most expensive materials, copper and gutta-percha, being indestructible, would have at all times a market value.
Other routes to Europe have been proposed, and have been at times quite popular, the most feasible of which are thoseviâBehring's Straits, or the Aleutian Islands, andviâLabrador, Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Isles.
To the routeviâBehring's Straits there are several grave objections. The distance from New York to London by a route crossing the three continents of America, Asia, and Europe, is about eighteen thousand miles, or more than nine times as great as that from Newfoundland to Ireland. Of course, the mere cost of constructing a continuous telegraph three-quarters of the distance around the globe, and of maintaining the hundreds of stations that would be necessary over such a length of land-lines, would be enormous. But even that is not the chief difficulty. A line which should traverse the whole breadth of Siberia would encounter wellnigh insuperable obstacles in the country itself, as it would have to pass over mountains and across deserts; while, as it turned north to Kamtschatka, it would come into a region of frightful cold, where winter reigns the greater part of the year. Of this whole country a large part is not only utterly uncivilized, but uninhabited, and portions which are occupied are held by savage and warlike tribes.
Of the Greenland route, Doctor Hayes, the well-known Arctic traveller, expresses himself in the most decided manner, that it is wholly impracticable. He says it must be obvious that the ice which hugs the Greenland coast will prevent a cable, if laid, from remaining in continuity for any length of time. Doctor Wallich, naturalist attached to Sir Leopold McClintock's expedition to survey the Northern route, considers it impracticable on account of the volcanic nature of the bottom of the sea near Iceland, and the ridges of rock and the immense icebergs near Greenland.
The main argument in favor of this route, in preference to the more direct one across the Atlantic, is, that it would be impossible to work in one continuous circuit a line so long as that from Newfoundland to Ireland. This would seem to be answered sufficiently by the success of the old Atlantic cable. But it is alleged that it worked slowly and with difficulty, which is true, and hence it is thought that the distance would be at least a very great obstacle. But we have shown, that, practically, by the increased size of the conducting-wire, the new cable has been reduced in length four-fifths, and will work five times as fast as the old one. The cable extending from Malta to Alexandria is fifteen hundred and thirty-five miles long, and the whole of this line can be worked through without relay or repetition in a satisfactory manner, as regards both its scientific and commercial results, and with remarkably low battery-power. The Gutta-Percha Company, which made the core of this cable, says that a suitably made and insulated telegraph-conductor, laid intact between Ireland and Newfoundland, can be worked efficiently, both in a commercial and scientific sense, and they are prepared to guaranty the efficient and satisfactory working of a line of the length of the Atlantic cable as manufactured by themselves, and submerged and maintained in that state.
It can be shown by the testimony and experience of those most eminent in the science and practice of oceanic telegraphy, that neither length of distance, within the limits with which the Atlantic Company has to deal, nor depth of water, is any insuperable impediment to efficient communication by such improved conductors of electricity as are now proposed to be laid down. All those who are best able to form a sound opinion, from long-continued experimental researches on this particular point, are willing to pledge their judgment, that, on such a length of line as that between Ireland and Newfoundland, and with such a cable and such improved instruments as are now at command, not less than twelve words per minute could be transmitted from shore to shore, and that this may be done with greatly diminished battery-power as compared with that formerly used.
I think I have shown by facts, and not theory merely, that the Atlantic cable can and will be successfully laid down and worked, thus supplying the long-needed link between the three hundred thousand miles of electric telegraph already in operation on the opposite shores of the Atlantic.
There are many of our people who are inclined to look coldly upon this enterprise, from a conviction that it would give Great Britain an undue advantage over us in case war should occur between the two countries, and I confess to having entertained the same views; but the case is so well put by Mr. Field, in his address before the American Geographical Society, as, in my judgment, to relieve every apprehension upon this point.
The relative geographical position of the two countries cannot be changed. It so happens, that the two points on the opposite sides of the Atlantic nearest to each other, and which are therefore the natural termini of an ocean telegraph, are both in British territory. Of course, the Government which holds both ends can control the use of the telegraph, or stop it altogether. It has the power, and the only check upon the abuse of that power must be by a treaty, made beforehand. Shall we refuse to aid in constructing the line, for fear that England, in the exasperation of a war, would disregard any treaty stipulations in reference to its use? Then we throw away our only security. For, suppose a war to break out to-morrow, the first step of England would be to lay a cable herself, for her own sole and exclusive benefit. Then she would not only have the control, but would be unrestrained by any treaty-obligations binding her to respect the neutrality of the telegraph. We should then find this great medium of communication between the two hemispheres, which we might have made, if not an ally, at least a neutral, turned into a powerful antagonist.
Would it not, therefore, be better that such a line of telegraph should be constructed by the joint efforts of both countries, and be guarded by treaty-stipulations, so that it might be placed, as far as possible, under the protection of the faith of nations, and of the honor of the civilized world?
Mr. Field says, that, in the negotiations on this subject, Great Britain has never shown the slightest wish to take advantage of its geographical position to exact special privileges, or a desire to appropriate any advantages which it was not willing to concede equally to the United States.
