America. A history

CHAPTER XI

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY

In this year America made her decennial enumeration of her people and their possessions. The industrial greatness which the census revealed was an astonishment, not only to the rest of the world, but even to herself. The slow growth of the old European countries seemed absolute stagnation beside this swift multiplication of men and of beasts, and of wealth in every form.

The three million colonists who had thrown off the British yoke had now increased to thirty-one and a half million! Of these, four million were slaves, owned by three hundred and fifty thousand persons. This great population was assisted in its toils by six million horses and two million working oxen. It owned eight million cows, fifteen million other cattle, twenty-two million sheep, and thirty-three million hogs. The products of the soil were enormous. The cotton crop of this year was close upon one million tons. It had more than doubled within the last ten years. The grain crop was twelve hundred million bushels – figures so large as to pass beyond our comprehension. Tobacco had more than doubled since 1850 – until now America actually yielded a supply of five hundred million pounds. There were five thousand miles of canals, and thirty thousand miles of railroad – twenty-two thousand of which were the creation of the preceding ten years. The textile manufactures of the country had reached the annual value of forty million sterling. America had provided for the education of her children by erecting one hundred and thirteen thousand schools and colleges, and employing one hundred and fifty thousand teachers. Her educational institutions enjoyed revenues amounting to nearly seven million sterling, and were attended by five and a half million pupils. Religious instruction was given in fifty-four thousand churches, in which there was accommodation for nineteen million hearers. The daily history of the world was supplied by four thousand newspapers, which circulated annually one thousand million copies.

There belonged to the American people nearly two thousand million acres of land. They had not been able to make any use of the greater part of this enormous heritage. Only four hundred million acres had as yet become in any measure available for the benefit of man. The huge remainder lay unpossessed – its power to give wealth to man growing always greater during the long ages of solitude and neglect. The ownership of this prodigious expanse of fertile land opened to the American people a future of unexampled prosperity. They needed only peace and the exercise of their own vigorous industry. But a sterner task was in store for them.

During the last few years the divisions between North and South had become exceedingly bitter. The North was becoming ever more intolerant of slavery. The unreasoning and passionate South resented with growing fierceness the Northern abhorrence of her favoured institution. In the Senate House one day a member was bending over his desk, busied in writing. His name was Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts. He was well known for the hatred which he bore to slavery, and his power as an orator gave him rank as a leader among those who desired the overthrow of the system. While this senator was occupied with his writing, there walked up to him two men whom South Carolina deemed not unworthy to frame laws for a great people. One of them – a ruffian, although a senator – whose name was Brooks, carried a heavy cane. With this formidable weapon he discharged many blows upon the head of the unsuspecting Sumner, till his victim fell bleeding and senseless to the floor. For this outrage a trifling fine was imposed on Brooks. His admiring constituents eagerly paid the amount. Brooks resigned his seat, and was immediately re-elected. Handsome canes flowed in upon him from all parts of the slave country. The South, in a most deliberate and emphatic manner, recorded its approval of the crime which he had committed.

To such a pass had North and South now come. Sumner vehemently attacking slavery; Brooks vehemently smiting Sumner upon his defenceless head – these men represent with perfect truthfulness the feeling of the two great sections. This cannot last.

A new President fell to be elected in 1860. Never had an election taken place under circumstances so exciting. The North was thoroughly aroused on the slave question. The time for compromises was felt to have passed. It was a death-grapple between the two powers. Each party had to put forth its strength and conquer, or be crushed.

The enemies of slavery announced it as their design to prevent slavery from extending to the Territories. They had no power to interfere in States where the system already existed. But, they said, the Territories belong to the Union. The proper condition of the Union is freedom. The Slave States are merely exceptional. It is contrary to the Constitution to carry this irregularity where it does not already exist.

The Territories, said the South, belong to the Union. All citizens of the Union are free to go there with their property. Slaves are property. Slavery may therefore be established in the Territories, if slave-owners choose to settle there.

On this issue battle was joined. The Northern party nominated Abraham Lincoln as their candidate. The Southerners, with their friends in the North – of whom there were many – divided their votes among three candidates. They were defeated, and Abraham Lincoln became President.

