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The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming, are checked below. THE
UNITED STATES UNMASKED.
A SEARCH INTO THE CAUSES
of
THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THESE STATES,
and an
EXPOSURE OF THEIR PRESENT MATERIAL AND MORAL CONDITION.
WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS BY THE AUTHOR.
BY GABRIEL. MANIGAULT.
London, Ontario: J. H. Vivian, 309 Clarence Street 1878.
LONDON:EDWARD STANFORD, 55 CHARING CROSS, S.W. 1879
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada in the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight, by G. Manigault, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture. PREFACE.
The author of this little book lately made several efforts to get it published in the United States. But even those publishers, whose political and social convictions carry them a long way with him in the views herein expressed, shrank from becoming god-fathers to his bantling. To do so would jeopardize their business interests, which are dependent on popular favour. For a people may fall into such a condition, that the grossest offence you can give them, is to tell them the truth of themselves. This obstacle has induced the author to bring out his book in Canada, in a form somewhat abridged — thus retaining some control over the copyright elsewhere. We are sure that this little book has one merit. If it be rightly read, it may save much money to many people not in the United States, who have been or may be tempted to acquire an interest in enterprises undertaken there, or in securities put into the money market from that quarter. CONTENTS
CHAPTER I — The Reasons for Entering on this Inquiry — Page [1]
CHAPTER II — The Causes of the Rapid Progress and Prosperity of the Thirteen English Colonies which Became States — Page [4]
CHAPTER III — How Long Was this Singular Prosperity to Last — Page [19]
CHAPTER IV — The Negro Question — Page [36]
CHAPTER V — The Southern States — Page [49]
CHAPTER VI — The Cause of the Secession of the Southern States — Page [70]
CHAPTER VII — The Effects of this Revolution on the Whole Union — Page [97]
CHAPTER VII — Political and Social Condition of the United States — Page [119]
CHAPTER IX — The Vast Indebtedness of the Country — and Its Effects — Page [140]
APPENDIX — Page [166]
Original Page Numbers are in [Brackets] THE UNITED STATES UNMASKED.
CHAPTER I.
The Reasons for Entering on this Inquiry.
The overweening tone in which the people of the United States have long been boasting of their country, their government, and themselves, coupled with the vast and peculiar, but accidental advantages, long enjoyed by the inhabitants of these states, has gained for them a reputation for wisdom in the organization of their political institutions, and in the conduct of their affairs, to which they have little claim. There is indeed much in the history and progress of this monster republic to excite the wonder of the world. Not even Imperial, and later, Papal Rome ever exercised, by the mere force of opinion disseminated from it as a centre, a wider and vaster influence over the nations of the earth, than the United States have done for many years past. Not only have the old and highly civilized monarchies of Europe been convulsed, and some of them revolutionized, through the spreading of political doctrines and social theories, different periods of their career, can which, if they did not originate, detect the grossly exaggerated germinated and now flourish in this misconceptions prevailing in Europe and paradise of democracy, where their fruits elsewhere, as to the prosperity of the are fast maturing, if not yet quite ripe; United States, and as to the sources of but these convictions and dogmas in social that prosperity; and also as to the science, emanating from the United States, results of the democratic form of now bear sway over the half barbarous government adopted there. And when he has republics of Mexico and South [2] America, detected not only these gross over the growing democracies of Australia misconceptions, but the vast and and South Africa, and their influence widespread mischief already done by seems to be felt in the remote, and, until receiving them as truths, he is bound in lately, secluded empires of China and common honesty to point them out. Japan. Without attempting an exact arrangement The popular voice throughout the world of our matter under the following heads, has attributed the progress, prosperity, we will endeavour substantially to prove: and power of the United States to the 1. That whatever wisdom and principles wisdom and justice of the political of justice may have promoted the institutions generated there. These they prosperity of the states now known as [3] believe have secured the happy condition the United States, they did not originate of the people; these have fostered that there, but were brought in from abroad, wonderful skill and energy which is and have there deteriorated rather than speedily developing the latent resources improved. of half a continent. This conviction has 2. That under the guidance of this led the populace, wherever they have been imported wisdom and justice a vast and awakened to the consideration of their rare combination of natural advantages political and social condition, to hail built up the prosperity of these states. the United States as the pattern held up 3. That the natural and material before the eyes of all mankind, to guide advantages they enjoyed were not more them in remodelling the institutions of freely and eagerly used, than wastefully their country, and in establishing the abused and exhausted. principles which here on earth are to 4. That, far from having made moral regenerate humanity. progress with their growth, the forty But a vigilant and impartial observer, millions of people in the United States looking at the United States from are most strongly characterized by their different stand points within and without, unblushing political, social and financial and studying their history through the corruption. CHAPTER II.
The Causes of the Rapid Progress and Prosperity of the Thirteen English Colonies which Became States.
America was long and is still, at times, called the New World, a name correct only in this sense: it was newly known to the people of Europe, and that higher civilization, long existing in Europe, was new to this western continent. But the races now dominant in America are not new either to history or civilization. They are the offspring of detachments from the peoples of England, Spain, Portugal and France, sent, or rather coming out as colonists, and long governed and protected by the countries from which they came. Confining our remarks to the colonists from England we will point out the peculiar advantages which, beyond those of the colonists of any other nation, they brought out with them from home, and met with in America. Let the reader consider how rare and happy, yet unforeseen, was that concurrence of circumstances which combined to secure the success of these English settlements on the North American coast. 1. The mother country was a powerful nation, and especially strong at sea. This enabled it to protect its remotest colony against every other maritime power. 43, North. In the greater part of this That country more-over was blessed with a region they found a temperate climate and wiser code of laws and freer institutions much fertile soil; and it abounded with than any other nation. In civilization, natural productions continually reminding arts, science, and literature it had no the colonists of their old home. If, on superior, if any equal. And, above [5] close inspection of these specimens from all, Christianity had there shaken off the the animal or vegetable kingdom, the trammeling corruptions of the Church of Englishman found the species different, Rome. yet the genus was apt to be the same with 2. The colonists not only brought out that so well known to him from boyhood. with them the laws and institutions which Nature in many, and the most obvious of they had inherited with the rest of their her productions, here and in England, countrymen, but they were a selection of often ran in wonderfully parallel lines, the more enterprising individuals from rarely coinciding, seldom far apart. If among the most enterprising of nations and the colonist wandered through the woods, races; a people distinguished by their he found oaks, beeches, elms, pines, industry, energy, inventive powers, and hollies, and other sylvan denizens individual self-reliance. This peculiarly strongly recalling to him England’s forest fitted them to make their way in the New trees. He started from the covert the World. buck [6] and the doe, the smaller 3. Most fortunate was it for these representatives of the genus of the stag English colonists that the Spaniards, and the hind, and worthy compeers of the running after the ignis fatuus (fleeting fallow deer he had so often seen in illusory glimpse of light) of an Eldorado English parks. On his approach the hare (legendary City of Gold) in tropical started from her form, the covey of America, had got the start of them by partridges or quails flurried him by their their conquests in the West Indies, and in sudden whirling flight from almost beneath Mexico and Peru. But for that, the his feet; and he detected the stealthy fox prospect of speedy gain, in its most springing quickly out of sight. Standing tempting form, would have diverted the on the bank of the rivulet he watched the English, in the pursuit of gold, from an perch and speckled trout gliding down the enterprise which led to their peopling stream, the heron wading in its waters, with their offspring the better half of the eagle soaring over head, and he heard the continent. the voice of the dove cooing in the woods. 4. The region most accessible to Throughout the more conspicuous objects of English enterprise on the coast of North organized nature he was seldom at a loss America lay between the latitudes 31 and for an English name for the new object so like that which he had left behind him in hostile savages tended to compact each the old country; and he instinctively felt colony into a well-organized body politic. that he had found a new home, in which his It must not be forgotten that, however race could live and thrive, and spread necessary government may be in every phase itself over regions seemingly without of society, it is always a burden and bounds. restraint, tolerated only as a safeguard 5. These English colonists enjoyed against more intolerable evils. If, on another peculiar advantage on which, in the first settling of the country, the order that it may be duly estimated, we colonists had been free to range over the shall comment more at length. continent, with no human enemy to hold No numerous people, as in Mexico, Peru, them in check, what chance would there and many other lands coveted by ambitious have been of preserving the civilization and enterprising nations in Europe, here and law-abiding habits they had brought already preoccupied the soil. Yet the with them from home? When all the more country was not uninhabited. Many enterprising spirits had become hunters scattered savage tribes, engaged in and trappers, voyageurs and ramblers endless war with each other, which kept through the wilds of the backwoods, and down their numbers, roamed over rather the broad prairies beyond them, what means than occupied the country. This race, would have been left for maintaining a here at least, had not advanced beyond the defensible settlement on the coast, to hunting stage of man’s pursuits. They had keep up the interest of, and the taken no steps towards becoming a pastoral intercourse with, the mother country, and people, having domesticated no animal, not to resist the attacks of European even the dog; and if they had taken a step marauders who, as it was, utterly towards tilling the soil, it was only by destroyed some of the earlier colonies? the casual labour of their women, to This cordon of savage enemies supply tobacco for their pipes, and maize maintained the martial energies of the for the green corn festival. So earlier settlers by calling them at times straitened and uncertain were their means into action; it preserved their civil of living that the population between the organization, their social relations, and Atlantic and the far west did not furnish their industry, by driving them to avail one soul to the square mile. themselves of the agricultural, pastoral, [7] It is true that this savage race and sylvan resources already in their fiercely resisted the intrusion of the possession, or easily within their reach; foreigners upon their hunting grounds. and it established the colony on a solid, But by this the colonies gained far more profitable and permanent footing, tending than they lost. This slender cordon of rapidly to enable it to sustain itself against all enemies. The truth is that, The cultivation of the soil, and the arts in spite of the bloody and disastrous most essential to the support and comforts Indian wars, of which we hear so much in of life are still dependent in both colonial history, as soon as the growth countries on the labour and skill of the and prosperity of any of the colonies primitive race. The Spanish colonies in really called for an expansion of its America seem to have made little progress borders, an energetic effort of the in civilization; and of late, after half a colonial government, even without aid from century of freedom from the domination of England, seldom failed to procure for it old Spain, their course seems to be rather [8] all the room needed for the growth of retrograde than progressive. the colony for years to come. More than two centuries have passed The case is quite different when the since the English began to make those attempt to establish a colony is made in a territorial acquisitions in India, which country where another people are already now embrace the whole and more than the in occupation of the soil. If inferior in whole of that great and fertile peninsula. war-like qualities, in arts and Yet the Britons in India are, to this day, civilization, the natives may be easily but an army of occupation, garrisoning the conquered, but not easily exterminated. strong-holds which command the strategic However merciless the slaughter in war, and commercial points, and the lines of the convenience and the necessities of the communication. There is not in India even conquerors almost always lead them to [9] the semblance of a British colony. A spare no small part of the subjected vast, industrious, and skilful native people. population fill all the lower and many of The Spaniards conquered Mexico and Peru the higher callings by which the mass of three hundred and fifty years ago; and Europeans, in their own country, earn a they proved themselves merciless living; and the climate in India is a yet conquerors, slaughtering a large portion more insuperable bar to emigrants from of two numerous nations, and stripping the Europe than the presence of an industrious survivors of everything that could swell and skilful native population. the spoils of the victors. From that day But even where the climate is as they became, and are still, the dominant suitable to the conquering invaders as to class; but they utterly failed to supplant the conquered natives, it is difficult for the native race; and, while the the new-comers to supplant the others. descendants of the Spaniards in Mexico Few counties are more blessed with little exceed one million, those of the physical advantages — more favoured in conquered people number seven times that soil, climate and geographic position and amount. The case is very similar in Peru. features, than Ireland. If the Normans of England, and their Anglo-Saxon followers, of the old Danish and other Scandinavian in their expeditions to Ireland in the invaders and settlers in Ireland, although twelfth century, had found it an Teutons, were now, by this new invasion, uninhabited country, in no long time they mingled with the Celtic people, and were would have added to the dominions of the equally zealous in opposing the new- English sovereigns territories equivalent comers. The result was that Ireland, to thirty English counties, differing although conquered and held by the English little in the character of their for seven centuries, is Irish still. The population, and in the culture and Celtic population, not being exterminated development of their resources, from the but only subjected, multiplied in spite of fifty-two counties of England and Wales. the subject position they held in their Great as the wealth and power of England own country; and they engrossed all the were even then, these thirty new counties, laborious and lower occupations, forming homogeneous with those east of the narrow an impassable barrier to the influx of Irish Sea, becoming practically a part of colonists who might have brought English the kingdom of England, would have added industry, arts, habits, and ideas into more than one-half to its power: and Ireland. In the earlier half of this Ireland would have been as much and more century the population rose to much more akin to England than Northumberland to than eight millions, of which number seven Kent. millions were of Celtic blood, and not one But as it was, Ireland has proved to and a half millions were the descendants England as much a source of weakness as of of the armed or of the pacific invaders of strength. The invaders from England found the country centuries ago — Ireland was Ireland, in the twelfth century, already Irish still. in the hands of a numerous people in the It is only since about the middle of actual occupation of the soil; and they this century that famine and other persistently, although unsuccessfully, powerful influences, among which the chief resisted the invaders. The superiority of were the increased facilities and the latter in civilization, discipline, inducements to immigration, have cut down arms and armour, and also in race, the population of Ireland by nearly three rendered numbers unavailing against them; millions. One would have supposed that for the conquerors of [10] Ireland were of Ireland would be now less Irish than it the Teutonic race, which has proved itself was. But the dominant people have utterly superior to all others. The conquered failed to assimilate the Irish to people were Celts, a race endowed also themselves. The animosity of the Celtic with high qualities, and inferior only to Irish against the English and their the Teutonic. Moreover, the descendants connection with England, and yet more against the class in their own country facts, from which could be inferred the who, although with them there for rate of possible increase of the human centuries, have not become one with them, species, where population does not press (and whom they still call Saxons), never upon the means of subsistence; the was, perhaps, more intense than at this increase not being checked by the day. difficulty of obtaining food. Before the [11] When we consider the utter failure settlement of these English colonies, who of the English to colonize India, and ever heard of any region of country their slow and small success in colonizing doubling its population in eighteen or Ireland, where complete and speedy success twenty years by natural increase? seemed certain; and when we contrast these In commenting on the splendid success failures with their unrivalled and of this colonization which, in little more wonderful success in North America, we than two centuries, expanded itself, in a must see that great natural and social belt a thousand miles wide, from the causes placed insuperable obstacles in Atlantic to the Pacific, over a region their way in the former cases, and that a nearly as large as Europe, we must not rare combination of circumstances afforded forget that the causes of this success, them the greatest facilities in the last. both moral and material, operated far more It is true that the people of Great vigorously in the ear1ier than in the Britain, the English and lowland Scotch, latter [12] part of that time. This are peculiarly fitted for these great becomes plain to us when we consider the enterprises of colonization, and that the moral and material influences promoting French and Spaniards attempting similar this prosperity and progress. undertakings, often with greater means, As we have said, the colonists, being never achieved half as much. But, in the Englishmen, brought with them English planting of the thirteen colonies on the institutions and civilization. They were North American coast, everything combined an energetic and enterprising detachment to secure success so speedy and permanent, of the Anglo-Saxon people, trained up in that the history of colonization can tell the practical English school of laws, us of nothing that rivals it. liberties, and acquired and vested rights; Let the reader take in the full import not in modern theories as to human of this fact: In many parts of this newly equality and the so-called inalienable settled country the wide expanse of virgin rights of man. As colonists they were soil continued to yield so ready and long protected, influenced, and in a abundant a return to the labours of the measure controlled by the mother country, husbandman, as here first in the history which had frequent communication with the of man to afford a reliable series of remotest settlements. Many of the more successful colonists, especially in the that the people of twelve out of thirteen South, sent their sons, and not seldom, colonies were of Teutonic origin, and their daughters to England for education, their Christianity was represented by continuing this for generations, and still Protestant churches: Maryland or rather speaking of England as “home.” And such Baltimore and its neighbourhood being the it still was in the best sense; for thence only settlement where the Celtic race and was derived almost all that was worth the church of Rome were strongly preserving in political, social, and represented. intellectual attainments. For in The government with which the colonists religion, law, letters, morals, and were in actual and daily contact, on all manners, America, with all its claims to the most vital points of political and inventing and capacity for appropriating, social life, was the colonial government has done little to improve, much to of each colony. These had been modelled corrupt that which it has derived from after that of Great Britain; and, at a England. later day, they were not so much changed The earlier emigrants, not strictly as modified into the State governments, to English, who sought homes in these English adapt them to their new condition of colonies, were of descriptions highly independence of the British crown. desirable in this new country, but were Internally the change was not great; the not numerous enough to change materially political and legal institutions of the the character of the population. On the individual states continuing to bear the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in marks of their Anglo-Saxon origin, not 1685, many French Protestants, a class in only stamped upon them, but interwoven in character, education, and industry far their fibre. The Anglo-Saxon race, long above the average of the French people, and overwhelmingly