Should not the Atlantic telegraph, if laid down under the conditions proposed by the Company, instead of being a cause of apprehension, in case of war, be rather looked upon with favor, as tending to lessen the risk of war between the United States and all European countries, affording, as it would, facilities for the prompt interchange of notes between the Government of the United States and those of the various nations on the other side of the Atlantic, whenever any misunderstanding should unhappily arise?
Let us, then, throw aside all feeling of apprehension from this cause, and be prepared to hail, with the same enthusiasm we experienced in 1858 at the laying of the old, the completion of the new Atlantic cable.
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[Since the following poem was written, we have had from the President the pledge that the "cabalistic words" shall be uttered by him on the first of January, 1863, unless the rebellion is abandoned before that time. Thanks and honor to the President for the promise! But we shall not look for the magical operation of the words till they are uttered without reservation or qualification.]
Hear, O Commander of the Faithful, hearA legend trite to many a childish ear;But scorn it not, nor let its teaching fail,Although familiar as a nursery tale.
Cassim the Covetous, whose god was gold,Once, by strange chance, found riches manifoldHid in a rocky cavern, where a bandOf robbers who were ravaging the landKept their bright spoils. Cassim had learnt the spellBy which the dazzling heaps were guarded well.Two cabalistic words he speaks, and, lo!The door flies open: what a golden glow!He enters,—speaks the words of power once more,And swift upon him clangs the ponderous door.Croesus! what joy to eyes that know their worth!Huge bags of gold and diamonds on the earth!Here piles of ingots, there a glistening heapOf coins that all their minted lustre keep.Cassim is ravished at the wondrous sight,And rubs his hands with ever new delight;Absorbed in gazing, lets the hours go by,Nor can enough indulge his gloating eye.He chooses what he can to bear away,And then reluctant seeks the outer day.
The words,—whatarethey,—those that ope the door?He falters,—loses all so plain before;—Tries this word,—that,—in vain!—he cannot speakThe magic sentence;—he grows faint and weak,—Spurns the base gold, cause of his wild despair;—What if the thieves should come and find him there?—Hark! they are coming!—yes, they come!—they shoutThe precious words;—ah, now they end his doubt!—Too late he hears; in vain he tries to fly;Trembling he sinks upon his knees—to die!
Commander of the Faithful! dark the straitThy people stand in, in this hour of fate;Thick walls of gloom and doubt have shut them in;They grope beneath the ban of one great sin.Yet there are two short words whose potent spellShall burst with thunder-crash these gates of hell,Open a vista to celestial light,Lead us to peace through the eternal Right.Oh, speak those words, those saving words of power,In this most pregnant, this supremest hour,—Words writ in martyr blood, as all may see!—Commander of the Faithful, say, BE FREE!
* * * * *
The causes of the present Rebellion, the personal history of its leaders, and the incidents immediately preceding the breaking out of the conspiracy, will ever remain objects of chief interest to the historian of the present period of the Republic. Influenced by a desire to obtain unimpeachable information upon these topics from unprejudiced sources, the writer of the following article, then a student at Yale College, availed himself of the vacation in December, 1860, and January, 1861, to visit the National capital, and while there to improve the reasonably ready access with which most public men are approached, whenever the object is either to give or to receive information, for the purpose of studying a period then promising to exceed in importance anything in the past history of the nation. It has been suggested to the writer, that certain interviews, such as younger men, when collegians, were then allowed with the frank Southern leaders, and which he has occasionally sketched in conversation, have had the seal of privacy removed by the tide of events, and should now be described for the public, as aiding to unmask, from unquestionable authority, the real causes and origin of the Rebellion, and contributing something, perhaps, to sustain public sentiment in the defence of the nation against a conspiracy which the statements of these Southern apologists themselves prove to have been conceived in the most reckless disregard of honor and law, and which, if successful, will give birth to a neighboring nation actuated by the same spirit.
The more important interviews alluded to were with the Honorable Robert Toombs, the Honorable R.M.T. Hunter, and the Honorable Jefferson Davis, at that time prominent members, as is well known, of the United States Senate, from the States respectively of Georgia, Virginia, and Mississippi. The communications of the Senators are proved to have been sincere by their subsequent speeches and by public events. The writer is by no means insensible to the breach of privilege, of which, under ordinary circumstances, notwithstanding the unfolding of events, he would be guilty, in detailing in print private conversations; but he believes that the public will sustain the propriety of the present revelations, now that the persons chiefly concerned have become enemies of the nation and of mankind.
Not, as he may possibly be accused, with the purpose of adding a syllable of unnecessary length to the narrative, but for the sake of vividness in presenting the idea of thepersonnelof the Southern leaders, soon to be known only as historical characters, and of scrupulous accuracy in representing their sentiments, to which, in this case, a notice of time, place, and manner seems as necessary as that of matter, the writer has taken not a little pains, through all the usual means, to remember, and will endeavor to state, the conversations, always with logical, and nearly always, he believes, with verbal accuracy, in order that the conclusions to be drawn from them by the reader may have the better support.