Mr. Lincoln was the son of a small and not very prosperous farmer. He was born in 1809 in the State of Kentucky, but his youth was passed mainly in Indiana. His father had chosen to settle on the farthest verge of civilization. Around him was a dense, illimitable forest, still wandered over by the Indians. Here and there in the wilderness occurred a rude wooden hut like his own, the abode of some rough settler regardless of comfort and greedy of the excitements of pioneering. The next neighbour was two miles away. There were no roads, no bridges, no inns. The traveller swam the rivers he had to cross, and trusted, not in vain, to the hospitality of the settlers for food and shelter. Now and then a clergyman passed that way, and from a hasty platform beneath a tree the gospel was preached to an eagerly-listening audience of rugged woodsmen. Many years after, when he had grown wise and famous, Mr. Lincoln spoke, with tears in his eyes, of a well-remembered sermon which he had heard from a wayfaring preacher in the great Indiana wilderness. Justice was administered under the shade of forest trees. The jury sat upon a log. The same tree which sheltered the court, occasionally served as a gibbet for the criminal.

In this society – rugged, but honest and kindly – the youth of the future President was passed. He had little schooling; indeed there was scarcely a school within reach, and if all the days of his school-time were added together they would scarcely make up one year. His father was poor, and Abraham was needed on the farm. There was timber to fell, there were fences to build, fields to plough, sowing and reaping to be done. Abraham led a busy life, and knew well, while yet a boy, what hard work meant. Like all boys who come to anything great, he had a devouring thirst for knowledge. He borrowed all the books in his neighbourhood, and read them by the blaze of the logs which his own axe had split.

This was his upbringing. When he entered life for himself, it was as clerk in a small store. He served nearly a year there, conducting faithfully and cheerfully the lowly commerce by which the wants of the settlers were supplied. Then he comes before us as a soldier, fighting a not very bloody campaign against the Indians, who had undertaken, rather imprudently, to drive the white men out of that region. Having settled in Illinois, he commenced the study of law, supporting himself by land-surveying during the unprofitable stages of that pursuit. Finally he applied himself to politics, and in 1834 was elected a member of the Legislature of Illinois.

He was now in his twenty-fifth year; of vast stature, somewhat awkwardly fashioned, slender for his height, but uncommonly muscular and enduring. He was of pleasant humour, ready and true insight. After such a boyhood as his, difficulty had no terrors for him, and he was incapable of defeat. His manners were very homely. His lank, ungainly figure, dressed in the native manufacture of the backwoods, would have spread dismay in a European drawing-room. He was smiled at even in the uncourtly Legislature of Illinois. But here, as elsewhere, whoever came into contact with Abraham Lincoln felt that he was a man framed to lead other men. Sagacious, penetrating, full of resource, and withal honest, kindly, conciliatory, his hands might be roughened by toil, his dress and ways might be those of the wilderness, yet was he quickly recognized as a born king of men.

During the next twenty-six years Mr. Lincoln applied himself to the profession of the law. During the greater portion of those years he was in public life. He had part in all the political controversies of his time. Chief among these were the troubles arising out of slavery. From his boyhood Mr. Lincoln was a steady enemy to slavery, as at once foolish and wrong. He would not interfere with it in the old States, for there the Constitution gave him no power; but he would in noway allow its establishment in the Territories. He desired a policy which “looked forward hopefully to the time when slavery, as a wrong, might come to an end.” He gained in a very unusual degree the confidence of his party, who raised him to the presidential chair, as a true and capable representative of their principles in regard to the great slavery question.

CHAPTER XII

SECESSION

South Carolina was the least loyal to the Union of all the States. She estimated very highly her own dignity as a sovereign State. She held in small account the allegiance which she owed to the Federal Government. Twenty-eight years ago Congress had enacted a highly protective tariff. 1832 A.D. South Carolina, disapproving of this measure, decreed that it was not binding upon her. Should the Federal Government attempt to enforce it, South Carolina announced her purpose of quitting the Union and becoming independent. General Jackson, who was then President, made ready to hold South Carolina to her duty by force; but Congress modified the tariff, and so averted the danger. Jackson believed firmly that the men who then held the destiny of South Carolina in their hands wished to secede. “The tariff,” he said, “was but a pretext. The next will be the slavery question.”