predominated in the sought homes in America to escape population, controlling public affairs, persecution for their faith. Many lowland popular opinion, and the whole tone of Scotch and Scotch-Irish from the North- society. The “English common law” is east of Ireland, zealous Protestants and still of force in almost every state of noted for their industry and thrift, the Union, except on those points on which migrated to these colonies. Under the its provisions have been expressly altered patronage of the [13] crown and of some of by statute. In fact the law has been so the colonial governments several numerous much altered in the last forty years in bodies of agricultural emigrants from England, that more of the old English Northern and Protestant Germany were common law is, or was lately in force in brought into the country. The original some of the states than in England itself. colonists of New York were Hollanders, so These local governments were sustained backwoods. Their watchword was “Westward chiefly by direct taxes, which were seldom ho!” They sought the unrestrained and burdensome in amount. Now there is adventurous life of the frontier. The nothing men are more vigilant against and better class became hunters and trappers more intolerant of than high and in the fur trade, the worse divided their unnecessary taxation, when they know that energies between trafficking with and the money comes out of their own pockets. cheating the Indians, and slaughtering And [14] this each man must know under the them out of the way of advancing open and honest system of direct taxation. civilization. This secured both honesty and economy in Here we must say that the history of the expenditure of the revenues of the the colonies and of the United States and colonies, and afterwards of the States. numberless documents connected with that There was in consequence just government history, tells us of peace and war with enough to protect society, but no further the Indian tribes, of negotiation, interference with men’s private pursuits, treaties and traffic with them. But they under pretence of taking care of, and do not and cannot tell us all that benefiting individuals. There was no fund occurred between the two races, but only to maintain a wide patronage, to be used what passed on the public stage. Behind as the means of bribing and buying up the scenes, from the early times of the supporters of those in power; and men colonies until now, an [15] unceasing ambitious of public life more often skirmish has been waged along the receding impoverished than enriched themselves by frontier on which the Indian yet lingers. holding office. Here he stands face to face with The vast expanse of territory west of persevering enemies who have been for the colonies, and, for a long time, of the centuries intruding on his haunts. Many states, served as a vent and safety-valve of these enemies are there because to relieve these not too rigid and civilized society, unable longer to exacting governments of the task of tolerate their presence, had thrust them controlling the more restless and out beyond its pale. We will not stop to enterprising, and also the more turbulent censure or defend this conflict of two and criminal portion of the population. hundred years. Perhaps the nature and The dangerous classes, as the French call position of the two races rendered it them, those who in most countries task the unavoidable. But we will illustrate by an vigilance of the police, and the energies anecdote the feelings and the deeds of the government to watch and control engendered among the whites on the them, here, from the first settlement of frontier. the country, steadily tended towards the “ We who first came out to this or peace between the government and the neighbourhood lived a rough life” said an tribes just then. But there was seldom old settler to a traveller in the West. such peace between us borderers and the “We were close on the Indian frontier, and red-skins, that we lost an opportunity of the red devils never far from us. Do you paying off old scores, when there was no know, young man, how I sometimes got my witness at hand to bring us into trouble.” venison?” The colonies and afterwards the States “ I suppose you hunted and shot the usually enjoyed almost complete exemption deer,” said the traveler. from the heaviest burden upon the “Not always, youngster” answered the old resources of nations. The greatest outlay man with a glance at once cunning and a government usually has to make is fierce. “More than once, while hunting in expended on those elaborate preparations the woods, I have heard the crack of a necessary to secure the country against rifle; and creeping stealthily that way the ambition and hostility of near and have come upon a redskin ripping up a fine powerful neighbours. Armies and fleets, buck or doe, which he had killed when I fortresses and arsenals, stored with heard the shot.” costly materials of war, are usually the “He had the advantage of you,” said the greedy devourers of a nation’s revenues. traveller; “being before hand with you in But the English colonies felt little of the sport.” this burden. The task and cost of “Not so!” said the old frontiersman, “I defending them fell chiefly on the mother had the advantage of him.” country. And when at length they became states, and had worked their way through “How so? What did you do?” the struggle for independence, they found “ I looked carefully around, and listened themselves without any strong neighbour on for a while; and if the signs showed that the same continent with them, nor in the he was a single hunter, with no companions least danger of invasion; and thus under near — “ no necessity to expend much in keeping up “What then?” exclaimed the traveller. a large military force. For eighty years [16] “I shot the Indian, and took the after l78l the permanent military and deer.” naval force of the United States, when “ You did! That was very like murder. compared with that of other countries, But of course it was in time of war.” was, or seemed, ridiculously small for “ Murder!” said the old man scornfully. their resources. The country enjoyed a “We did not give it that name on the unique exemption from that heavy burden frontier. Some people may call it so now. with which most nations were compelled to I can not remember whether there was war saddle themselves. But the chief and most obvious source breadth of the continent. The American of prosperity to the colonists and to farmer, moving steadily westward for their descendants for several generations, generations, has been sowing his seed in [17] securing to them immense success in the virgin soil enriched by centuries of their agricultural enterprises, sprang vegetation perishing on and manuring the from the fact that they were cultivating spot in which it grew. He has been like a virgin soil. dairy-man who could churn a vast quantity If we could trace the history of of butter, having an unlimited amount of agriculture from the first invention of cream to skim. the plough, we would be apt to find that We here remark that it is curious to the unfailing process, in every land, has trace, through certain returns as to been to wear out the field to barrenness nativities found in the United States by successive croppings, then to clear a census for 1850, how the natives of new field and go through the same routine different states on the Atlantic coast, in for extracting from it all that could be migrating westward, generally followed the turned into profit. Not until the whole parallels of latitude of their old homes, of his land had been robbed of its and that where, in the South, they in some fertility did any farmer think of using cases varied from it, their course [18] means and labour to recuperate the soil. oftener tended to the North than to the But the colonist in America, and his South. Doubtless they were guided by a descendants for generations, seldom felt natural craving for a cooler climate, more themselves to be reduced to this laborious congenial to people of the Caucasian race and irksome necessity. Virgin soil and than that in which they had been located. fertile land seemed to be here without Could we count, weigh, and measure all limit. And if, in a generation or two, the vast and unique advantages accumulated the once fertile fields in his upon the people of these states beyond neighbourhood proved to be exhausted, the those of other countries, we would not farmer had only to move westward, wonder at the rapid flood of prosperity that poured in upon them, and on which, “To fresh woods and pastures new.” for a time, they swam so buoyantly; nor that multitudes of the needy and the This craving of the farmer for fresh malcontent in the populous countries of and fertile soil gave quite as powerful an western Europe turned their faces towards impulse, as the enterprising and energetic it, as the Israelites to the promised character of the people, to the rapid land. extension of settlements across the whole Up to this point these new communities can claim little merit beyond that of the youthful heir who has just come into an immense and unencumbered estate, which he has not yet had time either to improve or to ruin. CHAPTER III.
How Long Was this Singular Prosperity to Last?
Was its permanence secured by the operation of permanent causes? Were there no evil agencies of any kind at work sapping its foundations? We will search them out and try to arrange them in their natural order. We have seen that the people of these English settlements on the Atlantic coast, while they continued colonies, and after they became States, enjoyed the inestimable blessing of living under governments which were efficient and yet not burdensome. They aimed at nothing more than to administer justice among the people, and to protect them against foreign enemies. And this is all that any people need demand of any government under which they live. Everything else the people, either as individuals, or through voluntary associations, can do better for themselves. Under political institutions, which trammelled neither their occupations nor their movements, the people throve and spread so rapidly, that there soon sprang up, far west of the States on the coast, a need for the organization of new local the United States,” more precise in terms governments, like those of the States from and more stringent in conditions, which which this swelling tide of emigrants had created, under the form of a federal issued. government, a common agent for each and For that debateable land on which the all the States for certain specified long and bloody skirmish was ever being purposes. The States endowed this common fought between the native red man and the agent with certain specified powers and intruding white adventures — this moving with no others; for the powers not granted frontier was withdrawing into the far were expressly reserved to the individual west, while behind it the wilderness was States. A year or two elapsed after this becoming, step by step, a settled and treaty came into operation between most of cultivated [20] country; bearing the marks the states, before all acceded to it. and yielding the products of civilized The purposes to be served by this agent industry, the fruits of which are eagerly of all the States, and which they named sought after in the markets of the “The Government of the United States,” commercial world. were essentially these: To secure the But in the meanwhile an unforeseen friendly union and intercourse between the change was taking place in the nature and states, and the people of the States; and aims of government throughout the country. to present them as one united body, in And this change, at first slow in peace and in war, to all foreign powers. movement, proceeded with ever accelerating [21] The States however did not cease steps, which we must trace out briefly. to be each a sovereign body politic within The better to carry on the war begun in its own limits, in all matters not 1776 for the establishment of their expressly delegated to the common agent. independence of the mother country, the The forming of the Union did not generate thirteen colonies had united themselves an allegiance to a government or to a into a confederacy by a treaty called “The country. Each citizen of each State owed Articles of Confederation,” which by allegiance to his own State. On the express agreement were to be perpetual. formation of the Union, at first under the They continued united under this treaty “Articles of Confederation,” afterwards through the greater part of the war, and under the “Constitution of the United seven years after. Becoming then States,” he, as well as his State, assumed dissatisfied with this treaty, the States, a new obligation: that of observing in acting as States, set aside “The Articles good faith the terms of the treaty of of Confederation,” which were to have been Union. Not even the officials of the new perpetual, and made with each other government ever took any oath of another treaty called “The Constitution of allegiance to it, as a government, or to the country within its jurisdiction. The franchise, as a voter, or hold office, or only oath taken was, to observe faithfully serve as a juror in the courts of the the terms of the treaty of union between State. the States. They vowed fidelity to the Under the terms of the treaty of Union “Constitution.” As to the perpetuity of the States had delegated to their common the Union, nothing is expressly said of it agent, the Federal government, exclusive in the “Constitution of the United jurisdiction over certain matters; among States.” Doubtless it was meant to be as which were: “To define and punish piracies perpetual as the good faith in observing and felonies on the high seas,” — and the conditions on which the States had “Offences against the law of nations,” — entered into the Union, and no longer. To “Counterfeiting the securities and coin of assume that the parties that made the the United States,” — and “Offences compact of union on certain specified against the post office, etc.” But, with conditions, meant these conditions should these exceptions and a few others, it was be temporary, but the union based upon to the government of their respective them perpetual — that gross and persistent States that the people looked for the violation of the terms of the agreement, punishment of all those offences, whether by some parties to it, would not release against persons, property, or society, the others from their obligation — would which governments find it necessary to be putting the most absurd and illogical punish. Omitting the offences specially construction on the contract. excepted above, all crimes committed in a The people of each State looked to State were tried by the sovereign their own State government for the authority of the State, under its own protection of their personal, social, and laws, in its own courts, and before a jury proprietary rights. The laws of the State of its citizens. If a man is hanged for a regulated all social relations, those of capital crime, it is the State that hangs husband and wife, parent and child, master him. Should the case call for the and servant, marriage, inheritance, exercise of the pardoning power, the guardianship; and all proprietary rights, governor of the State pardons him. But as title to land, and to other property, should the governor refuse, and the contracts, and in general all those President of the United States assume to questions as to rights and [22] wrongs, grant him a pardon, the convict would be for the decision of which men appeal to hanged even with such a pardon in his courts of law and equity. The law of the hand. It would be mere waste paper. The State fixed the status of individuals in civil jurisdiction of the state courts was the state, such as the qualifications as broad as the criminal. It was not to necessary before a man can exercise the relieve themselves of their jurisdiction as sovereign States that they contracted state government. In connection with the with each other for the creation, for case of these wild territories, the certain specified purposes, of a common Federal government was charged with agent, now known as the “Government of the dealing with the Indian tribes; a United States.” troublesome duty, and one which the agents Such was the theory of that complex of the government soon learned how to make political organization consisting of the very costly to the government, and very governments of the individual States, and profitable to themselves. the government of the States united with To enable the Federal government to each other. [23] As we have already said, fulfil these and some other duties, power the individual States levied the very had been granted to it “To lay and collect moderate revenues, needed for the support taxes, duties, imposts, and excises,” and of their governments, chiefly by direct that without any limitation except that taxes. For instance: the little state of “All duties, imposts, and excises shall be South Carolina, with a population in 1850 uniform throughout the United States.” of 668,500 of which 385,000 were Negro Being thus furnished with the means of slaves, for several years before and after feeding itself, this child of the States that time expended annually less than grew and grew, and its appetite for power $400,000 for the support of all the and appropriation grew with what it fed departments of its government; and this on, until it was able to eat up its proved enough to secure the efficient parents; and it has already eaten up a administration of the law, and preserve good many of them — by converting them good order in the State. We believe that into conquered provinces. this is but a fair sample of the economy [24] The truth is that the “Government observed in the expenditures of most of of the United States” was the offspring of the States. a stupid and shortsighted treaty between But their common agent, the government the several States. Being entrusted with of the United States, had some costly the power of unlimited taxation it duties to perform, for instance; those of gradually, yet rapidly and naturally, providing the means of defence against tended towards the usurpation of powers foreign enemies, and the temporary care not granted to it, to the overthrow of the and government of the large public essential rights of each State, and to a territories outside of the borders of the total change in the character and States, until, by the immigration and operative effects of government on the permanent settlements made, sufficient and confederation. This unexpected result suitable portions of this territory had tends to prove that governments are not become populous enough to support each a pieces of mechanism, that can be ordered and obtained according to contract with State governments; for their expenditures specifications; but germinate, grow, and were small and economical, and their perish, like other productions of nature; patronage limited in proportion. The and that some kinds of this natural States were each practically under bond to production, called government, are more use economy in raising and disbursing short-lived than others. their revenues; for high taxes in any one The power of levying taxes, and of State would have driven both population appropriating the proceeds, is the power and capital across its borders into the to govern. No other political right or neighbouring states. combination of rights, can long resist it. A large region of country is seldom or The Federal government, in order to fulfil perhaps never homogeneous. Climate, the duties for which it was created: geographic features, and other causes had namely, to raise and support armies; to marked out certain differences between the provide and maintain a navy; to establish Northern and the Southern States; and the and maintain courts for the trial of cases distinction in character between them grew arising out of matters placed within its more manifest as years rolled on. jurisdiction, and for some other duties From the first planting of the with which it was charged — this Federal colonies, the many convenient ports, the government needed a revenue larger than comparative barrenness of the soil, and the united revenues needed by all the abundance of timber in New England and the individual States. From the first adjacent regions, directed the attention existence of this government it proceeded of the colonists there to ship-building, to raise its revenue chiefly by duties and maritime affairs and the fisheries. They imposts on imported foreign goods, an also carried on a large trade in peltry indirect mode of taxing people, at which and lumber. While the people of the they are the less apt to grumble, as no Northern colonies did not neglect to avail man sees how much he pays of this indirect themselves of what fertile soil was at tax. Having now occasion to employ a hand, they early acquired the habits and large number of persons in various characteristics of a trading, seafaring, official capacities, the new government is and, to some extent, of a manufacturing at once in possession of a large and wide- people. spread patronage, which the politicians in But the climate and soil of the more office know how to use, and to increase Southern colonies being found to be for their own purposes. This soon gave peculiarly adapted to the production of the Federal [25] government an influence agricultural staples in great demand in over self-seeking individuals, of every commerce, these colonies became almost class, vastly greater than that of all the altogether agricultural communities; and the nature of their exports led to their Federal government early laid the having far more intercourse with the foundation of what was afterwards called mother country than with their Northern “the tariff system for the protection of neighbours. The revolution, which changed American industry” that is of their own them from colonies into States, did not occupations and enterprises in the North. change their interests and pursuits. But Some abuses in taxation and finance it revolutionized their political originated almost at the birth of the connections. Their Northern confederates, government. The people of New England seeing them in the enjoyment [26] of great have long shown great talents and no profits from the foreign demand for their scruples in taking care of their own peculiar products, set their wits to work interests at other people’s cost; and the to devise the means of diverting as much inhabitants of the New England coast, as possible of the proceeds of Southern being much occupied in the fisheries of crops to themselves in the North. Their the North Atlantic, they had the art to ingenuity, perseverance, artful persuade the Federal government that these combinations, and utter want of scruple, fisheries were very important to the whole made them successful in time, and for a country, not merely in supplying it with long time. salted fish, but as a nursery for seamen; Yet the Federal government conducted without whom [27] the confederation could its affairs with considerable economy for never become a great naval power. The some time, except perhaps during one short government was induced to give a bounty of war. During the Presidency of John Quincy so much per ton on all the vessels fitted Adams, for