It is well known that public men in Washington, out of business hours, are visited without formal introduction or letters, especially upon their reception-days, and that the privilege of a single interview implies no distinction to the visitor. The urbanity and frankness with which proper approaches are met, especially by the Southern leaders, are also well known. Young men, with unprejudiced minds, upon whom public characters are always anxious to impress the stamp of their own principles, are perhaps received with quite as much frankness as others.
* * * * *
The first interview sought was with Mr. Toombs, the most daring and ingenuous, and perhaps the most gifted in eloquence of the Southern leaders, whose house, at that time, was a lofty building upon F Street, only two doors from the residence of Mr. Seward. A negro servant, who, with all the blackness of a native African, yet with thin lips and almost the regular features of a Caucasian, appeared to the writer to be possibly the descendant of one of the superior, princely African tribes, showed the way to an unoccupied parlor. The room was luxuriously furnished with evidences of wealth and taste: a magnificent pianoforte, several well-chosen paintings, and a marble bust of some public character standing upon a high pedestal of the same material in the corner, attracting particular attention, and a pleasant fire in the open grate making the December evening social. A step presently heard in the hall, elastic, buoyant, and vigorous, was altogether too characteristic of Mr. Toombs's portly, muscular, confident, and somewhat dashing figure, to be mistaken for any other than his own. Mr. Toombs appeared to be now about forty-five years of age, but carried in his whole mien the elastic vigor, and irresistible self-reliance, frankness, decision, and sociality of character, which mark his oratory and his public career. His good-evening, and inquiry concerning the college named on the card of the writer, were in a tone that at once placed his visitor at ease.
"Your first visit to Washington, Mr. ——?"
"Yes, Sir. Like others, I have been attracted by the political crisis, and the purpose of studying it from unprejudiced sources."
"Crisis? Oh,that's past."
The writer will not soon forget the tone of perfect confidence andnonchalancewith which this was uttered. The time was the last week of December, 1860.
"You are confident, then, Sir, that fifteen States will secede?"
"Secede? Certainly,—theymustsecede. You Northerners,—you are from a Northern college, I believe,"—referring to the writer's card,—"you Northerners wish to make a new Constitution, or rather to give such an interpretation to the old one as to make it virtually a new document. How can society be kept together, if men will not keep their compacts? Our fathers provided, in adopting their Constitution, for the protection of their property. But here are four billions of the property of the South which you propose to outlaw from the common Territories. You say to us, by your elected President, by your House of Representatives, by your Senate, by your Supreme Court, in short, by every means through which one party can speak to another, that these four billions of property, representing the toil of the head and hand of the South for the last two hundred years, shall not be respected in the Territories as your property is respected there. And this property, too, is property which you tax and which you allow to be represented; but yet you will not protect it. How can we remain? We should be happy to remain, if you would treat us as equals; but you tax us, and will not protect us. We will resist. D—n it,"—this and other striking expressions are precisely Mr. Toombs's language,—"we will meet you on the border with the bayonet. Society cannot be kept together, unless men will keep their compacts."
This was said without the intonation of fierceness or malignity, but with great decision and the vigor of high spirit.
It was taking, of course, with considerable emphasis, a side in a famous Constitutional question, familiar to all readers of American Congressional Debates, once supported by Mr. Calhoun, and rather strangely, too, with that philosophical leader, confusing the absurdly asserted State right of seceding at will with the undoubted right, when there exists no peaceful remedy, of seceding from intolerable oppression: an entire position which Mr. Webster especially, and subsequent statesmen, in arguments elucidating the nature and powers of the General Government, to say nothing of the respect due to a moral sentiment concerning slavery, which, permeating more than a majority of the people, has the force, when properly expressed, wherever the Constitution has jurisdiction, of supreme law, are thought by most men, once and forever, to have satisfactorily answered. It was a complaint, certainly, which the South had had ever since the Constitution was formed, and which could with no plausibility be brought forward as a justification of war, while there existed a Constitutional tribunal for adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan presses, and by Northern Congressmen, that the Rebellion was utterly causeless, and as the writer was therefore exceedingly anxious to obtain, concerning their grievances, the latest opinions of the Southern leaders, as stated by themselves, he ventured to propose, in a pause of Mr. Toombs's somewhat rapid rhetoric, a question which, at that moment, seemed of central importance to the candid philosophical inquirer into the moving forces of the times:—
"Are we, then, Sir, to consider Mr. Calhoun's old complaint—the non-recognition of slave-property under the Federal Constitution—as constituting now thechief grievanceof the South?"
"Undoubtedly," was Mr. Toombs's instant reply, "it all turns on that.What you tax you must protect."
This is the very strongest argument of the Southern side. But the alleged slave-property is protected, though only under municipal law, by the Constitution. To protect it elsewhere is against its whole spirit, and, in the present state of public sentiment, against its very letter. Originally, as is well known, it was not proposed to protect at all,under the General Government, property so monstrous, except as it became necessary as a compromise, in order to secure a union. But the provision of the Constitution that the slave-trade should be abolished, the absolute power given to Congress to make all laws for the Territories, the spirit of the preamble, the principles of the Declaration, indeed, the whole history of the origin and adoption of the fundamental law, prove that its principle and its expectation were, if not absolutely to place slavery in the States in process of extinction, at least never to recognize it except indirectly and remotely under municipal law, not even by admitting the wordslaveto its phraseology.