1860 A.D. The time predicted had now come, and South Carolina led her sister States into the dark and bloody path. A convention of her people was promptly called, and on the 20th of December an Ordinance was passed dissolving the Union, and declaring South Carolina a free and independent republic. When the Ordinance was passed the bells of Charleston rang for joy, and the streets of the city resounded with the wild exulting shouts of an excited people. Dearly had the joy of those tumultuous hours to be paid for. Four years later, when Sherman quelled the heroic defence of the rebel city, Charleston lay in ruins. Her people, sorely diminished by war and famine, had been long familiar with the miseries which a strict blockade and a merciless bombardment can inflict.

The example of South Carolina was at once followed by other discontented States. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida hastened to assert their independence, and to league themselves into a new Confederacy. They adopted a Constitution, differing from the old mainly in these respects, that it contained provisions against taxes to protect any branch of industry, and gave effective securities for the permanence and extension of slavery. They elected Mr. Jefferson Davis President for six years. They possessed themselves of the Government property within their own boundaries. It was not yet their opinion that the North would fight, and they bore themselves with a high hand in all the arrangements which their new position seemed to call for.

After the Government was formed, the Confederacy was joined by other Slave States who at first had hesitated. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas, after some delay, gave in their adhesion. The Confederacy in its completed form was composed of eleven States, with a population of nine million; six million of whom were free, and three million were slaves. Twenty-three States remained loyal to the Union. Their population amounted to twenty-two million.

It is not to be supposed that the free population of the seceding States were unanimous in their desire to break up the Union. On the contrary, there is good reason to believe that a majority of the people in most of the seceding States were all the time opposed to secession. In North Carolina the attempt to carry secession was at first defeated by the people. In the end that State left the Union reluctantly, under the belief that not otherwise could it escape becoming the battle-ground of the contending powers. Thus, too, Virginia refused at first by large majorities to secede. In Georgia and Alabama the minorities against secession were large. In Louisiana twenty thousand votes were given for secession, and seventeen thousand against it. In many cases it required much intrigue and dexterity of management to obtain a favourable vote; and the resolution to quit the Union was received in sorrow by very many of the Southern people. But everywhere in the South the idea prevailed that allegiance was due to the State rather than to the Federation. And thus it came to pass that when the authorities of a State resolved to abandon the Union, the citizens of that State felt constrained to secede, even while they mourned the course upon which they were forced to enter.

It has been maintained by some defenders of the seceding States that slavery was not the cause of secession. On that question there can surely be no authority so good as that of the seceding States themselves. A declaration of the reasons which influenced their action was issued by several States, and acquiesced in by the others. South Carolina was the first to give reasons for her conduct. These reasons related wholly to slavery, no other cause of separation being hinted at. The Northern States, it was complained, would not restore runaway slaves. They assumed the right of “deciding on the propriety of our domestic institutions.” They denounced slavery as sinful. They permitted the open establishment of anti-slavery societies. They aided the escape of slaves. They sought to exclude slavery from the Territories. Finally, they had elected to the office of President, Abraham Lincoln, “a man whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”

Some of the American people had from the beginning held the opinion that any State could leave the Union at her pleasure. That belief was general in the South. The seceding States did not doubt that they had full legal right to take the step which they had taken, and they stated with perfect frankness what was their reason for exercising this right. They believed that slavery was endangered by their continuance in the Union. Strictly speaking, they fought in defence of their right to secede. But they had no other motive for seceding than that slavery should be preserved and extended. The war which ensued was therefore really a war in defence of slavery. But for the Southern love and the Northern antipathy to slavery, no war could have occurred. The men of the South attempted to break up the Union because they thought slavery would be safer if the Slave-owning States stood alone. The men of the North refused to allow the Union to be broken up. They did not go to war to put down slavery. They had no more right to put down slavery in the South than England has to put down slavery in Cuba. The Union which they loved was endangered, and they fought to defend the Union.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TWO PRESIDENTS

Mr. Lincoln was elected, according to usage, early in November, but did not take possession of his office till March. In the interval President Buchanan remained in power. This gentleman was Southern by birth, and, as it has always been believed, by sympathy. He laid no arrest upon the movements of the seceding States; nay, it has been alleged that he rather sought to remove obstacles from their path. During all these winter months the Southern leaders were suffered to push forward their preparations for the approaching conflict. The North still hoped for peace, and Congress busied itself with vain schemes of conciliation. Meetings were held all over the country, at which an anxious desire was expressed to remove causes of offence. The self-willed Southerners would listen to no compromise. They would go apart, peacefully if they might; in storm and bloodshed if they must.