instance (from 1825 to 1829) out for the fisheries. For fifty years or the yearly expenditure of the government so, every man in the United States was little exceeded $13,000,000; vastly more taxed to pay part of the price of his indeed than that of all the state salted fish before it was caught, and governments, but a mere trifle compared whether he wanted it or not, in order to with its own expenditure of late years. pay this bounty to the New England fishing Yet long before that date, the tendency craft, many of which were fitted out to to pervert taxation from its legitimate catch, not so much the fish, as the object, the raising of revenue for the bounty. support of the government, to the But this was not the usual mode in fraudulent aim of making profitable which the Federal government undertook to private pursuits in particular parts of make profitable the occupations and the confederacy, was plainly manifest. enterprises of particular classes of the Under the influence of the people of the people, and of particular parts of the Northern and less agricultural states, the country, at the cost of others. The industry of the Southern States was they might build up a profitable business directed, perhaps beyond even the growing for themselves; that although nature might of the food needed at home, to the have given to particular countries greater cultivation of certain crops which found facilities for the production of certain their chief and best markets in foreign commodities, than it has given to their countries. The most profitable use to own, that advantage enjoyed by foreigners which the Southern agriculturist could might be more than counterbalanced by apply his land, labour, and skill, was obstructing the importation of their growing these crops in such demand abroad. products. The government was raising In payment for these crops exported, a nine-tenths of the revenue necessary for great amount of foreign goods came into its support by duties on imported goods. the country; for the commodities sent out Some enterprising Northern men had the art of the country must be paid for by those to induce it to go further, and to impose that are brought into it. They cannot be so high a duty on some particular articles paid for in any other way. Commerce is as greatly to raise the price, and make it based upon the exchange of commodities; cheaper to manufacture them at home, than money is only the means of facilitating, to import them from abroad. The first and measuring the rate of that exchange. articles so taxed were well chosen as the From these remarks may be estimated the beginning of this system of government interest the people of the South had in protection; for the materials were foreign trade. So far as foreign produced in abundance in the country. A commodities came into the country to pay duty of 30 per cent. ad valorem (according for southern crops, these commodities, or to value) was imposed on all imported hats the proceeds of them when sold, belonged and shoes, and soon none but Yankee made to Southern men. The Southern farmer and hats could be bought; but a good hat cost the foreign manufacturer drove, through nine or ten dollars, and shoes and boots intermediate agents, a profitable trade rose in proportion. The people of the with each other, in exchanging the Northern states soon found out that there proceeds of their industry and capital. were a number of other articles which they What [28] a man has honestly obtained he could make to great profit, if the has a right to exchange with any other man government would only shut out the cheaper for his honest acquisitions. and better foreign articles, by laying a The productions of the Northern States heavy duty on them. Thus the manufacture were very far from being in equal demand of silken goods has been forced into a abroad. But many people in the North sort of hot house existence in the United bethought them that if they could shut out States, where no silk is produced, by the rivalry of the foreign manufacturer laying a duty of 60 per cent. on foreign silks. For the Northern States having a in this dilemma: If he supplied his wants majority of votes in the Congress of the by buying foreign goods, the price was United States, and their [29] people being raised by an exorbitant duty paid to the nearly all of them eager to embark in some government. If he bought Northern goods manufacturing speculation, well protected he paid an exorbitant price to the by high duties against foreign manufacturer. The government by its competition, it gradually came to pass fiscal legislation aimed at compelling the that there were few articles that could he South to purchase the products of the made in the country at any cost but that a North at a high price, and to sell to the high impost was laid on the similar North the products of its industry at a foreign articles, which would have low price. It made the South tributary to undersold them in the same market. the North. The object of this system of imposts Nothing could exceed Yankee greediness was to compel the agriculturists, and more to appropriate the [30] proceeds of the especially those in the South, to buy from industry of other people. But for that Northern manufacturers, by discouraging, clause in the constitution declaring that and even preventing the importation of “No tax or duty shall be laid on articles foreign goods. And it was in a great exported from any State” the manufacturers measure successful, but is no longer would have procured a duty to be laid on profitable. It built up a vast all raw cotton exported, in order that the manufacturing interest in the North, not crop of the South should not be sold to one-fourth of which would have come into foreigners until it had gone through the existence in the face of foreign processes of manufacture in the Northern competition, and which now even protection cotton factories. fails to make prosperous. It drained the Has the reader ever considered what is South of its wealth in two ways: It the origin and true nature of that offence compelled the Southern man to pay far more which is called smuggling? Stealing, and for every manufactured article than the robbery, and the destruction of your natural price in the cheaper and better neighbour’s property, and a multitude of market; and it lowered the price of other acts, are crimes in their very Southern produce by impairing the nature, and were criminal before any human foreigner’s means of paying for it. It law undertook to punish them. can be shown that when the duties on But there is in nature no such offence foreign goods were raised, the price of as smuggling. An important ingredient in Southern produce fell, and that when these your natural liberty is the right to carry duties were lowered the price of Southern the proceeds of your industry, or any part produce rose. The Southern man was placed of your portable property, to the best market you can find for it; and, when you imports become a very costly mode of have exchanged it for other commodities, raising revenue, for it requires a very you have naturally an equal right to carry costly apparatus for collecting them; the your new acquisitions home with you. They government having to keep a multitude of are as much yours as that was, which you well-paid agents on the frontiers, and gave for them. These are the natural and even in the interior of the country, in justifiable acts out of which governments order to watch against and detect this have manufactured the offence of artificial crime, which its own vicious smuggling. They create the crime by legislation has engendered. legislation; they provide for its It is true that, even under a system of punishment by further legislation. exorbitant duties, respectable people do It is true that, as every man needs the not bring their goods into the country protection of a government, so each man without paying the imports; not because it may be called upon to contribute, is wrong to do so; but because the according to his means, to the support of government has so contrived it, that it that government; and this contribution may cannot be done without recourse to deceit, be levied on his property in transitu (in trickery, bribery, and false swearing. transit). The benefit derived from the High duties have everywhere and always protection afforded by the government proved a most effectual means of utterly being very much in proportion with the demoralizing a people. amount of property a man has needing Yet this mode of raising revenue, in protection, this amount affords no unfair preference to others, is in high favour rate for the apportionment of taxes. Nor with most governments, for three dishonest will men run the risks attending the reasons: It conceals from the consumers of smuggling of their [31] goods into the imported articles how much they pay in country, to avoid paying on them a taxes, and thus prevents their grumbling reasonable, that is, an equable tax, such at the exactions of the government. It as they pay on their houses, farms, and also enables the administration to buy up other property. the support of certain classes of Levying duties on imported goods is a producers at home, by favouring their cheap and convenient mode of raising industries at the cost of other people. revenue, as long as the duties are low, It moreover widens the patronage of those and not disproportioned to other taxes. in power, by affording them occasion to But when the duties are so high as to give profitable employment to a multitude stimulate smuggling, that alone is proof of officials, a whole [32] army of custom that the burden of taxation is unequally house officers, the services of few of and unjustly distributed. High duties on whom would be needed under a more equal of a large revenue by the government was and just system of taxation. of vital interest, for they profited by The United States affords a striking its expenditures. They were opposed to example of these abuses. The people of duties so high as to cut off revenue from the Northern States, having a majority of the government, while affording protection the votes in Congress, they had, when to the manufacturer, by shutting out the united among themselves, the control of goods of his foreign competitor. The the government, and sought to use it to representatives of the Southern States, by their exclusive profit. In raising a combining with this class of plunderers, revenue for the government, they, by the [33] were more than once enabled to foil ingenious arrangements of their tariff the measures of that worse class of acts, threw the burden of taxation on the plunderers, who advocated protective South. In expending that revenue they duties so high as to shut out foreign bestowed a benefit on the North. They goods. lowered the value of Southern produce by On one occasion, about 1840, the impairing the foreigner’s means of paying government raised so much more revenue by for it; and they raised the price of its tariff than it could find immediate Northern manufactures by shutting out the use for, that it distributed several competition of foreign goods. They used millions among the States, in order to get the whole machinery of government as if it rid of it — thus bribing them with their had been designed for impoverishing the own money. They never repeated this South and enriching the North. error, but invented new ways of expending This method of plundering the South met any surplus. The natural remedy, in this with earnest protest and strenuous anomalous case, would have been to reduce opposition from that quarter; and the the taxes; for it proved that more money tariffs for revenue and protection had been taken from the people, or from underwent many fluctuations. The fact is, some of them, than was necessary for that there is an essential incompatibility support of the government. But this did between the two objects of revenue and not suit the Northern majority who protection. Just so far as a duty governed the country and plundered the protects home manufactures, it fails to South. To them taxation was a blessing. yield any revenue; for it keeps out The greater the revenue raised, the more foreign goods; and just so far as a duty was spent among themselves; for they took yields a revenue from foreign goods good care that as little as possible of imported, it fails to afford protection to government money should be expended in the the home manufacturer. There were many South. The North measured the value of people at the North, to whom the raising the Union by the amount of tribute it could draw from the South, in revenue paid American railroads, canals, manufacturing to the government, and in the profits of and mining corporations, city the Northern manufacturers while protected improvements, and a thousand other from foreign competition. The South was enterprises, flowed in a few years into learning to doubt the value of a Union, the country, and almost exclusively into that subjected it to such a continual the Northern States. What country will drain on the proceeds of their property not thrive, or seem to thrive, as long as and industry, merely in order to fill the several hundred millions of dollars more pockets of their confederates. In 1859 than its people earn, are annually poured the revenue of the United States exceeded into its lap? More especially if it can, $80,000,000, nineteen-twentieths of which after a time, stop paying even the was raised by duties on foreign goods; and interest of a great part of its far the greater part of this, through the borrowings. peculiar arrangements of the tariff, was The object of the “American System for paid by the South; which also paid much the protection of industry” was simply to more than $80,000,000 in excess of the make the people of the Southern States, as natural price, on the goods bought from far as possible, the tax-payers, those of Northern manufacturers, who were protected the Northern States the receivers and from foreign rivalry. Northern industry enjoyers of the proceeds of taxation. and enterprise were made profitable by This system of taxation was introduced [34] draining off the profits of the early and gradually, under many cunning industry and enterprise of the South. pleas and devices, at a time when the true The North throve. Of $80,000,000 of principles of political economy were yearly government revenue raised chiefly little understood even by the best on the South, four fifths was expended in informed men of the country. But it was the North. Of more than $80,000,000 firmly established and openly avowed as perhaps double that amount, of soon as the people of the Northern States, artificially contrived yearly profits to by their numerical superiority, had protected Northern manufacturers, the acquired the control of the government whole was expended in the North. From the created by the States for the maintenance cheapened price of Southern produce, of the rights of all the States on a artificially lowered by the protective footing [35] of perfect equality. For tariff which obstructed foreign trade, a forty years previous to the war of saving of $60,000,000, perhaps Secession the aim and the effect of the $80,000,000, accrued to the North. An policy of this common federal government, unknown amount, certainly $2,000,000,000, under the control of the Northern borrowed in Europe, to be invested in majority, was to convert the Southern States into tributary provinces. Of course this policy was bitterly denounced and strenuously opposed by the representatives in Congress from the South, and by the governments of most of the Southern States. Persistence in it seemed at times to threaten the continuance of the Union. But when the indignation in the South rose to a dangerous point, the politicians of the North combining with some from the South, had the art to make some temporary compromise, such as a reduction and modification of tariff, which allayed the excitement. The truth is that indirect taxation and its effects are such hidden and insidious things, that they are not readily traced at a glance. It is impossible to make the great body of the people of any country see and understand the ultimate effects of any chain of causes made up of many links. You can swindle and plunder them to any extent, so that you do it indirectly, adroitly, and under plausible excuses. Only the most intelligent classes of the people in the South could be made to understand fully, how thoroughly and to what extent they were robbed by their sworn confederates. CHAPTER IV.
The Negro Question.
There was however another matter than taxation, tariffs, and the protection of industry, in meddling with which these Northern members of the Federal Union could not conceal their hostility to the South, and their utter want of faith in dealing with the treaty which bound the States to each other, and this leads us to a topic which might fill many pages. A shallow philosophy prevailed in the last century, and is not quite exploded in this, which taught that civilization and barbarism, culture and ignorance, made all the difference between peoples; that the characteristics distinguishing different families, tribes, nations, and races of men originated solely in the conditions under which they had lived. They may have so originated; but in times so remote, and under the influence of causes so powerful, and operating so long, that the effects have moulded the physical and mental constitutions of different races; and to us these differences are, practically, permanent. He who travels over the earth will find very different races of men distributed over its surface; and he who travels over the records of the past will find that very different characteristics and careers have distinguished these races from each must deal with facts better established, other. Some have carried their social and and generally admitted to be true. political organization, and their We believe that authentic history intellectual attainments to very high affords no proofs that any human race or points, yet always with some marked shades tribe, while continuing to occupy the same of difference [37] from those who rivalled country, ever changed those physical and them. Others have attained only to a mental characteristics which distinguished lower grade of cultivation. Many races them from other races, except so far as have never originated a civilization of they changed their races by mingling their their own, and with difficulty received blood with that of strangers to it. Nor and retained that communicated to, or is there distinct evidence of such changes forced upon them by others. Some have occurring even when such a race or tribe rapidly perished before the civilization changed its country. From change of thrust upon them. The natives of some of condition they may deteriorate, improve, the Islands in the Pacific ocean, and or die out; but we have no proof that [38] particularly the Maoris of New Zealand the characteristic marks, indicating the seem to be of this class. The North- race from which they sprang, will not American Indian, unless you include the cling to them to the last. We have the Mexican, is not likely to survive as an instance of one race, at least, the Jews, unmixed race. And there are indications and probably another, the gipsies, to in history that mixed races do not substantiate this supposition; for both prosper, and in some cases are apt to die have kept themselves pretty much apart out. from mixture with other races; and we have In short the ascertained facts in the no instance of an unmixed race to prove to history of mankind indicate, not that the contrary. Institutions originate races, but that Could we bring back to life a dozen Races originate institutions. Anglo-Saxon boys seven years of age, We know nothing of the origin or causes drowned or otherwise cut off in health in of these differences of race; although the days of King Alfred; could we further many persons have laboured to trace them send them to a school in the most Anglo- out. Some naturalists have gone so far in Saxon county in England; if at the end of their speculations as to trace the origin seven years or any longer period Messrs. of one class of beings of the highest Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall were sent to organization to their development from examine them in mind and body, we have no others of inferior types. We do not grounds for supposing that this choice object to their amusing themselves and committee could distinguish them among other people with these inquiries. But we their companions, through any marks of change in the race during the thousand offspring from two very different races of years which separate the births of King men tend strongly to die out, from moral Alfred’s boys from the others. as well as physical causes. Geological research affords proof of It would seem to us, were we to hazard the existence of different human races an opinion on the matter, that it would be many thousand years ago. It affords proof better that each country should be that some human races have, in particular occupied by people of one race, to the regions, been supplanted by others. But exclusion of others, and that this race it affords no indication that one race has should be the one best suited to the been changed into another. The supplanted climate. Wherever a country is peopled by race was partly extirpated, partly driven one of the higher races, we would suppose out of that region, but it was neither a it highly injurious, and ultimately changed nor a lost type of humanity, for deteriorating to them, to introduce an we find its representatives living inferior race among them. But the elsewhere at this day; and, on farther existence of different races in the same research, that higher type of man, into country occurs so often, that this would which the supplanted race was supposed to almost seem to be the order of nature. have been improved, is now proved to have After these preliminary remarks we will been in existence thousands of years enter more closely on the subject on hand. before the supplanting of the other race. “The paradise of vegetation, a rich soil The geologist of the far future, when the with a hot climate, is the grave of human North-American tribes shall have utterly life.” It is certainly so to the died out, on finding the skeleton of the Caucasian race. Whenever detachments of red man in one stratum, and that of the this race have penetrated into tropical, white man in another stratum over- [39] or even sub-tropical regions, as they lying the former, will not make the often do, they have found themselves in blunder of inferring that the red race had climates unfavourable to their health, and been developed into the Teuton or the to the full exercise of their native Celt. energies. Nowhere in the old or new A multitude of facts well known to us world, nearer to the Equator than latitude show that the marks which distinguish 35, can any considerable population of the human races are very durable; and no facts Caucasian race be found, which can undergo known to us indicate that they may not be, field work and other out of door labours, in historical experience, permanent. It equal to those of the peasantry in is particularly difficult to exclude, in England, France, and Germany. Under such such inquiries, the effects of mixture of habitual exertions and exposure they would blood; but some