"Even in the Northern States themselves, to say nothing of the Territories, I am not safe with my property. I can travel through France or England and be safe; but if I happen to lose my servant up inVairmount,"—Mr. Toombs pronounced the word with a somewhat marked accent of derision,—"and undertake to recover him, I get jugged. Besides, your Northern statesmen are far from being honest. Here is Billy Seward, for instance,"—with a gesture toward his neighbor's house,—"who says slavery is contrary to the Higher Law, and that he is bound as a Christian to obey the Higher Law; but yet he takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, which protects slavery. This inconsistency runs through most of the Northern platforms. How can we live with such men? They will not be true even to a compact which they themselves acknowledge."
"You would think, then, Wendell Phillips, for instance, more consistent in his political opinions than Mr. Seward?"
"Certainly. I can understand his position. 'Slavery,' he says, 'is wrong. The Constitution protects slavery; therefore I will have nothing to do with the Constitution, and cannot become a citizen.' This is logical and consistent. I can respect such a position as that."
Here Mr. Toombs—ejecting, as perhaps the writer ought not to relate, a competent mass of tobacco-saliva into the blazing coal—paused somewhat reflectively, perhaps unpleasantly revolving certain possible indirect influences of the position he had characterized.
"Upon which side, Sir, do you think there is usually the most misunderstanding,—on the part of the North concerning the South? or on the part of the South concerning the North?"
"Oh, by all odds," he replied, instantly, "we understand you best. We send fifty thousand travellers, more or less, North every summer to your watering-places. Hot down in Mobile,"—his style taking somewhat unpleasantly the intonation as well as the negligence of the bar-room,—"can't live in Mobile in the summer. Then your papers circulate more among us than ours among you. Our daughters are educated at Northern boarding-schools, our sons at Northern colleges: both my colleague and myself were educated at Northern colleges. For these reasons, by all odds, we have a better opportunity for understanding you than you have for understanding us."
"In case of general secession and war," the writer ventured next to inquire, "would there probably, in your opinion, be danger of a slave insurrection?"
"None at all. Certainly far less than of 'Bread or Blood' riots at theNorth."
The writer was surprised to find, notwithstanding Mr. Toombs's eulogy of Southern opportunities, his understanding of the North so imperfect, and still more surprised at the political and social principles involved in the spirit of what followed.
"Your poor population can hold ward-meetings, and can vote. Butweknow better how to take care of ours. They are in the fields, and under the eye of their overseers. There can be little danger of an insurrection under our system."
The subject and the manner of the man, in spite of his better qualities, were becoming painful, and the writer ventured only one more remark.
"An ugly time, certainly, if war comes between North and South."
"Ugly time?Oh, no!"
The writer will never forget the tone of utter carelessness andnonchalancewith which the last round-toned exclamation was uttered.
"Oh, no! War is nothing. Never more than a tenth part of the adult population of a country in the field. We have four million voters. Say a tenth of them, or four hundred thousand men, are in the field on both sides. A tenth of them would be killed or die of camp diseases. Buttheywould die,any way. War is nothing."
The tone perfectly proved this belief, not badinage.
"Some property would be destroyed, towns injured, fences overturned, and the Devil raised generally; but then all that would have a good effect. Only yaller-covered-literature men and editors make a noise about war. Wars are to history what storms are to the atmosphere,—purifiers. We shall meet, as we ought, whoever invades our rights, with the bayonet. We are the gentlemen of this land, and gentlemen always make revolutions in history."
This was said in the tone of an injured, but haughty man, with perfect intellectual poise and earnestness, yet with a fervor of feeling that brought the speaker erect in his chair.
The significance of the last remarks, which the writer can make oath he has preservedverbatim, being somewhat calculated to draw on a debate, of course wholly unfitted to the time and place, the writer, apologizing for having taken so much time at a formal interview, and receiving, of course, a most courteous invitation to renew the call, found himself, after but twenty minutes' conversation, on the street, in the lonely December evening, with a mind full of reflections.