1861 A.D. Early in February Mr. Lincoln left his home in Illinois on his way to Washington. His neighbours accompanied him to the railroad depôt, where he spoke a few parting words to them. “I know not,” he said, “how soon I shall see you again. A duty devolves upon me, which is, perhaps, greater than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine aid which sustained him, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support; and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain.”

With these grave, devout words, he took his leave, and passed on to the fulfilment of his heavy task. His inauguration took place as usual on the 4th of March. A huge crowd assembled around the Capitol. Mr. Lincoln had thus far kept silence as to the course he meditated in regard to the seceding States. Seldom had a revelation involving issues so momentous been waited for at the lips of any man. The anxious crowd stood so still, that to its utmost verge the words of the speaker were distinctly heard.

He assured the Southerners that their fears were unfounded. He had no lawful right to interfere with slavery in the States where it existed; he had no purpose and no inclination to interfere. He would, on the contrary, maintain them in the enjoyment of all the rights which the Constitution bestowed upon them. But he held that no State could quit the Union at pleasure. In view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union was unbroken. His policy would be framed upon that belief. He would continue to execute the laws within the seceding States, and would continue to possess Federal property there, with all the force at his command. That did not necessarily involve conflict or bloodshed. Government would not assail the discontented States, but would suffer no invasion of its constitutional rights. With the South, therefore, it lay to decide whether there was to be peace or war.

A week or two before Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration Jefferson Davis had entered upon his career as President of the Southern Republic. Mr. Davis was an old politician. He had long advocated the right of an aggrieved State to leave the Union; and he had largely contributed, by speech and by intrigue, to hasten the crisis which had now arrived. He was an accomplished man, a graceful writer, a fluent and persuasive speaker. He was ambitious, resolute, and of ample experience in the management of affairs; but he had many disqualifications for high office. His obstinacy was blind and unreasoning. He had little knowledge of men, and could not distinguish “between an instrument and an obstacle.” His moral tone was low. He taught Mississippi, his native State, to repudiate her just debts. A great English statesman, who made his acquaintance some years before the war broke out, pronounced him one of the ablest and one of the most wicked men in America.

In his Inaugural Address Mr. Davis displayed a prudent reserve. Speaking for the world to hear – a world which, upon the whole, abhorred slavery – he did not name the grievances which rendered secession necessary. He maintained the right of a discontented State to secede. The Union had ceased to answer the ends for which it was established; and in the exercise of an undoubted right they had withdrawn from it. He hoped their late associates would not incur the fearful responsibility of disturbing them in their pursuit of a separate political career. If so, it only remained for them to appeal to arms, and invoke the blessing of Providence on a just cause.

Alexander H. Stephens was the Vice-President of the Confederacy. His health was bad, and the expression of his face indicated habitual suffering. He had nevertheless been a laborious student, and a patient, if not a very wise, thinker on the great questions of his time. In the early days of secession he delivered at Savannah a speech which quickly became famous, and which retains its interest still as the most candid explanation of the motives and the expectations of the South. The old Government, he said, was founded upon sand. It was founded upon the assumption of the equality of races. Its authors entertained the mistaken belief that African slavery was wrong in principle. “Our new Government,” said the Vice-President, “is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man – that slavery is his natural and normal condition.” Why the Creator had made him so could not be told. “It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them.” With this very clear statement by the Vice-President, we are freed from uncertainty as to the designs of the Southern leaders, and filled with thankfulness for the ruin which fell upon their wicked enterprise.

It is a very curious but perfectly authenticated fact, that notwithstanding the pains taken by Southern leaders to show that they seceded merely to preserve and maintain slavery, there were many intelligent men in England who steadfastly maintained that slavery had little or nothing to do with the origin of the Great War.

Book Fourth