facts indicate that the die out in a generation or [40] two. If wrested from the conquered people. Then there are any exceptions to this, which we mining for that yet in the bowels of the doubt, they will be found in mountain earth became the most engrossing pursuit regions, where high elevation counteracts of the colonists. This demanded irksome low latitude, and on a poor soil, yielding and exhausting labour, fatal to the whites little produce, and no malaria from summer in this climate; and that labour was heats. exacted from the natives, many of whom the But the Caucasian, venturing into or conquerors made their slaves. near the tropics, has generally found The effects of this change in their himself surrounded by a population of a condition was soon seen in the island of different race from himself, with a San Domingo. The natives there were a physical constitution far better adapted delicate people, and Las Casas, the noted to the climate in which the two races now Spanish priest, was [41] shocked on meet. Yet under this disadvantage, he has witnessing their sufferings. He saw that seldom failed so to use his superiority in they were dying out under the toils and intellect, knowledge, and warlike privations imposed upon them by their qualities, as not to avail himself of the conquerors who, turning miners and gold hardihood and industry of the inferior hunters, became the hardest of races around him, establishing in his new taskmasters. In fact no representative of country a polity, of which he made himself this conquered people has been living the head. If the subordinate population within two centuries. Las Casas, a man of was of a race given to provident industry, rank and influence, returning to Spain, they became subjects merely; but if made strenuous efforts at court for the constitutionally given to listless and relief of the Indians from the slavery and improvident indolence, he made them his toils which were exterminating the race. slaves, and supplied their want of The better to effect this he urged that provident and energetic will from his own Negroes should be sent out to relieve the stock of both of these qualities. Indians from the labours so fatal to them. The Spaniards, a branch of this Other priests in New Spain urged the same Caucasian stock, were the earliest measure. But Las Casas is said to have European colonists in America. They, too, regretted, later in life, the part he took were the most rapid conquerors there. The in this matter. gold they found in the hands of the Modern philanthropists ridicule as well natives of San Domingo and Mexico excited as denounce the blundering zeal of Las their cupidity to the highest pitch. Casas in the cause of humanity. It could Their greed after the precious metals soon devise no better mode of relieving one exhausted the supply which could be oppressed race than the transfer of their burden to the shoulders of another. But and entered zealously into the African the views and conduct of this Spanish slave trade under the special license and priest were not quite so absurd as they patronage of the government. Negro slaves imagine them to be. He looked upon it not were brought into and held in all the so much as an enslaving of the Negro, as a English colonies on the Atlantic coast, changing of his master. He may well have and this continued long after these learned from the Portuguese settlements on colonies became states. the coast of Africa, that the greater part The African slave trade became a source of the Negroes were, perhaps always had of so much profit to the English merchants been, slaves to men of their own colour. and ship-owners, that when some of the He certainly knew that many of them were colonies wished to limit it, on account of slaves among the Moors on the coast just the supposed danger in introducing such a opposite to Spain. He even had crowd of savages into the new settlements, opportunities of making himself familiar with another and hostile race of savages with Negroes and Negro slavery in the close on their borders, the government in South of Spain and Portugal. Both the England overruled the objections of the race and their condition were open to colonial authorities, and kept the ports observation. He saw the Negro usually freely open to the importation. This cheerful, often noisily so, seemingly trade was a source of great profit to some content in servitude if not unusually English cities, as Bristol and others. harsh and exacting; readily admitting the The commercial growth of Liverpool, we white man’s superiority, and by no means have heard, originated with it; and broken down by the condition in which he Glasgow shared in its gains. and most of his race were born, lived, and But it was nowhere more zealously, died; and Las Casas may [42] naturally profitably and longer followed up than by have contrasted the different effects of the merchants and shipowners of the New servitude on the Negro and on the Indian England ports. Even Puritan divines in of San Domingo. But he lived long enough New England, among them the famous to see that the labour of the Negro would Jonathan Edwards, are said to have fail to preserve the Indian race. embarked their money in this trade. And The Spaniards introduced Negro slaves when at length in accordance with an into all their American colonies, in which article, agreed upon by the States, and they could make them useful. The inserted in the Constitution of the United Portuguese followed, if indeed they had States, the ports were about to be closed not set this example in Brazil and to the African slave trade in 1808, a [43] elsewhere. A century or so later the great temporary impulse was given to the English had founded colonies in America, importation of Negroes. Virginia had already closed her ports to the slavers. So John Brown lost his little Indian We can only quote the following published boys. statement from memory. Charleston, South Carolina, being the most convenient port But these speculations in young Indians through which could be supplied the great usually ended more successfully in their demand for Negroes in the newly settled being shipped to the West Indies, to be territories in the South-west; out of more made useful slaves of there, if that could than two hundred slave-ships that entered be done. that port in 1806-7, far the greater There are marked differences of number, probably three-fourths, hailed character, and points of contrast between from Newport, Boston, Salem, and other New the North American Indian and the Negro England towns. race. The Indian, grave, somewhat silent, Negro slaves imported from Africa, and undemonstrative [44] in manner, and their offspring born in America, continued reserved in temper, shuns promiscuous to be sold, bought and held in almost intercourse, is prone to a wild and free every State that had been one of those life; he does not readily acknowledge colonies. But climate and the physical another’s superiority, and pines and dies constitution of the Negro were yet to out when reduced to servitude. settle his destination and habitat, when The noisy, chattering Negro loves the thus transferred from Africa to another excitement of a crowd, is readily continent. domesticated, if not easily civilized, and The Spaniards in their greedy search thrives and multiplies in subordination to after gold tried to make useful slaves of other and higher races. the natives of San Domingo, and failed. The history of the Negro in and out of The Puritans of New England, besides Africa leads to these conclusions: — There importing Negroes from Africa, added to never has originated among an unmixed their chattels by kidnapping young Negro population any condition of society Indians, and making slaves of them. But that approximated to civilization. they found them not easily trained to When civilization has been introduced labour, and hard to keep, being much given among them, it is purely imitative, and to running away. We have seen somewhere they have not been able to retain it when this doggerel dating, it is likely, from left to themselves. those times: — Although the Negro race have shown a strong tendency to gather around centres John Brown had two little Indian boys. of population, there never has existed a One ran away, and the other would not Negro polity that rose above the stay, organization of a barbarous tribe. No example can be found of a community The value of the Negro’s labour, which it of free Negroes exercising the ordinary needs close superintendence to get, falls providence and industry common to most from day to day, until it will not pay for other races. his maintenance. This was the result that In the communities in Central Africa, put an end to Negro slavery in the which have progressed so far as to Northern States. Yankee traders and maintain themselves by tilling the soil, shipowners were as busy as ever buying society is organized on the basis of slaves on the coast of Africa, and selling master and slave. them in Southern and West Indian ports. While the history of mankind is full of But there was another branch of the same accounts of the spontaneous migrations of trade. Negro slaves being found to be a Teutons, Celts, Moguls, Arabs, and other source of little profit in the North, the races, the genuine Negro never left his younger and more saleable of those born original country but as a slave. and bred there were gradually sent off to The Negroes owe their possession of a the South. It was not until they had large part of middle and western Africa gotten rid of most of the marketable part solely to the climate, which is generally of this peculiar merchandise, that the and speedily fatal to people of most other people of the Northern States, one after races. another, abolished slavery. Then they However much the Negro may be changed washed their hands and purged their and improved in [45] the course of some consciences of all participation in what generations by being transferred to they now called an outrage against the another climate and a civilized community, inalienable rights of man. he remains as obviously a Negro in mind But in the States lying further South and body as his ancestors were. the descendants of the British colonists Free Negroes living remote from the who had settled there found themselves in tropics die out in a few generations. a very different position from their Negro slaves similarly situated did not Northern confederates. die out so fast. Their country was sub-tropical, and, To these remarks we will add that except in and near the mountains, wherever wherever the climate is such that the the soil was fertile, the summer heat white man can perform all necessary out- engendered malaria, noxious to the health, of-door labours without sacrificing his often fatal to the [46] lives of the health, the Negro rapidly and completely whites, especially when fatigued with loses his value as a labourer, as the labour, exhausted by fasting, or exposed country fills up with a new and to the dews of night. The more fertile industrious population of a superior race. the soil, the more fatal the climate to the white man; while the Negro seemed to inmates of the gaols, poorhouses, defy its evil influences, labouring, hospitals, and lunatic asylums, in the thriving, and multiplying in localities, Northern States. The census, with the where the whites, without care in avoiding reports on crime, pauperism, disease, and exposure, and in the choice of the place insanity, exhibit these facts in the where they slept, ran great risk of dying clearest light. out. Even in the more barren and Another element was rapidly flowing therefore healthier parts of the country, into the country to widen the difference white labourers in the field, under the between the Northern and Southern [47] oppression of the long and hot summers, States. The climate of the former, cannot work with half the energy and although one of extremes, is one in which persistence of the labourer in Western the white man can labour to some Europe. advantage, although not as well as in that Thus the States that form the Federal of the British Islands. Western Europe Union were divided by geographical was overflowing with discontented position, climate, and pursuits, into two labourers, and malcontents who were not distinct groups, differing in character labourers; and multitudes came to America. from each other. Moreover there had been A large proportion of these new-comers to from the first settling of the country the land of liberty, where many of them some marked differences in the character thought themselves at liberty to do of the colonists. New England had been whatever seemed good in their own eyes, settled chiefly by mal-contents against were of very undesirable characters. They the English government and the Church of came with their heads stuffed full of England. The same might be said of some false notions on political, economical, other colonies; but both the English social, and moral questions of every kind, government and church had many zealous among which was prominent a great contempt adherents among the colonists in Virginia for vested rights. and those south of it. But latterly the The government received this crowd of most obvious distinction between the South emigrants with open arms. They all, and the North was the presence in the without distinction, at the end of a few former of a large, orderly, and fast years, might become citizens and voters, multiplying population of Negro slaves, without paying one penny of tax, and take contrasted with a sparse and rapidly a part in the ruling of a country, of the decreasing remnant of emancipated Negroes history, government, laws, and in the latter. Few as these free Negroes institutions of which most of them knew were, they proved to be a great nuisance, nothing, and never could know, from utter furnishing a monstrous proportion of the ignorance and incapacity to learn. But the people of the Northern States similar to those of the country from which had powerful motives for encouraging this it had come. Of the foreigners living in immigration. Every man who held land, or the United States in 1850, two millions had any capital vested in some money- were in the North, and not one quarter of seeking speculation, felt that this influx a million in the South. The tide of of labour and mechanical skill was adding emigration had not yet reached its height, to his own wealth, and his hopes of vastly and this disproportion afterwards increasing it. Moreover, every addition increased. The North thus acquired an to the population of the Northern States, almost unlimited command of capital and by swelling the number of their labour, including in the latter skilled representatives in the Congress of the mechanics and men of high scientific United States, added to their control over attainments. All its great works of the Federal government. This was the internal improvements are chiefly the great object on which the people of the result of borrowed foreign capital, Irish Northern States had set their hearts. and German labour, and mechanical skill They gained not only power but money by from England, Scotland, and the North of it. Europe. At the first formation of the Federal This was the prosperous condition of Union, not only were the Northern States the Northern States in 1860. What was more in number than the Southern, [48] but then the condition of the Southern States? the people were more numerous. And, rapid Before we enter into that inquiry we as was the increase of population in the will observe that there never was any South, it was more rapid in the North, great cordiality between the two parts of being continually swollen by the influx of the Union. But the road to prosperity immigrants from Europe, rivalling in which lay open before them, kept them too numbers the migrating hordes that overran profitably busy to afford time for deadly provinces of the Roman empire. We have quarrels between them; and they few means of reference at hand, but in occasionally experienced pressure enough, some years, as in 1854, this immigration from foreign enemies, to keep them amounted to nearly half a million. together. At the same time the prosperity of the North was stimulated by the influx of a vast amount of capital borrowed in England and elsewhere. Is it destined to be repaid? Caveat creditor. Both labour and capital sought in the New World the latitudes, climate, and investments, most CHAPTER V.
The Southern States.
It is impossible to explain the present condition of the United States, without giving a sketch of the progress of the Southern States down to 1860. If we were to represent them as pictured at and for some time previous to that date, by very many of the Northern people, and by the leading journals published in the Northern cities, from which journals the world at large chiefly derived its notions of the slave-holding states of the Union, the Whole South would seem to have been one pandemonium. Never were any people so elaborately vituperated and denounced as they were by an annually swelling crowd of their Northern confederates. It is true that there were at the North numbers who set their faces against this hostility in words and in acts against the people of the Southern States. But being gradually overridden by popular clamour and violence; they lost influence day by day, and finally shrunk into a small minority who were, and still are, compelled to keep their convictions to themselves. During the war that followed, free speech, censuring the course of the government, was answered by mob-law, or by locking up the speaker in Fort La Fayette, or some other Bastille. For years the mildest expression of forts of St Augustine and Pensacola, and Northern opinion had taught that the two French posts on the Mississippi, was a people of the Southern States were wilderness, the hunting ground of the red indolent, unenterprising, and averse to man. Another century wrought but very steady labour of any kind; the only energy partial changes in this vast region, they showed was in driving their slaves. although several European colonies were The [50] self-sufficient New Englander had then flourishing on the coast. long harped upon this theme, while What progress had the South made in the offering himself as an example for next hundred years? And how far can the imitation in the opposite qualities. people of the South claim that progress as According to him the North under New their own work? England’s guidance and inspiration, had Although the Southern colonies were not done everything, and the South nothing, to settled without much loss of life from the develop the resources of the country. He effects of the climate, yet while the laid it down as an infallible dogma, that country was in forest, and the colonists Negro slavery in the South had employed chiefly in the timber trade and deteriorated the character and habits of the rearing of cattle, they retained [51] the people, was an obstacle to the their health far better than afterwards. progress of population and civilization, As the woods were felled and the land and the improvement of the country; that cleared for farming, the country became all slave labour was unskillful, slovenly, more and more malarious. The labours of and superficial, obstructing the use of the field proved most trying to the machinery and improved methods of culture, constitutions of the colonists, and and making labour discreditable in the greatly shortened the average length of white man. It stamped incompleteness and life. Agriculture throve in none of these inefficiency on all that was done or colonies until the Negroes were brought attempted. The New Englander had preached in. this doctrine so confidently and zealously More than a century ago the tide of as not only to convince himself, but some European immigration into North America people even in the South almost began to had been much diverted from the Southern believe it. Yet the true history of the States. The climate deterred labouring Southern States flatly contradicted these men from going thither; and the few assertions. Europeans and Northern men who settled A little more than two centuries before there seldom brought families with them. 1860, the whole territory of the Southern A great majority of the people of the States, except the neighbourhood of South sprang from ancestors who had Jamestown in Virginia, of the Spanish settled in some of the Southern colonies Is it to be supposed that these several generations back. Southern men would have gone and settled As to the oft asserted deterioration of themselves in the Northern states, if, the white population of the Southern from inferiority in ability and industry, States, and that this deterioration was they found themselves less capable of partially counteracted by the influx of making a living and pushing their fortunes newcomers from Europe and the North, a than the people they went among? Far the multitude of statistical and historical greater part of these emigrants from the facts utterly disprove these assertions. South were labouring farmers, and their We will briefly refer to the statistics: — object was to find a climate in which It appears from the United States field work and out-of-door labour is not census of 1850, that nearly nine-tenths of so injurious to the white man as in that the foreign born population in the country which they had left behind them. It is were found in the Northern States, and proved, by successive returns of the little more than one-tenth in the Southern census — that the white population of the States. Southern States was multiplying rapidly It appears from the same census, that although the emigration much exceeded the while only one hundred and ninety five immigration both from Europe and the thousand (195,000) persons, born in the Northern States. Northern States, were living in the South As to the asserted deterioration of the — four hundred and eighty five thousand people of the Southern States, notorious (485,000) natives of the Southern States historical facts prove its falsehood. were then living in the North. Eighty Although the whites in the South were much five thousand Virginians were found in fewer that those in the North, in fact not Ohio alone. Fifty-one thousand in half as numerous, yet the people of the Indiana. Sixty-eight thousand Kentuckians United States selected most of their in Indiana. Fifty-nine thousand in Presidents from the South — down to 1800. Illinois. Fifty-eight thousand North The Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of Carolinians in Ohio. Thirty thousand in the United States, with, we believe, only Indiana. Thirty- [52] two thousand one exception, were born and died in Tennesseans in Illinois — &c. We need not slave-holding states. The two men pre- lengthen out this statement. The eminently distinguished in the annals of Southerners who had settled in the North Congress by their parliamentary abilities, were twice and a half more numerous than were Henry Clay, a leader who seemed to the Northern men who had settled in the take possession of men’s hearts and heads South. — and John C. Calhoun, the logical statesman, who best expounded the principle and duties of the government — secessionists near St. Louis in Missouri, both were born in, and represented slave where they were greatly in the minority — holding states. So with the soldiers who and afterwards attracted