The utter recklessness concerning life and property with which the splendid intellect, under the lead of the ungovernable passions of this man, was plunging the nation into a civil war of which no one could foresee the end, was the thought uppermost. Certainly, the abstract manliness of asserting rights supposed to be infringed it was in itself impossible not to respect. But the man seemed to love war for its own sake, as pugnacious schoolboys love sham-fights, with a sort of glee in the smell of the smoke of battle. The judicial calmness of statesmanship had entirely disappeared in the violence of sectional passion. Perhaps he might be capable of ruining his country from pure love of turbulence and power, could he but find a pretext of force sufficient to blind first himself and then others. Yet Robert Toombs, in the Senate Chamber, takes little children in his arms, and is one of the kindest of the noblemen of Nature in the sphere of his unpolitical sympathies. The reader who is familiar with Mr. Toombs's speeches will need no assurance that he spoke frankly.[A]
[Footnote A: Ten days later, in the Senate, with a face full of the combined erubescence of revolutionary enthusiasm and unstatesmanlike anger, Mr. Toombs closed a speech to the Northern Senators in the following amazing words, (Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 271,) which justify, it will be seen, every syllable of the report of the conversation upon the same points:—
"You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my State, a free State, to lie down and submit because political fossils raise the cry of 'The Glorious Union'? Too long already have we listened to this delusive song. We are freemen. We have rights: I have stated them. We have wrongs: I have recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into power has declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude four thousand millions of our property from the common territories,—that it has declared us under the ban of the empire and out of the protection of the laws of the United States, everywhere. They have refused to protect us from invasion and insurrection by the Federal power, and the Constitution denies to us in the Union the right either to raise fleets or armies for our own defence. All these charges I have proven by the record, and I put them before the civilized world, and demand the judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages, and of Heaven itself, upon these causes. I am content, whatever it be, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. We have appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights. You have refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we had them, as your court adjudges them to be, just as all our people have said they are, redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. Refuse them, and what then? We shall then ask you to 'let us depart in peace.' Refuse that, and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our banners the glorious words, 'Liberty and Equality,' we will trust to the blood of the brave and the God of battles for security and tranquillity."
Sincere, but undoubtedly mistaken, Mr. Toombs! To this philippic, let the words of another Southern, but not sectional Senator, reply, and that from a golden age:—
"But if, unhappily, we should be involved in war, in civil war, between the two parts of this Confederacy, in which the effort upon the one side should be to restrain the introduction of slavery into the new territories, and upon the other side to force its introduction there, what a spectacle should we present to the astonishment of mankind, in an effort, not to propagate right, but—I must say it, though I trust it will be understood to be said with no design to excite feeling—a war to propagate wrong in the territories thus acquired from Mexico. It would be a war in which we should have no sympathies, no good wishes, in which all mankind would be against us; for, from the commencement of the Revolution down to the present time, we have constantly reproached our British ancestors for the introduction of slavery into this country."—HENRY CLAY,Congressional Globe, Part II., Vol. 22, p. 117.]
Sick at heart, as the future of the nation stood to his dim vision through the present, the writer found his way to his hotel. At this time the North was silent, apparently apathetic, unbelieving, almost criminally allowed to be undeceived by its presses and by public men who had means of information, while this volcano continued to prepare itself thus defiantly beneath the very feet of a President sworn to support the laws!
* * * * *
The formal interview with the Honorable R.M.T. Hunter was sought in company with two other students of New-England colleges. We had hoped to meet Mr. Mason at the same apartments, but were disappointed. The great contrast of personal character between Mr. Hunter and Mr. Toombs made the concurrence of the former in the chief views presented by the latter the more significant. The careful habits of thought, the unostentatiousness, and the practical common sense for which the Virginian farmer is esteemed, and which had made his name a prominent one for President of a Central Confederacy, in case of the separate secession of the Border States, were curiously manifested both in his apartments and his manner. The chamber was apparently at a boarding-house, but very plainly furnished with red cotton serge curtains and common hair-cloth chairs and sofa. The Senator's manner of speech was slow, considerate,—indeed, sometimes approaching awkwardness in its plain, farmer-like simplicity. One of the first questions was the central one, concerning the chief grievance of the South, which had been presented to Mr. Toombs.
"Yes," was Mr. Hunter's reply, somewhat less promptly given, "it may be said to come chiefly from that,—the non-recognition of our property under the Constitution. We wish our property recognized, as we think the Constitution provides. We should like to remain with the North."
He spoke without a particle of expressed passion or ardor, though by no means incapable, when aroused, as those who have seen his plethoric countenance and figure can testify, of both.
"We are mutually helpful to each other.We want to use your navy and your factories. You want our cotton. The North to manufacture, and the South to produce, would make the strongest nation. But, if we separate, we shall try to do more in Virginia than we do now. We shall make mills on our streams."
His language was chiefly Saxon monosyllables.
"The climate is not as severe, the nights are not as long with us as with you. I think we can do well at manufacturing in Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay and our rivers should aid commerce. As for the slaves, I think there is little danger of any trouble. There may be some," he said, with a frankness that surprised us slightly, but in the same moderate, honest way, his hands clasped upon his breast, and the extended feet rubbing together slowly, "in the Cotton States, where they are very thick together; but I think that there is very little danger in Virginia. The way they take to rise in never shows much skill. The last time they rose in our State, I think the attempt was brought on by some sign in an eclipse of the moon."
Nearly all that passed of political interest is contained in the foregoing sentences, except one honest reply to a question concerning his opinion of the probability of the North's attempting coercion.
"If only three States go out, they may coerce," said Mr. Hunter; "but if fifteen go, I guess they won't try."
At the present period of the Rebellion, this indication of the anticipations of its leaders in engaging in it must be of interest.