attention by his have a name in history — Washington, Lee, success in subordinate positions. But his Stonewall Jackson, and Joseph E. Johnston, good fortune sprang from a peculiar whose campaigns were master pieces of conjunction of events. The Northern Fabian strategy. To these [53] we may add government and people began their efforts the names of that coarse, strong willed to put down the “rebellion” as they called man, Andrew Jackson, who ruled all that it, with inadequate forces. Every time came in contact with him, and General they made a failure, they changed their Scott, and Z. Taylor, so successful in the general, and greatly increased their war against Mexico. All these were born levies. Luckily for Grant it was not and bred in the South. No equivalent to until a number of commanders in chief had this array of worthies sprang from the been shelved — and the insufficient Northern States. strength of successive armies had been But some Yankee panegyrist may say that acknowledged, that the government put General Grant’s services alone far surpass forth all its remaining strength and the achievements of all the soldiers we credit, raised an army of a million of have named. And this tempts us to say a men, more than half of whom were few words in explanation of General foreigners — and put Grant in [54] Grant’s military career. command. He certainly succeeded at last We know little of the earlier part of in performing the task entrusted to him. that career. He was educated at West But we do not just now remember, in all Point, and held a commission in the army history, any successful general who had so for several years, but had to leave it. many of his men slaughtered by an enemy He was afterwards engaged in some greatly inferior in numbers. But he had manufacturing or commercial enterprises, been furnished with plenty of men and but failed in them. 1860 found him a plenty of ammunition, and seems to have broken man. But he was known to be a man valued the one about as much as the other. of great resolution. It has been said We are not well informed as to the details that he offered his services to the of his campaigns. But we know of no one Confederates; but this may be false. The instance in which he displayed strategic same thing has been asserted as to another ability of a high order — and should be noted Northern General of better character surprised if any military critic could than Grant. He was, we believe, first point it out. Wielding an overwhelming employed by the United States government force against enemies very inferior in in crushing a movement of the numbers, he showed the most dogged resolution, and failure at one point only attainments, almost as popular a writer, stimulated him to try his luck at another. and almost as shallow a thinker as Greeley This explains his more than semicircular himself. campaign around Richmond in 1864-5. The truth was that in the South, We do not mean to attribute any unusual constituencies of white men, with a Negro purity of morals, or elevation of population politically beneath them, were sentiment, to the average Southern man. less influenced by the motives and He had little claim to it. But there was impulses, which, in elections, control the something in the political and social mob of voters in the Northern States. organization of the Southern States, And, whatever may have been the objects especially the older States, that enabled which led a Southern man into public life, men who were not mere cunning and politics was seldom adopted as a unscrupulous politicians, but men of high profession, or trade, by which he hoped to character and social position, to take make his fortune. Pecuniary embarrassment prominent places in public life. It was was there the usual result of political evident that the leading men of the South ambition. What perhaps most influenced long exercised a wholesome, elevating, and the selection and formed the characters of conservative influence, both politically the public men of the South was the and socially, over the whole Union. The position they long occupied as the acknowledgement of this was not unusual in defenders of law, vested rights, and the North, and sometimes came from very constitutional limitations, and as the curious quarters. opposers of extravagance and corruption in No man made himself more conspicuous by government, and of the attacks of a incessant and unmeasured abuse of the radical and usurping democracy. South than Horace Greeley, the editor of Having said so much of the whites, the the ‘New York Tribune.’ It was meat and real people of the South, we will now drink to him, literally and speak of the Negroes there. By far the metaphorically. It supported his paper, greater part of the Negroes were the and that supported him. One of his descendants of Africans brought into the bitterest complaints against the South, country before the revolution of 1776. It and many others echoed it, was that was not late in the history of the Southern men dominated both socially and Southern colonies when the slave politically over [55] their Northern population increased more by births than associates. The same admission was freely by importation. and fully made by Elihu Burritt, “the In this respect the English continental learned blacksmith,” a widely known New colonies differed from the colonies in the England author, a man of greater West Indies, whether English, French, or Spanish. In these latter, for reasons that no great number of Africans were unknown to us, possibly from the cost of brought into the country between 1790 and maintaining the families of the Negroes, 1808, when the trade ceased. It is only adult male slaves were much in probable that the whole number of Africans demand. Cargoes of Africans consisted brought to the English part of the chiefly of men, as those of Coolies at the continent from the opening of the slave present day. But, among the Negroes trade to the close of it did not exceed brought into the English continental three hundred thousand; yet their colonies, there were almost as [56] many offspring in 1860, were more than four women as men. Indeed, we have been told million four hundred thousand. that it was not uncommon for the slaver, We would not infer from the mere after selling off most of the adult males increase of population, the absolute well in the West Indies, to bring the remainder being of a people. A well known modern left on his hands, chiefly women and instance would contradict that assumption. children, to some port on the continent. But this rapid increase of the Negroes in Thus the Negroes, on a plantation or the Southern States is a remarkable fact, estate in the West Indies, resembled a and indicates very strongly that their regiment in this respect, that the ranks condition was not unadapted to their were kept full by the introduction of nature. It clearly proves that the oft- recruits. But the importation of Negroes pictured cruelties of the masters and into the continental colonies was like sufferings of the slaves, [57] even when bringing in a body of peasantry for the founded on truth, must have represented permanent settlement of the country. The exceptional cases. result was that, although far fewer After 1808 no Africans were introduced Africans were brought to the English part into the country. According to the census of the continent than to any one of the of 1810 the number of slaves in the United larger West Indian Islands, yet their States was one million, one hundred and descendants are twice as numerous as all ninety-one thousand (1,191,000). Fifty the Negroes in the West Indies. years later, in 1860, they had increased We have access to very few sources of to three million nine hundred and fifty- early statistics, and the census of the three thousand (3,953,000). If we deduct United States dates only from 1790. But the immigrants that annually swelled the it appears from the census that the rate white population, it will he found the of increase of the Negroes was little Negro slaves multiplied about as fast as higher during the last eighteen years of the whites, fully 27 or 28 per cent, every the slave trade, than after the ports were ten years; while, as is well known, the closed against it. From this we infer free Negroes declined in numbers, especially in the North, although kept up that the Negroes are now rapidly by additions from the slave population, decreasing in numbers in the South. either as fugitives or set free by their In 1810 the Southern States, besides masters. supplying all the wants of their people in It is a suggestive fact that although the shape of food, produced for Maryland was a slave-holding State, yet an exportation crops to the value of thirty- increasing number of free Negroes, two millions of dollars. Fifty years amounting in 1860 to eighty-four thousand, later, in 1860, still supplying all the remained in that State, where they were food their people needed, they produced politically in subordination to the for exportation crops to the value of whites, in preference to stepping across a three hundred and thirty millions of mere surveyor’s line, and going into dollars; and that under a tariff and Pennsylvania, where they would enjoy fiscal policy which designedly and political equality with the white people. successfully beat down the price of their They had learned that they were in a more produce. If we omit the border Southern natural position, and better treated, in States, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, the former State than in the latter. which furnished very little of this It is a very significant fact that produce for exportation, this was the according to the census of 1870, the whole surplus crop of the Southern States, with number of coloured people in the United a population of five millions (5,000,000) States fell short, by half a million, of whites, and three million six hundred the number they should have reached, had thousand (3,600,000) Negroes, after the Negroes continued to increase from agricultural labour had supplied the 1860 to 1870 at the lowest rate recorded necessaries of life to their people. The in any previous period of ten years. Did cotton crop made up nearly three-fourths the Negroes continue to multiply, as of this amount in value. usual, from 1860 until their emancipation We believe agricultured history affords in 1865, and then their increase abruptly no instance of so rapid an increase in the cease? That supposition would exactly amount of any crop, as that of the cotton explain the returns to the census of 1870. crop in the Southern States. They seemed Perhaps it is too soon to draw certain destined to clothe the world, and to do it inferences as to the increase or [58] cheaply. The production was increasing at decrease of the Negro population. But the rate of sixty or seventy per cent. from some facts known to us, among which every ten years; far faster than either are the greet infant mortality, and the the white or the Negro population. If disregard of family ties, we are convinced nothing had interrupted the progress of this culture, by this time (1878) the cotton crop of the Southern States would combination of human capabilities and have risen to eleven or twelve millions of relations, which could have raised these bales, equal, at the moderate price of regions, so peculiar in character and twelve cents per pound to five hundred and climate, to the condition they had fifty or six hundred millions of dollars. attained to in 1860. Much fault has been found with the We know nothing in the history of the slovenly farming of the South, owing to Negro race from which we can infer that the employment of slave labour. The [59] there ever was, or indeed, ever will be truth is that abundance of land and anywhere, a numerous Negro population in scarcity of labour causes rough but broad as good physical and moral condition, and cultivation; while abundance of labour and as fit to form a part, although a scarcity of land leads to neat and subordinate part, of a civilized thorough tillage. In the South much of community, as the four millions of Negro that limited breadth of land, peculiar in slaves in the Southern States in 1860. soil and situation, adapting it to the They had, as a body, attained to a higher production of the sugar-cane, or rice, or degree of culture in morals, habits, and the long-stapled sea-island cotton, religion, than the race had ever known, exhibited neat, skilful and thorough and this by the imitation of their culture, by slave labour. masters; for the Negro is eminently an The civilization, systematic industry, imitative being. But as soon as the and controlling intelligence of the white relation of servitude and its habitual race, directing and aided by the ability intercourse ceased, that tendency to [60] to labour and the constitutional imitate the better lessons to be learned peculiarities of the Negro, in a country from the whites faded rapidly. For the and climate so capable of valuable impressions made upon the Negro are of productions, had made the Southern States singularly brief duration. From this rich, civilized, and prosperous constitutional defect, the Negro, perhaps communities; whose annually increasing more than any other race, needs a produce took the lead in the commerce of government close to him, and the world, and sustained in peace and superintending him. With no more plenty two distinct populations, each of forethought and providence than children, which already numbered several millions, they need to be controlled and directed and were multiplying with great rapidity. like children, and the effect of the We suppose that it is intended that the government close to them was seen in the improvable portions of the earth’s surface Southern States. Although much given to should be brought under cultivation by petty delinquencies, no where was there man; and we do not know any other less of serious crime than among the four millions of slaves in the South. But now, We ourselves may believe that we believe, few who have seen much of the Christianity tends to abolish slavery. Negroes there within the last ten years But how does this tendency work? Merely will deny that the bulk of them are as it tends to raise and perfect humanity. receding from civilization. In the It tends to render needless the servitude declining influence of religion, and often of any class of men. Christianity tends in its utter perversion, in the loss of also to abolish the poor-house, the gaol, industry and orderly habits, and in their and the gallows, by rendering each of them disregard of family ties, the major part less needed. But we are sure that all of them are drawing near to Jamaica and that Christianity will ever effect, on Hayti, on their way to Guinea and Congo. earth, will be to diminish the need for We do not assume that any considerable them. portion of the white people in the South The very numerous body of professed had attained to high moral and Christians in the Southern States were intellectual culture. We know that with quite unaware that there was less of the bulk of the people in any country, and earnestness and sincerity in their faith of any race, religion, moral culture, and and practice, than there was among their civilization are but skin deep. Both professing Northern neighbours. reason and revelation tell us that. Christians in the South, although divided Moreover in a new and almost exclusively as elsewhere, between several churches and agricultural country high intellectual and sects, were characterized by a general moral culture is not readily disseminated. sobriety in their convictions, and were But there was in the South a cultivated less apt to be led off into the many class, perhaps not inferior in essential extravagant “isms” pervading the North. qualities to the best class in any The profanities and bestialities of country, and their number and influence Mormonism, and other religious was extending rapidly westward through the monstrosities, did not originate, and South. Indeed we know of no country never spread into the South. Although the whatever, in which real progress and clergy in the South were intensely zealous improvement were making as rapid strides for the defense of the rights of these as in these Southern States. States against Northern aggression, yet This assertion must sound strangely in war sermons, substituting politics for the ears of those [61] who have been religion, were not preached by them. They taught that “slave-holding is the sum of left that to the Northern pulpits. all villainies,” and utterly incompatible Patriotic songs did not take the place of with the profession of Christianity. devotional hymns in Southern churches, as the “Star-spangled banner” and other political rhapsodies, did in the North. catalogues of sins, and of sinners, he Nor was the altar, with the consecrated evidently means to comprehend all the bread and wine of the Christian Eucharist, shapes taken by man’s iniquity. How came draped in Southern churches with the he to forget to put slave-holding and the Confederate banner, as it was with the slave-holder among the sins and the United States flag, at New York and sinners? How came St. Paul to encourage elsewhere, in the North. the runaway slave, Onesimus, to return to [62] The Christian clergy of the South his master, Philemon? And, according to had the Bible, the Word of God; and, with the construction now put by the best Greek the exception of the Roman Catholics, scholars on the twenty-first verse of the professed to make it the exclusive ground seventh chapter of the first epistle to of all their teaching. But they failed to the Corinthians, he dissuades Christian find in it any texts enjoining the slaves from seeking and seizing occasions emancipation of the Negroes. On what to attain freedom. So obvious are these ground rests the assertion that defects in Christian Scriptures, that many Christianity prohibits the holding of of the most uncompromising apostles of slaves? Christ, during his stay on earth, human, and especially Negro freedom, his apostles, during their whole lives, turned in disgust and contempt from the lived in slave-holding countries; they Bible, and appealed to a higher law. were in habitual contact with masters and [63] Many, I should say most Christian slaves. Yet they never once came in men and ministers in the South believed conflict with slavery. Let it not be that the Negro’s religious faith and forgotten that the slaves of the Roman, of practice were far more aided than hindered the Greek, of the Syrian, and the Jew, by his subordinate and even servile were people of far higher races than the condition. And it is very far from being Negro. yet proved that they were in error. Christian doctrine has its mysteries, It is often said that the possession of the meaning of which may be disputed and power over others cultivates selfishness misunderstood; but its moral teaching is and tyranny in the possessor of that very plain spoken. Yet not only did “that power. It doubtless has that tendency. A sin of sins,” “that sum of all iniquities” common application and illustration of escape censure, but the Christian this remark is the conduct of the masters Scriptures distinctly inculcate the of slaves. Doubtless they afforded many a relative duties of masters and of slaves. case in point. The possession of power Saint Paul, in his inculcation of over others, in any shape, is apt to practical Christian morals, is full and generate tyranny. But far from being the precise in his teachings. In his long only, it is not the usual and natural effect of it. The natural and usual difference of race. His thoughts and his effect of the possession of power over care were directed, not merely to the others is to awaken the sense of profits derived from their services, but responsibility on their account. Without beyond that, to providing for their wants this, the relations of the family, of and well-being. The interest he felt in society, and of government could not them assumed the form of duty, and went exist; for they all rest upon it. beyond that of the employer towards his In the case of the employers of labour, hired workmen. especially when that employment is Among the many thousands of masters of somewhat permanent, as in the case of slaves in the South, doubtless there must land-holders, thrown into frequent, often have been not a few shocking instances of habitual intercourse with those who live tyranny and brutality. We can find plenty on their lands, every observant man must of such instances elsewhere. But the have seen that the usual effect of this physical condition of the Negroes, the relation is to generate the habit of rapid increase of their numbers, the considering the necessities and interests rareness of the occasions on which they of those thus connected with, and, to some were prosecuted for serious crimes, and extent, dependent upon them; and this their quiet acquiescence in their leads to the habit of acting for their condition during a four years’ war of such benefit. This relation tends to take a a peculiar character — all indicate that man out of himself, counter-acting the law, custom, and the feelings of their selfish instincts of our nature, which we masters generally secured to them oftenest see aggravated into the most treatment by no means adverse to their unscrupulous selfishness among those who welfare. are occupied exclusively in buying and The people of the Southern States did selling, and other pursuits, which bring not hold themselves more responsible than men into only casual contact with persons the rest of their race for the presence of little or not at all known to them. the African among them. If their fathers As the land holder naturally takes an had bought the Negroes as slaves, it was interest in his tenants and work people, the people of England and of the North who so the Southern planter had a more per- had brought them there, and sold them as [64] manent interest, and frequent slaves; and doubtless the proceeds of the intercourse with his Negroes; and his price then paid is still to be found in relations to them necessarily assumed a England and the Northern States. somewhat patriarchal character, which There were in the South some people, counteracted that natural and almost perhaps a good many, who would have universal antipathy springing from preferred that the Negroes should never have been brought there. The result would effectually cultivate the soil; to have been that, with only white labour to enfranchise them as citizens would throw rely on, the larger and especially the office and power into the hands of the more fertile portions of the South would lowest and most unprincipled demagogues, have been a pastoral rather than a farming who would soon get the control of the country; and it would [65] not have made votes of the mass of ignorance and one-fourth the progress in wealth and incapacity in the guise of Negro citizens; civilization that it had already made. and then use their official positions thus But the country would have enjoyed the acquired, for every corrupt and fraudulent advantage of being free from the presence purpose. Nobody now can doubt, after the of this inferior race. revelations made and being made, that the But the Negroes were there, and that numerous body of Northern adventurers and being the case, nobody in the South Southern turncoats, who, encouraged and doubted as