It must be understood that the writer and his companions presented themselves simply as students, with no fixed exclusive predilections for either of the public parties in politics,—which, in the writer's case at least, was certainly a statement wholly true,—and that this evident freedom from political bias secured perhaps an unusual share of the confidence of the Southern Senators. It will be remembered, also, that in every conversation, however startling the revelation of criminal purpose or absurd motive, the manner of these Senators was always totally devoid of any approach to that vulgar intellectual levity which too often, in treating of public affairs, painfully characterizes the fifth-rate men whom the North sometimes chooses to make its representatives. The manner of the Southern leaders was to us a sufficient proof of their sincerity.
* * * * *
At the house of the Honorable Jefferson Davis, now in the world's gaze President of the then nascent Confederacy, the writer, in the intelligent and genial company of the graduate of Harvard and the student of Amherst before mentioned, called formally, on the evening of the New Year's reception-day. A representative from one of the Southwestern States was present, but we were soon admitted to the front of the open blazing grate of the reception-parlor. We had before seen Mr. Davis busy in the Senate.
The urbanity, the intellectual energy, and the intensely shrewd watchfulness and ambition, combined with a covertly expressed, but powerful native instinct for strategy and command, which have made Mr. Davis a public leader, were evident at the first glance. The Senator seemed compact of ambition, will, intellect, activity, and shrewdness. A high and broad, but square forehead; the aquiline nose; the square, fighting chin; the thin, compressed, but flexible lips; the almost haggardly sunken cheek; the piercing, not wholly uncovered eye; the dark, somewhat thinning hair; the clear, slightly browned, nervous complexion, all well given in the best current photographs, were united to a figure slightly bent in the shoulders, of more respiratory than digestive breadth, in outlines almost equally balancing ruggedness and grace, of compactness wrought by the pressure of perhaps few more than fifty summers, not above medium height, but composed throughout of silk and steel. A certain similarity between the decorations of the parlor and the character of the owner, perhaps more fanciful than real, at once attracted attention. Everything was simple, graceful, and rich, without being tropically luxuriant; the paintings appeared to be often of airy, winged, or white-robed figures, that suggested a reflective and not unimaginative mind in the one who had chosen them. This was the leader whom Mr. Calhoun's fervent political metaphysics and his own ambition for place and power had misled. His conversation was remarkable in manner for perfect unostentatiousness, clearness, and self-control, and in matter for breadth and minuteness of political information. In the whole conversation, he never uttered a broken or awkwardly constructed sentence, nor wavered, while stating facts, by a single intonation. This considerable intellectual energy, combined with courtesy, was his chief fascination. Yet, underneath all lay an atmosphere of covert haughtiness, and, at times, even of audacious remorselessness, which, under stimulative circumstances, were to be feared. Undoubtedly, passion and ambition were natively stronger in the countenance than reason, conscience, and general sympathy,—an observation best felt to be true when the face was compared in imagination with the faces of some of the world's chief benefactors; but culture, native urbanity, and a powerful reflective tendency had evidently so wrought, that, though conscience might be imperilled frequently by great adroitness in the casuistry of self-excuse, justice could not be consciously opposed for any length of time without powerful silent reaction. The quantity of being, however, though superior, was not of so high a measure as the quality, and the principal deficiencies, though perhaps almost the sole ones, were plainly moral. In his presence, no man could deny to him something of that dignity, of a kind superior to that of intellect and will, which must be possessed by every leader as a basis of confidence. But mournful severe truth would testify that there was yet, at times, palpably something of the treacherous serpent in the eye, and it could not readily be told where it would strike.
In reply to a reference to a somewhat celebrated speech by Senator Benjamin of Louisiana, which we had heard the day previous, he said that we might consider it, as a whole, a very fair statement both of the arguments and the purposes of the South. Perhaps a speech of more horrible doctrine, upheld by equal argumentative and rhetorical power, has never been heard in the American Senate. In reply, also, to the one central question concerning the chief grievance of the South, he gave in substance the same answer, uttered perhaps with more logical calmness, that had been given by Mr. Hunter and Mr. Toombs, that it was substantially covered by Mr. Calhoun's old complaint, the non-recognition of slave-property under the Federal Constitution. Of course we were as yet too well established in the belief that slavery in the United States is upheld by the Constitution only very remotely and indirectly, under local or municipal law, to desire, even by questions, to draw on any debate.
In reply to a question by the gentleman from Harvard, he spoke of a Central Confederacy as altogether improbable, and thought, if Georgia seceded, as the telegrams for the last fortnight had indicated she would, Maryland would be sure to go. "I think the commercial and political interests of Maryland," he remarked, in his calm and simple, but distinct and watchful manner, manifesting, too, at the same time, a natural command of dignified, antithetical sentences, "would be promoted, perhaps can be only preserved, by secession. Her territory extends on both sides of a great inland water communication, and is at the natural Atlantic outlet, by railway, of the Valley of the West. Baltimore in the Union is sure to be inferior to Philadelphia and New York: Baltimore out of the Union is sure to become a great commercial city. In every way, whether we regard her own people or their usefulness to other States, I think the interests of Maryland would be promoted by secession."