to what was their proper backed by the Northern government, position. The country, climate, and their controlled the votes of the Negroes by condition as slaves, had proved so intrigue and bribery, were simply thieves, suitable to their nature, that three endowed with more skill and [66] cunning hundred thousand Africans, in a period of than the common thief. They aimed at much less than a century and a half pocketing millions of plunder, and being (taking the average time of their arrival) backed by the authority and military force were represented by four million and a of the government, were remarkably half of descendants. To the out-of-door successful, until the country became labours of the Negroes was due not merely exhausted of spoils. the crude agricultural productions of the The people of the Southern States knew soil, but they furnished the occasion and that they had a civilization worth the means for the less exposed but more preserving, and that it was based upon the skilful labours and occupations, in the existing relations of the white and black same country, of a more numerous races. They knew that no foreigner population of whites. outside of the jurisdiction of their own The people of the South knew that the State governments had a right to interfere welfare, wealth, and civilization of their in their internal political and social country, and the preservation of social organization, and least of all the people order in it, rested on the servile of the Northern States. For they had condition of the Negroes. The history of induced the Southern States to join in the their race proved that to emancipate them treaty that formed the Union by allowing was to abolish reliable industry among the to each slave-holding State additional only race which, in that climate, could representation in Congress for three- fifths of its slaves; and also by each When the Caffres and others resist this State pledging itself to deliver up any confiscation and expatriation they fugitive from another State legally held extirpate them. But to compensate them to service there. for the loss of their thirsty and sterile Where two very different races meet in lands, the English missionaries strive to the same country, they are from nature and lead them to the green pastures and waters necessity antagonistic. They do not of comfort in Paradise. commingle, or at least very partially, and There are questions which human reason with no satisfactory results, for the seems incompetent to solve, like that as offspring is apt to be wanting in the to the origin of evil. Thus we do not better qualities of both races. The know, except through revelation, why God inferior race either dies out, or becomes made man. Indeed, some deep thinkers (?) subject to the other. When the latter now tell us that it was man who invented result occurs, the further subjection of God, a figment of the plastic imagination. individuals of the one race to individuals We do not yet know, having failed to find of the other tends to mitigate the effects out, how men came to be distributed into of the antagonism of races. It provides the white, yellow, brown, red, and black each one of the subject race with an races. Whether the existence of one, or individual guardian who has the interest, other, or of all these races, is a desire, and power to protect him. He is blessing or an evil to themselves, or to no longer a masterless slave amid a crowd each other, is a question not easy to of masters, caring nothing for him while answer. But we may infer, even from the tyrannizing over him. We need not go far mere natural, instinctive clinging to for examples to prove that when a life, that life is a blessing. But there barbarous race is not enslaved, it is, are other important questions which admit sooner or later, exterminated. The of being solved with a conclusiveness Yankees, long ago, gave up the attempt to approaching the answer to an arithmetical make slaves of the North American Indians. problem. We will state one which is Since then they have been busy german to the matter we have been exterminating them. The [67] English, not discussing. so long ago, gave up enslaving the natives We have not implicit faith in the of middle Africa. Since then they have United States census, but as to the mere been dispossessing the pastoral tribes of enumeration and classification of the South Africa of their meagre pastures. population (its only constitutional For the well tended herds of the Caffres purpose), it is sufficiently accurate for stood in the way of the cattle of the us to draw reliable inferences from it. English colonists, and must be driven off. From the returns in this census we infer that the three hundred thousand Africans little cause to thank les amis des noirs brought into the country, in the last (friends of the blacks) and their allies. century and the first seven years of this We do not believe that any one, who has century, were [68] represented, in 1860, not lived in a country where a large by more than four million four hundred portion of the population are Negroes, has thousand descendants, because they had the means of forming a sound opinion on been kept in servitude; for we learn from Negro slavery. He would be still better the census, that in those States in which able to judge, on knowing them in both they were kept in slavery, they multiplied servitude and freedom. Until he has this rapidly; and in those States in which they experience, it is pure presumption in him were early emancipated, they died out to undertake to decide this question. We rapidly. Yet we admit that climate had are convinced that the emancipation of the some share in these results. Negroes in the Southern States tends Now that all are emancipated, we see rapidly to diminish their numbers and grounds for believing that they will not revive their barbarism. And, from the only form a rapidly diminishing proportion [69] nature of the climate, the room left of the whole population of the country, vacant by their shrinking numbers can be but that they will actually dwindle but sparsely filled by another race, gradually from four millions to three, unless a flood of Chinese migrate thither. two, one million, and less. For, although Yet some thirty years ago the world the greater part of every Southern State, hailed as gospel truth on Negro slavery the whole indeed of many of them, is that world-read book, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ unsuited to cultivation by the field It now turns out that the authoress, when labour of the whites, yet no part of these she wrote it, had never been in a slave- States affords, like most of the West holding State, and had never seen a slave Indian islands and the adjacent tropical except as a fugitive from servitude. She regions, an almost spontaneous supply of seemed to suppose that the four millions food to an indolent and vegetating of slaves in the South, unlike all other population like the Negroes. populations, did not embrace a criminal This result, the decline in the numbers class. We do not mean to say that all, or of the Negroes, was not the end avowedly half, or a third, of the fugitive slaves, aimed at by those who were so zealous and who were never numerous, belonged to that active in putting an end to Negro slavery; class. After the war and the yet they might easily have foreseen it. emancipation, the authoress of that book If mere existence be a blessing, which we went to Florida and lived there some time; do not assert, the Negroes in America have and, then admitted, that she found the real Negroes very different from those she had painted. But we attribute little value to the opinion and testimony of a witness who, after Lady Byron’s death, announces to the world that the most reticent woman in all England had told to her, a stranger and a foreigner, a most scandalous secret, which she had most guardedly suppressed during a long life, the truth of which was disbelieved and denied by her legal advisers in matters akin to it, and which was unsuspected by the scandal-seeking world, until the inventive novelist coined it into money by publishing it. The former prosperity and now fallen state of the South concerns us here only so far as it serves to explain the present condition of the whole Union. CHAPTER VI.
The Cause of the Secession of The Southern States.
Government is a conservative institution. The purpose for which it exists is to preserve, not to revolutionize, or destroy. We dwell upon this truism — because many people seem to have lost sight of the truth in it. The Southern States in seceding from the Union were resisting, not making a revolution. The Northern States, and the Federal government under their control, under the pretence of preserving the Union, were making a revolution; destroying one government legally established, and putting in its place a disguised representation of it, but which was really a usurping tyranny. When the thirteen colonies declared themselves free and independent States, breaking off their connection with Great Britain, they did so on the claim that, on the principles of English constitutional liberty, each colony had the exclusive right to tax itself, and the British parliament, in which they were not represented, had no right to tax them. They made great use of this argument; yet it was, as they used it, of little value as a principle in government, for it expressed but half the truth in it, suppressing the more valuable half, and making it substantially a falsehood. Unless the tax-payers, who furnish the payers. The administration of a means necessary to the support of government founded on this basis, may government, can say how much is necessary prove inefficient or corrupt; but as long for its support; unless they have the as the ultimate authority of government power to limit taxation, they have no rests on this foundation, the control of security for their rights. And the best it is in the hands of the class who are security they can have is to [71] hold the most able to reform abuses. For, while power of taxation exclusively in their they have a direct and obvious interest in hands. If the power to tax is to be put good and just government, they are in a into other hands than theirs, it is better position sufficiently independent to be that this imposer of taxes should be one able to act upon their convictions, not so autocrat than the multitude. The demands straitened and trammelled as to be bribed of the one may be satisfied, those of the and led through their necessities. This hungry, greedy multitude can not. The one accounts for the economy and honesty which man imposing taxes can be controlled, the for a long time marked the expenditures millions imposing taxes, cannot be and the administration of those State controlled. governments. The colonies, on renouncing their But high wages and the low price of allegiance to the King, became republics, land in a new [72] country, especially in but they did not create republics. Take the new settlements, where almost every from the colonial governments, under which one became a landholder, and to some small they had been long living, the royal amount a tax-payer, obscured the permanent prerogatives, and ipso facto they were importance of this provision as to the republics. But they were not democracies, franchise. The extreme doctrines as to in the modern sense of the word. We the equality of men, and the inferences believe that there was not one of the from it, set afloat and disseminated every thirteen states, in which the franchise, where by the French Revolution, and the right to a voice in legislation, or in especially among the crowd of emigrants the choice of delegates to the legislative from Europe, to whom the Federal assembly, was not based on the possession government accorded a speedy of freehold property, or some equivalent naturalization; and the eagerness and stake in the country. And although the perseverance with which demagogues seized money value of this necessary and dwelt upon a topic so acceptable to qualification may have been small, still the multitude, exercised so powerful an the State government represented and was influence, that in forty or fifty years controlled by those who furnished the every restriction on the franchise was means for its support — that is the tax- swept away in every State, Virginia and Rhode Island being the latest; and the presence of a Negro population in right to vote was conceded to every white servitude modified the democratic man, born or naturalized in the country, influences of the government. But now the and twenty-one years of age, who was not a older portions of the confederacy were pauper dependent upon public charity. The fast losing the peculiar advantages of a States were now confederated democracies. new country. The population, multiplying The Government of the United States was rapidly, was still further swollen by the fast becoming what it had not been, and great tide of emigrants from Europe; and what was never intended, one huge in general they were those whom the democracy. country could best spare. The growth of Theoretical statesmen had indeed hedged large cities and the density of population in this wild, ignorant, greedy democracy around the commercial and manufacturing with certain paper barriers, called Bills centres in the Northern States, brought of Rights and Constitutions. But the with them all those struggles for Magna Charta of democracy is expressed in employment and subsistence, all those few and simple words: The Sovereign contrasts of condition between the very Majority have all rights, and the minority rich and very poor, between the luxurious no rights in opposition to its will. and the destitute, all the discontent and In a new country, with land abundant heart-burnings, all the corruption and and cheap, and labour highly paid, the vice of the oldest capitals in Europe; and people prosperous and progressive, that this in the heart of the most democratic portion of the population oppressed by and of governments. rebelling against the narrowness of their The policy of protection for American condition, and the natural obstructions to industry had artificially built up an their progress in providing for their own immense manufacturing system with its well-being, will be unusually small; and crowds of operatives dependent on its in consequence that class which seeks to success. The rival policy of raising a live by preying on society will not be great revenue for the government, to be numerous. A government of the most expended among the people of the Northern popular form may sit [73] lightly on the States, had reared up another greedy, country, and yet secure a reasonable intriguing, insatiable class, who sought a amount of justice and order. But this living out of government expenditures. cannot last long. The political aims of every one of both In the United States the whole country these classes were exclusively directed to was becoming year by year more democratic, advancing his individual pecuniary politically but not socially, especially interest at the cost of others. When in the Northern States. In the South the these two classes united in pursuit of any object, if they did not make up the treasury was drained. An army of custom majority of the voters, their influence house officers, with a collector and his controlled that sovereign majority in the staff of subordinates, even for the Northern States, and through it ruled the pettiest ports, where the duties collected country. did not suffice to pay the salaries of the [74] A stranger in the country, who had collectors; a post-office, with 40,000 any faith in the theories as to the post-masters, and a yearly deficit of simplicity, purity, and economy of eight millions, to be supplied from the republican government, might well wonder United States revenue; numberless public what occasion the United States government works, civil and military, affording fat had for a large revenue. Its army of jobs, the profits being divided in secret 14,000 or 15,000 men (in 1860) would have between the contractors and the government formed but one strong division in the officials; great enterprises not public, field. All its ships in commission would but subsidized by the generous public, form, not a fleet, but a squadron. The such as the Pacific railroad, to which the civil list called for but a small number government, besides money and land given, of necessary officials with very moderate lent sixty millions in its bonds, on which salaries, in the executive, judicial, and loan we believe no interest has been paid, diplomatic service; and it was not and the principal never [75] will be paid burdened with the expenses of a regal or — (How this loan was procured and even vice-regal court. The interest on appropriated the “Credit Mobilier” the public debt, amounted to little or investigation has unveiled) — and numerous nothing. This government was exempted other enterprises subsidized openly and from all those local duties and expenses secretly — some of which have, while most which were performed and paid by the of them have not, been as clearly individual States. The military and naval explained as that of the Pacific railroad; expenditures, the heaviest burden on other Indian agencies, where the agents grew nations — here, if we might judge from the marvellously rich while cheating the strength, or rather weakness, of the army Indians with one hand and the government and navy — was but a feather on its back. with the other; military post sutler- What did the United States want with ships, procured in Washington for a eighty millions of dollars? “consideration,” being licenses to cheat How the money was spent we have not soldiers and others at every out of the time to show. We cannot go into details. way post — the least of these classes of Let the believer in republican purity, consumers of government revenue; had simplicity, and economy, search into the Gargantua’s mouth, with its capacity to open vents and secret leaks by which the swallow millions. It was not easy to supply all these the hands of the minority by the agency of demands. But by protective tarifis and government measures and legislation. government revenue tariffs the South was Another subordinate principle on which drained of its earnings and wealth, and they laid great stress was “rotation in the North fattened and enriched — until office.” According to this, by the time a the people there were utterly corrupted, man had served his apprenticeship in and completely lost sight of the true office, whether administrative, judicial nature of the political institutions under or fiscal, he should be turned out to make which they had lived. The Federal room for a new apprentice, especially if government was to them the great bestower another party had come into power. The of bounties, and they looked only to that, labouring people learned to believe that magnifying its jurisdiction, and ready to the government owed them a living, or at sustain it in each usurpation of power. least was bound to bring profitable It was their government, and a source of employment home to every man’s door in the great profit to them; for the great value North; and those who had capital or credit of American citizenship was the privilege held that it was bound so to manage the of taxing other people’s earnings and affairs of the public as to afford them property for your own benefit; and no one profitable investments and speculations. enjoyed it more thoroughly than those who And liberal government expenditure was the had neither earnings nor property of their most obvious means of attaining these own. They opposed and resented most ends. bitterly every effort of the Southern There was nothing that the people of States and Southern statesmen to restrict the North feared so much as lest the the measures of the Federal government to Southern States should become strong the limited and specified powers delegated enough in number, and in their population, to it by the States. This would not only to be able to protect themselves by their curtail their bread and butter; it would representation and votes in Congress from deprive them of their pate de foie gras unfair legislation and taxation on the and champagne. part of the Federal government. Conscious The Federal government in the hands of that they were plundering their Southern the people of the Northern States proved confederates they had learned thoroughly to be the greatest possible corrupter [76] to hate them. of the people. The principle on which the An early indication of the country was ruled was, “To the victors faithlessness and animosity of the North belong the spoil,” the victors being the against the South was thus exhibited: — majority who carried the elections, and Under the colonial charters Virginia held the spoil whatever could be wrung out of very extensive territories on the west of the Alleghany range, extending west and State had a greater right in it, than north-west to the Mississippi river and those of any other State. the lakes; and North Carolina and Georgia Under the constitution, the laws, and held the territories west of them to the the practice of the country, as long as same river. These territories had very this territory, or any part of it, few [77] whites settled in them, but were remained under the control of the Federal chiefly occupied by Indian tribes. When a government, any citizen of any State, had good many whites had settled in the the right to migrate to any part of it Kentucky territory Virginia authorized (except the Indian reserves), carrying them to form a government of their own. with him his moveable property of any North Carolina authorized the white kind. The policy of the country settlers in her Tennessee territory to encouraged the settlement of these form a government for themselves; and territories; and after making surveys, the these two new States were admitted into government habitually offered the lands the Union. Virginia granted the remainder for sale at a low price. Not only might of its western territory, and Georgia any citizen from any State purchase [78] granted the whole of its western land there, but by settling on a tract of territories to the Federal government, for land not exceeding a certain number of the use and benefit of all the States. At acres (160 we believe), he acquired a a later period the Federal government right of pre-emption at the government purchased from France its title to that price; and he was entitled to legal vast region, the Louisiana territory, the protection for all his personal and money paid for it being furnished by all proprietary rights, just as if he had been the people of all the States. At a later still in his own State from which he had period Florida and much Mexican territory migrated. were acquired and added to the territories Such parts of these territories, as, or public lands of the United States. All from climate, soil, or other natural these lands, except such particular tracts features, attracted the attention of as individuals had acquired titles to Southern men by being favorable to their under former governments, as those of occupations, drew many emigrants from the Spain and France, the Federal government Southern States, and many of these held in trust for the benefit of all the emigrants carried Negro slaves with them. citizens of all the States. They might be To other