"But would not Maryland lose many more slaves, as the border member of a foreign confederacy, than she does now in the Union?"
The reply to this question we looked for with the greatest interest, since no foreign nation, such as the North would be, in case of the success of the attempted Confederacy, ever thinks of giving up fugitives, and since the policy of the South upon this point, in case she should succeed, would determine the possibility or impossibility of peace between the two portions of the Continent.
Mr. Davis's reply was in the following words, uttered in a tone of equal shrewdness, calmness, and decision:—
"I think, for all Maryland would lose in that way she would be more than repaid by reprisals. While we are one nation and you steal our property, we have little redress;but when we become two nations, we shall say, Two can play at this game."
We breathed more freely after so frank an utterance. The great importance of this reply, coming from the even then proposed political chief of the Confederacy, as indicating the impossibility of peace, even in case of the recognition of the South, so long as it should continue, as it has begun, to make Slavery the chief corner-stone of the State, will be at once perceived.
"But," the writer ventured to inquire, "what will become of the FederalDistrict, since its inhabitants have no 'State right of secession'?"
"Have you ever studied law?" he asked.
The gentleman from Amherst confessed our ignorance of any point covering the case.
"There is a rule in law," continued Mr. Davis, "that, when property is granted by one party to another for use for any specified purpose, and ceases to be used for that purpose, it reverts by law to the donor. Now the territory constituting at present the District of Columbia was granted, as you well know, by Maryland to the United States for use as the seat of the Federal capital. When it ceases to be used for that purpose, it, with all its public fixtures, will revert by law to Maryland. But," and his eye brightened to the hue of cold steel in a way the writer will never forget, as he uttered, in a tone perfectly self-poised, undaunted, and slightly defiant, the words, "that is a point which may be settled by force rather than by reason."
This was January 1, 1861, only eleven days after South Carolina had passed her Act of Secession, and shows that even then, notwithstanding the professed desire of the South to depart in peace, the attack not only upon the national principles of union, but upon the national property as well, was projected. Mr. Davis, loaded with the benefits of his country, yet occupied a seat in the Senate Chamber, under the most solemn oath to uphold its Constitution, which, even if his grievances had been well founded, afforded Constitutional and peaceful remedies that he had never attempted to use. Presenting regards, very formal indeed, sick at heart, indignant, and anxious, we left the house of the traitor.
The historical conclusions to be drawn from the above slight sketches are important in several respects. Mr. Davis, Mr. Toombs, and Mr. Hunter are among the strongest leaders of the Rebellion. Representing the Northern, Southeastern, and Southwestern populations of the disaffected regions, their testimony had a wide application, and was perhaps as characteristic and pointed in these brief conversations, occurring just upon the eve of the bursting of the storm, as we should have heard in a hundred interviews. That they spoke frankly was not only evidenced to us by their entire manner, but, as it is not unimportant to repeat, has been proved by subsequent events. The conversations, therefore, indicate,—
1. That the grand, fundamental, legal ground for the Rebellion was a view of Constitutional rights by which property in human beings claimed equal protection under the General Government with the products of Free Labor, and to be admitted, therefore, at will, to all places under the jurisdiction of the Federal power, and not simply to be protected under local or municipal law,—rights which the South proposed to vindicate, constitutionally, by Secession, or, in other words, by the domination of State over National sovereignty: an entire view of the true intent of the Federal compacts and powers, which, in the great debates between Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun, to say nothing of elucidations by previous and subsequent jurists and statesmen, has been again and again abundantly demonstrated to be absurd.
2. That the immediate, comprehensive pretext for the Rebellion was the success of a legal majority having in its platform of principles the doctrine of the non-extension of involuntary human bondage in the territories over which the Constitution had given to the whole people absolute control, a doctrine which the mass of the Southern populations were educated to believe not only deadly to their local privileges, but distinctly unconstitutional.
3. That the leaders of the Rebellion frankly admitted, that, excepting this one point of Constitutional grievance, the interests of the populations which they represented would be better subserved in the Union than out of it.
4. That the leaders of the Rebellion appear not to have anticipated coercion; but yet, from the earliest days of Secession, contemplated the spoliation of the Southern National property, and particularly the seizure of the Federal capital.
5. That, even should the independence of the South be acknowledged, peace could not result so long as Slavery should continue: their avowed system of reprisals for the certain escape of slaves precluding all force in any but piratical international law.
6. That the spirit of the Rebellion is the haughty, grasping, and, except within its own circle, the remorseless spirit universally characteristic of oligarchies, before the success of whose principles upon this continent the liberties of the whites could be no safer than those of the blacks.
"We are the gentlemen of this land," said the Georgian senator, "and gentlemen always make revolutions in history." And just previously he had said, with haughty significance, "Yourpoor population can hold ward-meetings, and can vote. Butweknow better how to take care of ours. They are in the fields, and under the eye of their overseers."
In these two brief remarks, taken singly, or, especially, in juxtaposition, from so representative a source, and so characteristic of oligarchical opinions everywhere, appears condensed the suggestive political warning of these times, indeed of all times, and which a people regardful of civil and religious liberty can never be slow to heed.