portions of this common called (except that they were not in territory, different from the former in actual individual possession) joint- climate, soil, or other traits, emigrants tenants, or co-parceners in common of this from the Northern States chiefly were property. Certainly the people of no one attracted. Fewer Southern men went there, and few or none carried slaves with them. or any other; and had sovereign authority, When any part of this common territory, within its borders, on every matter of large enough to form a State, became government and legislation, except those sufficiently settled to need, and be able which had been expressly delegated to the to support a State government, the people Federal government. So far from that there were permitted to organize one, and government having any voice or were admitted into the Union by an Act of jurisdiction in this matter, it was bound Congress. Then it stood on the same to accord to the new State representation footing as any one of the original for three-fifths of the slaves in it; and thirteen States. every Northern State had bound itself to Thus it was that new States were added give up every fugitive slave found within to the confederation, in accordance with its borders, on application of the State the design of the original thirteen States from which the slave had fled. when they founded the Union. Some of It must be remembered that the right, these new States were peopled chiefly by that is the possession and control, which emigrants from the Northern States, and men exercised over their slaves seldom, in had few or no Negro slaves in them. any age or country, originated in legal Others were peopled chiefly from the enactment. It was a practical right which Southern States, had many Negro slaves in legal enactments found men in possession them, and looked to have many more. These of, in many countries and under various two different results had been brought circumstances. The origin and object of about by geographical and physical causes. laws in human society is, not to grant To regions in which the white man could rights, but to protect rights which men labour to advantage few or no Negroes were have acquired and possess — but find to be brought. Where climate, soil, or other insufficiently secured to them. The law influences were adverse to the field was called in to recognize, regulate, and labour of the whites, the Negroes were secure to the possessors that which they brought in. obviously held. The law no more gave them [79] When any part of this territory possession of their slaves, than of their common to all the States and to all the horses, and cattle, and household goods. citizens of all the States, had thus The law which punishes the horse-thief become itself a State — then, and not adds nothing to the proprietary right of until then, did there arise a sovereign the owner, but it adds much to his jurisdiction, in the new State, with security in the enjoyment of his right. authority to decide such a question as the Even admitting that the State governments retaining or getting rid of Negro slavery. were wrong not to abolish Negro slavery, a It was now a State, as much as Virginia, matter within their jurisdiction — for their common agent, for the Federal slaves thither with them. Many of the government, created for, and limited to Northern States made it criminal to arrest other [80] special matters of legislation, or assist in arresting the very fugitive to legislate as to Negro slavery, was an slaves which the State had pledged itself, act of pure outrageous usurpation. But it under the treaty of the Union, to deliver was only the culminating act of a long to the owners. And on some occasions when series of usurpations. fugitive slaves were arrested under In the last five paragraphs we have process issuing from the United States simply expressed the legal and courts, the people resisted the officers, constitutional principles affirmed in the in some cases killing them, and rescued decrees of the Supreme Court of the United the fugitives. Organized societies in the States, the highest tribunal in the land; North employed agents to tamper with the the authority of which the Northern States Negroes in the South, in order to render and people upheld, while it suited their them dissatisfied, and induce them [81] to purposes, but thrust aside with contempt run away; and they provided the means to when it stood in the way of any of their facilitate their escape. This they called cherished objects. their underground railroad. They boasted The people of the Northern states publicly of the success of these having long drawn immense tribute from the intriguing operations against their South through the Federal government by Southern confederates. But in truth, its plundering tariff system for their success was small, more aggravating protection and revenue, feared lest the than injurious, the fugitive Negroes never Southern States might grow too numerous, being numerous. It served chiefly to show populous, and strong, to continue to their animosity against their submit to this system of plunder, confederates, and their shameless particularly after the acquisition of violation of the pledges they had given extensive territories in the South, when confederating with them. resulting from the annexation of Texas and Whenever people arrive at the the war with Mexico. They at once conviction that slave-holding is sinful, exhibited increased hostility to the they are in conscience bound to give it up South, and laboured to put a brand of at once. This is true of individuals and inferiority upon it. They claimed that of nations. But we cannot tolerate a one- Congress had, and should exercise the sided conscience. The people of the North right to prevent any part of the common by this time held no slaves. They had not territory becoming a slave-holding State, found them profitable, and had sold most even though it had been peopled by of those that were saleable to their emigrants from the South, taking their Southern confederates. But, in order to secure a confederated union with the other provisions of the treaty as were South, they had covenanted to allow them profitable to them? additional representation in Congress for Yet this difficulty seems never to have three-fifths of their slaves, and each startled the conscience of this most State pledged itself to deliver up conscientious people, or ever to have fugitives from labour and service, that occurred to the mind of any of them, is, slaves, on the demand of the except one crazy Yankee orator, who once confederate from whom they had fled. They urged secession from the slave-holding did these things willingly, in order to South, but was quickly silenced, and did secure a political and commercial union not himself adhere to this honest policy. with the slave-holding States, because The simple truth is that every Northern they derived great profit from that union man felt that the North was deriving — and those conditions were the price they immense profits from its political union were willing to pay for it. with the slave-holding States; and if he When their newly enlightened were a clear headed man who understood the consciences taught them that this union fiscal policy of the government, he knew with the slave-holder “was a covenant with that these immense Northern profits were Hell” as they now learned to call it, they the proceeds of a system of taxation, that were in an awkward dilemma. Yet they was no better than the robbery of one part might have found an honest way out of it. of the confederation for the benefit of No doubt men have a right to rescind a the other. But the anti-slavery party contract that binds them to a crime. To proclaimed and believed that the South take the highest possible case, nothing would yield quite as much and more but the want of enlightenment of plunder, when cultivated by free Negroes, conscience leads to the fulfilment of a as by slaves. They had no fears of losing pledge like Jephtha’s vow. But he who money by emancipating the slaves of their [82] refuses to fulfil a criminal compact, confederates, or their consciences would must not claim the reward that tempted him have failed to carry them through the task to make it. The newly conscientious they imposed upon themselves. Their aim Northern States might have rescinded their was to yoke conscience and profit “covenant with Hell” as they called their together. compact of union with the unrepentant There is a fascination in the slave-holding South. They might have conviction that we are more righteous than seceded from union with it. But on what our neighbours, which leads us to dwell plea could they annul such articles of the upon that belief, and on the feelings treaty of Union as had become distasteful generated by it. There is too something to them, yet claim the fulfilment of such grand and heroic in that philanthropy which [83] busies itself in righting great whole North, excepting a class of wrongs committed by other people, individuals rather respectable than especially when remote from us; for they numerous, yet for a long time the anti- best admit of embellishment from the slavery party pure and simple, seemed to glowing colours of the imagination. And be an increasing minority, but not a fast- to too many hearts it is intensely growing party rapidly absorbing all gratifying to find an object for unlimited others. The bulk of the labouring class denunciation and vituperation. It would at the North indicated, by their treatment be curious and perhaps instructive to of the free-coloured people among them, collect choice samples of the phraseology that they were not so much bent on the of the orators who denounced Negro slavery abolition of slavery, as on the abolition and the Southern slaveholders. They of the Negro, as some- [84] thing that exhausted every known anathema, invented stood in their way. But the mass of the new ones, and exhausted them; yet the people, and yet more of the merchants, mouths of these same orators might be full capitalists and politicians, felt that, the next moment of praises of the Pilgrim for the peace of the country and the Fathers of Massachusetts, who held their profit of the North, this question of slaves, Indian and Negro, by, we must Negro slavery must be handled with great suppose, especial license from heaven. It delicacy, and as far as possible let would not, however, be so safe to conclude alone. They disclaimed for the Federal that these indignant philanthropists could government any jurisdiction in the matter, never have been themselves seduced into except perhaps in the territories. Among the sins they denounced, as to remember the multitude of evidences of this, it is that they were far remote from the only necessary to refer to one: the opportunity and temptation to commit them. inaugural address of him who proved to be It was commonly remarked in the South that the abolition President, disclaims all such Northern men as came thither and right to meddle with slavery in the became slave-holders, usually proved the States. The commercial prosperity and most exacting of masters; while their financial credit of the whole North was brethren in the North certainly made no based chiefly on the produce of the scruples, and used every device, for Southern States; and most people in the exacting all they could out of the North professed to be angered at the proceeds of Southern industry by a most violence of the genuine anti-slavery fraudulent system of taxation. party, and alarmed at its rapid growth, Although the feelings of hostility and fearing an interruption of the profitable depreciation towards the Southern States, condition of trade and finance. While as slave-holding communities, pervaded the this lasted the fiscal policy of the government secured to them too large a stories and coarse witticisms. Some able share of the proceeds of slave labour, for speeches were delivered by him, but they them to desire the abolition of Negro were prepared by another man. His own slavery. serious efforts only proved his ignorance The people of the Southern States, as a and shallowness. But he was popular in body, had been exceedingly blind to the the great North-west, and was a man whom nature and effects of the artful fiscal the party knew how to use for their policy by which the North had been long purposes. Another party which expressly robbing them. It involved too many disclaimed for the Federal government and explanations to be made clear to the right to interfere with slavery in the masses. But they were not deaf to the States, but claimed for it the right to unmeasured denunciations and falsehoods prohibit it in the common territories, their Northern confederates had been long nominated for their candidate an eminent preaching and publishing against them. North-western politician, the zealous Nor were they blind to the demonstrations expounder of “Squatter Sovereignty.” A and overt acts of hostility ventured upon third party of no definite views, except by the more virulent of the anti-slavery peace at any price, brought out their party. But here was, or seemed to be, a candidate. And a fourth, consisting of numerous party in the North, who professed the people of the Southern States and such to adhere to the terms of the compact on people in the North as maintained the which the union of the States had been permanence and sanctity of the terms, on formed; and who loudly protested against which the Union had been formed, and the the aggressions of the Northern States and limitations on the powers of the Federal people against their Southern con- [85] government, nominated their candidate. federates. Putting faith in this party, The result was that the anti-slavery party and acting with it, the Southern States carried every Northern State, and the still hoped to be able to remain in the election — the fourth party carried every Union with self-respect and safety. Southern State, and the other parties were An election of President of the United nowhere. States was to come on late in 1860, and The people of the Southern States now the whole Union was greatly agitated by found that they were living under a the canvass. The anti-slavery party chose government completely in the hands of for their candidate an until lately their enemies, utterly hostile to their obscure man — of little capacity or rights and interests, and claiming a right attainments, except as what is called a not only to surround and hedge them out stump orator. He had a genius for [86] from all right in the common diverting a rude Western crowd with funny territories, and reduce them to complete and hopeless subjection, but to names of these men are legion, as the revolutionize their internal political and political journals of 1860-1 clearly show. social organization. This was not the But there were examples of very confederation into which they had entered; different conduct among the most eminent this was not the government which they had men in the North. The Ex-President joined in creating. Unless they could Franklin Pierce continued to pronounce the submit to be revolutionized by external grievances complained of by the South to enemies, and become mere tributary be real, and the conduct of the North and provinces to them, it was high time to of the government a series of outrages. break off all connection with utterly Ex-President Filmore, when urged by a faithless confederates, whom the most great popular assembly [87] in New York to solemn treaty could not bind. The become a mediator between the North and Southern States began to secede from the the South, for the preservation of the Union in rapid succession, and war was Union, replied: — “Let the people and the made upon the South to force them back legislative assemblies of the North make into it. redress for their outrages, and repeal We shall make little comment on the their unconstitutional acts, and I will war. But the people of the South were gladly go to mediate for the Union. But surprised to see those Northern until they do that, I will not budge one politicians, merchants, capitalists, and step.” The secession of several States others who made up the Democratic party occurring during the last months of there, and who had joined in loudly President Buchanan’s administration, he protesting against the usurpations of the both by words and actions showed that he government and the aggressions on the held the grievances of the Southern States South — to see these men throw themselves to be real, and felt great scruples at into the arms of the new administration, using force to keep them in the Union. seek from it office and military commands But the Northern pressure brought to bear and profitable contracts, and become the upon him was overwhelming. Mr. Charles zealous sustainers of every measure to O’Connor of New York, a man of high and crush the South. A few months after unspotted character, and the most eminent proclaiming its wrongs, they were eagerly lawyer in the United States, published an making war upon it. This seemed strange; elaborate address to the public, yet their conduct is easily explained. maintaining the right of any state to While they could keep the South in the secede from the Union on the violation, by Union, they enjoyed the profits of Negro other States or by the Federal government, slave labour. If the South seceded they of its rights under the Constitution; and lost all the profits of slave labour. The he scouted at the idea that either the government or the other States had a than the Nestor of the English bar, the shadow of right to use force to retain the Chief Justice now found that, in his seceding State in the Union. And five extreme old age, he had outlived the law. years after, when the war was over, the Out of many such examples afforded by South conquered, and the Confederate eminent men in the Northern states, we President, Jefferson Davis a prisoner in will refer to one more, Mr. Valandingham, Fortress Monroe, Mr. 0’Connor at once an able lawyer and statesman, and member offered himself as his counsel; of Congress from Ohio. He laboured under maintaining the impossibility of the conviction that the conditions of a convicting him of any crime. The treaty between confederates, and the government reluctantly perceived this legislation resulting from that treaty, impossibility of conviction on any charge were sacred things, binding the that could bear legal scrutiny. Some consciences and the hands of the parties months after Abraham Lincoln had become to it. This impelled him to oppose President, Chief Justice Taney, for nearly zealously the usurpation of power by the thirty years the head of the Supreme Court Federal government, and the aggressive of the United States, the highest judicial legislation and action of the people of authority in the Union, had occasion to the Northern States against their Southern pronounce judicially, that the measures of confederates. The major part of his the government and the conduct of the constituents, being among the most guilty President and his subordinates amounted to of those he censured, took the earliest the overthrow of the Constitution and [88] opportunity to turn him out of his seat, a trampling on all law. But military and sent a man of different principles to officers with the sanction of the fill his place. But Valandingham was President, thrust aside the writs of earnest, able, and eloquent. He continued habeas corpus issued from the United to protest against the measures of the States courts, with the utmost contempt. government, when out of Congress, as he On the breaking out of the English had done when in it; and to demonstrate revolution in 1688, Sergeant Maynard, a their utter lawlessness; and many people luminary of the English bar, hastened to listened to him [89] with interest. As join the standard of William, Prince of nothing could make him desist from this Orange; who, on seeing him, bluntly said: factious course, it was deemed necessary — “From your extreme age you must have to silence him. And those in power were outlived all the lawyers of your day.” equal to the occasion. “If your Highness had not come quickly,” Ohio was not one of the States agitated he answered “I should have outlived, not by the secession movement. On the only the lawyers but the law.” Less happy contrary, it had already raised more than fifty regiments of volunteers to sustain Doubtless he too would have found zealous the policy of the government, and crush and powerful friends to procure that he resistance to it. The military commander [90] should be merely exiled and outlawed. in Ohio, under orders from Washington, Such a proceeding would have been quite as proceeded against Valandingham in a legal as the case we offer as a precedent. summary manner. He, a civilian, not in We do not mean to compare Valandingham arms, but guilty of making speeches with Mr. Gladstone. He was not endowed against the measures of the government, with all the gifts of the English was arrested, court-martialed, and statesman; and he was especially wanting condemned to death. in that pliancy and versatility of Luckily for Valandingham he had many convictions which have characterized Mr. and strong friends, even among the zealots Gladstone’s long and varied career. These for absolutism in government. Great indeed have led the latter into some exertions were made to save him; and at incongruities; one (we will mention only length, in mercy, he was thrust across the one) of the most singular of which is, Confederate lines as an exile and outlaw. that he, who has proved throughout his Not being a Southern man, nor a life the most strenuous of peace- secessionist, he was permitted to pass advocates, even to the point of buying through the Confederate States, and at peace with gold paid down, should be last found a refuge in Canada, until the crazed with admiration for an old Greek war was over. There were other civilians, poem which, from alpha to omega, is more obscure but not more guilty than stuffed full of fighting. Valandingham, who, not having as potent There was no right more expressly friends, did not escape death by sentence acknowledged and fully secured to the of similar courts. people than the right to keep and bear We were, not long since, tempted to arms. It was a right that lay at the very suggest that Valandingham’s case would foundation of government, both State and afford a good precedent in dealing with Federal — and the most essential element Mr. Gladstone who, by daily speech and in the security of the liberties and the pamphlet, was harassing the government and rights of the citizen. Nor was any right vexing the souls of the British nation, in more fully in the hands of the States, his pertinacious opposition to their according to the Constitution, the laws, measure, during the war between Russia and and the custom of the country, than that Turkey. This factious turbulence might of officering, arming, and training the have been quieted by requiring the Duke of militia. This was the military force of Cambridge, as head of the army, to have the State, and the Federal government Mr. Gladstone court-martialed and shot. could only obtain the services of any part of it by applying to a State government say that arms intended for and consigned for it. Further, if there was anything to the State of Georgia have been seized well established in the Union by the by the police; but