Let the pride of race and the aristocratic tendencies which underlie the resistance of the South prevail, and we shall see a new America. The land of the fathers and of the present will become strange to us. In place of a thriving population, each member socially independent, self-respecting, contented, and industrious, contributing, therefore, to the general welfare, and preserving to posterity and to mankind a national future of inconceivable power and grandeur, we shall see a class of unemployed rich and unemployed poor, the former a handful, the latter a host, in perpetual feud. The asylum of nations, ungratefully rejecting the principles of equality, to which it has owed a career of prosperity unexampled in history, will find in arrested commerce, depressed credit, checked manufactures, an effeminate and selfish, however brilliant, governing class, and an impoverished and imbruted industrial population, the consequences of turning back upon its path of advance. The condition of the most unfortunate aristocracies of the Old World will become ours.
But the venerated principles partially promulgated in our golden age forbid such unhappy auspices. Undoubtedly gentlemen make revolutions in history; but since all may be Christians, may not all men be gentlemen? At least, have not all men, everywhere, the sacred and comprehensive right of equal freedom of endeavor to occupy their highest capacities?Does not the Creator, who makes nothing in vain, wherever He implants a power, imply a command to exercise that power according to the highest aspiration, and is not responsibility eternally exacted, wherever power and command coexist?By that fearful sanction, may not all men, everywhere, become the best they can become? What that may be, is not free, equal, and perpetual experiment, judged by conscience in the individual and by philanthropy in his brother, and not by arrogance or cupidity in his oppressor, to decide? To secure the wisdom and perpetuity of this experiment, are not governments instituted? Is not a monopoly of opportunity by any single class, by all historical and theoretical proof, not only unjust to the excluded, but crippling and suicidal to the State? Nay, is not the slightest infringement of regulated social and political justice, liberty, and humanity, in the person of black or of white, that makes the greatest potential development of the highest in human nature impossible or difficult, to be resisted, as a violation of the peace of the soul, endless treachery to mankind, an affront to Heaven? Would not the very soil of America, in which Liberty is said to inhere, cry out and rise against any but an affirmative answer to such questions?
A near future will decide.
* * * * *
The Twenty-Second of September, 1862, bids fair to become as remarkable a date in American history as the Fourth of July, 1776; for on that day the President of the United States, availing himself of the full powers of his position, declared this country free from that slaveholding oligarchy which had so long governed it in peace, and the influence of which was so potently felt for more than a year after it had broken up the Union, and made war upon the Federal Government. Be the event what it may,—and the incidents of the war have taught us not to be too sanguine as to the results of any given movement,—President Lincoln has placed the American nation in a proper attitude with respect to that institution the existence of which had so long been the scandal and the disgrace of a people claiming to be the freest on earth, but whose powers had been systematically used and abused for the maintenance and the extension of slave-labor.
It was our misfortune, and in some sense it was also our fault, that we were bound to uphold the worst system of slavery that ever was known among men; for we must judge of every wrong that is perpetrated by the circumstances that are connected with it, and our oppression of the African race was peculiarly offensive, inasmuch as it was a proceeding in flagrant violation of our constantly avowed principles, was continued in face of the opinions of the founders of the nation, was frankly upheld on the unmanly ground that the intellectual weakness of the slaves rendered it safe to oppress them, and was not excused by that general ignorance of right which has so often been brought forward in palliation of wrong,—as slavery had come under the ban of Christendom years before Americans could be found boldly bad enough to claim for it a divine origin, and to avow that it was a proper, and even the best, foundation for civil society. Our offence was of the rankest, and its peculiar character rendered us odious in the eyes of the nations, who would not admit the force of our plea as to the great difficulties that lay in the way of the removal of the evil, as they had seen it condemned by most communities, and abolished by some of their number.
The very circumstance upon which Americans have relied for the justification of their form of slavery, namely, that it was confined to one race, and that race widely separated from all other races by the existence of peculiar characteristics, has been regarded as an aggravation of their misconduct by all humane and disinterested persons. The Greek system of slavery, which was based on the idea that Greeks were noblemen of Heaven's own creating, and that they therefore were justified in treating all other men as inferiors, and making the same use of them as they made of horses; the Roman system, which was based on the will of society, and therefore made no exceptions on the score of color, but saw in all strangers only creatures of chase; the Mussulman system, brought out so strongly by the action of the States of Barbary, and which was colored by the character of the long quarrel between Mahometans and Christians, and under which Northern Africa was filled with myriads of slaves from Southern Europe, among whom were men of the highest intellect,—Cervantes, for example;—all these systems of servitude, and others that might be adduced, were respectable in comparison with our system, which proceeded upon the blasphemous assumption that God had created and set apart one race that should forever dwell in the house of bondage. If, in some respects, our system has been more humane than that of other peoples in other times, the fact is owing to that general improvement which has taken place the earth over during the present century. The world has gone forward, and even American slaveholders have been compelled to go with it, whether they would or not.