the city of New York Constitution, the laws, and the customs of should in no way be made responsible for the country, it was the freedom of the outrage. As mayor I have no authority internal commerce. Any man had a right to over the police. If I had the power, I buy anything offered for sale, and carry should summarily punish the authors of it to any part of the Union without this unjustifiable seizure of private hindrance. property.” Yet when, before the Southern States How came the Southern members of this had seceded from the Union, many Federal republic to be so destitute of individuals in the South and some of the arms and armament? The States had for State governments, becoming alarmed at the many years neglected to keep up any threatening aspect of [91] affairs and the efficient arsenals of their own, relying unarmed condition of the South, attempted on those of the common government in all to purchase arms and ammunition, the contingencies. The Federal government had Northern people and State governments were in store large amounts of arms and at once awake and active. The police of ordnance, procured by contract, or made at the States and the cities were set to its own establishments, all of which, watch every shipment by coast, river and except one on the Northern border of railroad; and all arms consigned to any Virginia, were in the Northern States. one suspected of connection with the South These arms, when received, were were at once seized upon. All legal right distributed among many depots, some of was trampled upon. It was assumed that which were in the Southern States. the Southern States were already subject [92] President Buchanan’s Secretary of provinces preparing for rebellion. War was John B. Floyd, who had been These doings were loudly protested Governor of Virginia, as his father had against even in the North. The New York been before him. Both had been strenuous Herald, among others, denounced it as “a maintainers of the rights of the Southern clearly illegal proceeding, in violation States in opposition to the aggressions of of the Constitution, and without the the North. Suddenly there arose at the sanction of any law of the State. It is North a loud out-cry that this Southerner an unwarrantable outrage on the rights of had availed himself of his position, as private property, &c.” head of the War Department, to transfer Fernando Wood, Mayor of New York, in large amounts of arms from the North to reply to the inquiries of Mr. Toombs, the South, in anticipation of Secession; Senator from Georgia, says: “I regret to thus arming the “rebels” while he disarmed the true men and their government. For the fact that 500,000 of these old weapons the people there almost universally looked still encumbered the arsenals in the upon the Federal government, with its North. Had Floyd foreseen the secession powers and means, as something belonging of the Southern States, perhaps he would to themselves. It was not for one moment have taken care that there should be a remembered that any property in the hands more equal distribution of government arms of the government belonged quite as much and munitions of war among States, each of to the people of the South as of the which had an equal right to them. Yet North. President Lincoln, in his message to When Congress promptly investigated Congress on the 5th of July, 1861, did not this charge, the facts at once explained scruple to assert that “a disproportioned and refuted it. There had been great amount of arms and munitions of war had neglect for years in replenishing the some how found themselves in the Southern depots (called arsenals) in the South. States.” But the United States, now following the Thus the Northern States and their example of European governments, had of people had control of the government, with late been laying aside the smooth-bored its treasury and credit, of the army and musket, and old-fashioned rifle, forts, of the navy, with the power of substituting the Minie rifle in their blockading the Southern coast; and they place. In December, 1859, Secretary Floyd lost no time in using that power. The had ordered 115,000 arms of these South, which had chiefly paid for all antiquated patterns to be sent to Southern these things, and had an equal right to arsenals, to make room for the new arms in them, had no part of them. True to its the Northern armories. The arsenals in policy of draining all it could from the the South received not one of these South, and returning as little as improved weapons. In the issue, one of possible, the government made nearly all the odds against the Southern troops was its military, naval and other expenditures having to contend against an enemy at the North, and kept the results there, provided with the new and superior weapon. except the armaments of a few forts, as A large portion of the better arms they Fortress Monroe, Fort Sumter, Pulaski, afterwards obtained were taken on the Pickens, and others, which served as battlefield from defeated enemies. bridles in the mouths of Southern Notwithstanding the evidence to the harbours. The people of the North seemed contrary, Secretary Floyd was persistently to aim at keeping the South in the charged with treason, for sending 115,000 condition of the Israelites under the iron old muskets to depots in the [93] South, rule of the Philistines. “There was no although President Buchanan pointed out smith in all the land of Israel; for the Philistines said — lest the Hebrews make and withdraw from the Union. This was a them swords and spears.” peaceful right and no act of hostility. The people of the Northern States made But the politicians went beyond this and several gross blunders in estimating the assured the people that secession would condition of the South. (Talleyrand tells prove a peaceful remedy for their wrongs. us that, in politics, a blunder is worse This was as gross an absurdity as any man, than a crime.) They had taught themselves calling himself a statesman could utter. to believe that the South would be yet The people of the Northern States had more productive and profitable to them control of the Federal government and of [94] under free Negro labour than under all its powers and resources; they had slave labour. They looked upon the been for years in the enjoyment of large condition and feelings of the Negroes as contributions or rather tribute from the identical with that of prisoners unjustly industry and fertility of the South; their shut up in gaol. They believed that the prosperity had been largely, we think people of the South felt that they were chiefly built upon these contributions, sitting on a volcano — knowing that the and must decline on their withdrawal. Now Negroes were only waiting on their it is flying in the face of all history northern friends for the signal for and all experience in human nature to insurrection to rise in arms against their suppose that any people or government, cruel oppressors; and that under this fear with large means of waging war, will the people of the South dared not resist abandon possession of rich tributary the aggressions of the North and of the territories [95] without first striving to government under their control. retain them by force of arms. It matters The people of the South and their not whether the tribute is the result of leaders committed many and great blunders. robbery or of right. They will fight But we will only name one which we think rather than give it up. the first and greatest of all. The Some individuals in the South uttered politicians, urging on the people the earnest warnings that secession meant war, necessity of seceding from the Union, for it must lead to it; and urged prompt universally pronounced secession to be a preparation for it. But they had not the peaceful right. And so it was. The terms ear of the people. If the South had any of the treaty which had united the States statesmen, their counsels were not heard into a confederation having been grossly, amid the harangues of politicians; and the repeatedly, and notoriously violated by States which seceded went out of the the Northern States, to the injury of the Union, with the most flimsy preparations Southern, any one or all of them had a for maintaining in arms the step they had right to declare the treaty null and void, taken. The most important provisions made for defence were due to the foresight and people thoroughly plundered. In truth, activity of a few individuals. many of the later military expeditions In the war that ensued the five were little else than cotton stealing millions of whites in the seceding raids, which well account for the sudden Confederate States had to fight their own wealth of many officers, from the battles, half armed, and cut off from the commander-in-chief downwards. But mere outside world; but the twenty-two millions plunder did not satisfy them. Two facts in the Northern States, supplied the indicate the spirit which actuated the deficiencies of the United States Northern government and armies. When armaments by drawing supplies from all their columns, marching through the Europe. But what they seemed most to need country, came to a house of the better were fighting men; for they continued to class, which was deserted by the family offer higher and higher bounties, until for fear of being robbed and insulted, they had enlisted a quarter of a million they usually burned it as the home of a of Irish and another of Germans, many, traitor, and sometimes burned a whole town perhaps most of them fresh from home, to unhouse a nest of traitors. Yet more tempted not only by high bounties, but by galling to those who valued religious the hope of free farms from the lands of liberty above worldly possessions was the the “rebels” which were freely, although fact that, by order of the government, all privately promised them. We can hardly the Anglo-Episcopal churches were closed, have over-stated the number of foreigners in which the President of the United in the United States army. At the end of States was not prayed for. the war the number of men in the service The conquered provinces were then was one million. The report of the placed under military governors, until the Surgeon-General of the United States farce could be gone through of certifies that the majority of those who reconstructing the state government came into the hospitals were Irish and according to the orders and plan sent from Germans. And the Confederates found that Washington. They are now indeed called a great part of the prisoners they took States, but they are still conquered and had not left Ireland or Germany long. The subjected provinces. Yankees themselves much preferred army We say this from the conviction that contracts to military service. but for the dominating power of the After a four years’ bloody struggle the Northern States, and the military force of Confederate States [96] were overrun and their government at Washington, the conquered; the Negroes, who had remained reconstructed State governments in the quiet all the time, were emancipated, the South would not have stood one day. State governments were overthrown, and the CHAPTER VII.
The Effects of this Revolution on the Whole Union.
We may seem at times to have wandered from our subject, but we believe that all we have hitherto said will assist the reader to understand the present condition of the United States. In 1860 the United States were, or seemed to be, the most prosperous of countries. The financial credit of the government, of the individual States, and of numberless great corporations, stood exceedingly high in Europe, and enabled the country to borrow on easy terms all the capital it wanted. All the world that had money to lend thought the United States the best place to lend money in. This almost unlimited credit was based, not merely on the then present prosperity of the country, but yet more on its rapid progress towards greater prosperity. But when we examine into the sources of this credit, we find that the importance of the United States to the rest of the world was chiefly commercial and financial; and that its growing importance in these respects was based chiefly on the annually increasing production by the Southern States, of staples to the value of three hundred and thirty millions of dollars already, and increasing in amount Northern speculators brought an immense and value every year. The exports of the amount of Northern capital and Northern rest of the Union were trifles compared to credit with them. Many of them sought to this. do a thriving business by lending largely The greater part of the productions of to embarrassed Southern planters on the South found a ready market in Europe, mortgage of their lands, at 15, 18 and 20 and the whole of them would have [98] done per cent. interest. But the greater so, if a large part had not been diverted, number of these men were convinced that by most unjust legislation, to serve as the Southern planters had always been too tribute to swell the prosperity of the indolent and ignorant to manage their people of the Northern States, serving to affairs with skill, and that they raise still higher that financial credit, themselves could now show them how to make of which they were making such free use. crops. This credit, much shaken during the war They bought numberless plantations, and of Secession, was fully restored by the where they could [99] not buy they leased success of the North and of its them. They bought tools, implements and government, as long as the real effects of machinery; repaired barns, cotton gins, this war could be concealed and sugar-mills, &c., and hired Negroes misrepresented. Indeed few of those who freely. They were certain that free Negro now feel these effects most sorely seem labour would prove better and cheaper than yet to understand the causes of them. We slave labour. They found the Negro will endeavour to point them out plainly. generally ready to hire himself. The When the Southern States were crushed, difficulty was to make him fulfil his conquered, and revolutionized, besides the engagement. vast number of Northern men who flocked Of the Southern planters some few, even thither, or, leaving the army, remained under their altered circumstances, by there, in search of office, and plunder by skill, economy, and good luck, have been means of office, a crowd of Northerners, able to make a decent living. But the of a somewhat different stamp, came down most successful of them are far poorer into the South. Their government had than they were — nine-tenths of them are expended more than three thousand millions greatly impoverished, and three-fifths of of dollars in preserving these states, now them are already utterly ruined. This is conquered provinces, to the Union; and the condition of those, born in the these men came to render the fertile South country, familiar with the nature of the more profitable than ever to the North, by Negro, and bred up to agricultural means of free Negro labour; and to make pursuits there. But what of the new- their own fortunes while so doing. These comers from the North, with untold millions at their command, most of it perhaps in all the eleven States that borrowed in Europe or originally drained seceded, have not paid the cost of growing from the formerly fertile fields of the them; and year by year the South has grown South ? We do not pretend to know how poorer and poorer. much of Northern capital has gone Many facts prove this: and, first, the Southward from first to last, either as returns of the census of 1870, compared the means of entering on these with those of 1860. The census furnishes speculations, or in the effort to sustain evidences of an astonishing decline in the them, or to lend at high interest to productions of the Southern States; so Southern land-holders, or in buying up the great as to warrant the conclusion that stocks of dilapidated and embarrassed these States actually produce less than Southern railroads, and in building there they consume. numberless new railroads, anticipating a To prove this we will go into some most prosperous future for the country. details. Cotton, sugar, and rice, are But in place of prosperity came ruin; and produced only in the South, and we select the old and the new roads are bankrupt. the facts as to these articles, because But we are sure that the outlay in the the whole deficiency falls upon the South. South amounts to many hundreds of The cotton crop of 1860 amounted to millions. We know that most of the money 5,387,000 bales. The crop of 1870 was lenders have been compelled to take the 3,011,000 bales, being a decline of mortgaged plantations, and turn planters 2,375,000 bales. In the ten years from themselves, or sell the plantation for far 1850 to 1860 the cotton crop had advanced less than the debt under the mortgages. from 2,400,000 bales to more than double. We have yet to hear of one decidedly But in stating the produce of single successful Northern man who went to the years, as the census does, and not a South and turned planter. Nine out of series of years, we know that an ten, perhaps nineteen out of twenty, have unfavourable, compared with a favourable been utterly [100] ruined. These Northern season, somewhat exaggerated the progress speculators have become more thoroughly of increase. But had the usual average bankrupt than even the Southern planters. increase of the cotton crop continued down We are certain that 90 per cent. of the to 1870, it would have amounted to eight capital carried to the South has been sunk or nine millions, nearly three times as there, never to rise again, and only much as the crop of 1870. serves to swell immensely the vast amount The production of sugar in 1860 was the North spent to preserve the Union. 231,000 hogsheads. In 1870 it had fallen The truth is that since 1866 the crops to 87,000 hogsheads, not much over one- grown in the cotton States, at least, third. [101] The rice crop in 1860 amounted to Now a decline of one-half in the 215,313,000 pounds. In 1870 it had fallen productions of a country may well imply to 73,635,000, little more than one-third. that it has fallen from the height of In Virginia the tobacco crop in 1860 prosperity into utter ruin. It may imply was 123,368,000 pounds. In 1870 it fell that the country consumes all, and more to 37,086,000, less than a third. than all, it produces, and that there is The only Southern State in which wheat no surplus beyond the cost of production, was an important crop was Virginia. In and even that may not be replaced. What 1860 the crop amounted to 13,131,000 country is there that produces yearly bushels. In 1870, to 7,398,000 — somewhat [102] twice as much as it consumes? We more than half. know of none. The truth is that the Maize, or Indian corn, is a most South, especially the cotton States, have important crop in the Southern States, grown poorer year by year, from 1865 to being the chief breadstuff of the people, this day. So far from producing any and the chief food of live stock on a surplus, it has been living from hand to farm. In some States, down to 1860, there mouth on the Northern capital carried was a considerable surplus for there by sanguine speculators within the exportation. last twelve years. The South since 1865, The States of Virginia, North and South has been suffering under a chronic state Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, of scarcity of the necessaries of life, at Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, in high prices in a poor country. Far more 1860, produced 263,291,000 bushels of cases of death from actual want occur in Indian corn. In 1870 they produced it, and chiefly among the Negroes and 156,103,000 bushels, about three-fifths of especially their children, than in any the former crop. There was nothing left country in which productive land is for exportation. Was it enough for food? abundant in proportion to the population. We will not cram our reader with We know that a totally different statistics, the driest and most chaffy of picture from this is assiduously presented all mental food — but refer him to the to the world, as exhibiting the present heavy volumes of the census. Taking the condition of the South. Every newspaper chief production of the Southern States it there, and every man of business who has is apparent that the average amount of his capital at stake there, does the their productions in 1870 was little, utmost to give a favorable impression as perhaps no more than half of what it was to the revival of industry and prosperity. in 1860, yet there was some increase of They vainly hope by concealing ruin to population in those ten years. ward it off. They are galvanizing a corpse. But this concealment and misrepresentation become more impossible purchasers have been since ruined by every day. cultivating them. It may be said now as It must not be imagined that the to the plantation States, that with rare Southern States, taken as a whole, form a exceptions, land can find no sale, has no very fertile region. It is naturally less price, and is often not worth the tax fertile by far than England, Ireland, imposed on it. Extensive and valuable France, Italy, and other countries we estates with costly improvements on them, could name. Its late prosperity was and in the cultivation of which in cotton, based, first on the abundance of sugar, and rice, many thousands of dollars improvable land, and then not less on were expended every year, are now thrown agricultural skill and industry, protected out untilled, and the dwellings, mills and by well-ordered and economical State other buildings are rotting to the ground. governments, which no longer exist. There is very far less land under There is no better measure of the cultivation than in 1860, the cultivation prosperity and decline of a country than is far worse, and dilapidation and the rise and fall in the price of land. abandonment increase from year to year. There is a great deal of land in the Most of the Negroes who have bought or Southern States that never was sold but at rented land to farm for themselves, fail very low prices — and much may be said even to feed themselves, and after a year never to have had any value but for the or two return to the condition of hired timber growing on it. Of [103] these labourers — and can be little relied on as lands we need not speak; but of the such. In the greatest part of the country fertile and improvable soils much had been all other culture is slighted to make the rendered highly productive, and much that cotton crop, the only one that brings any changed hands from time to time brought money into the country, and of that but a high and increasing prices. A vast deal half crop is made. It is very difficult of land has been sold since the end of the to ascertain what the cotton crop now war, and prices have continued to fall amounts to. Before 1860 it was estimated from year to year. And in the cotton from the receipts at the Southern shipping States at least, it would be an ports, no account being taken of the small extravagant estimate to suppose that land percentage used in the regions that would on an average bring one-fourth the produced it. But now much of the crop price it would readily have commanded goes northward, [104] inland, by the before 1860. Indeed in many parts of the Mississippi and the railroads. We believe country, formerly highly prosperous, many that the same cotton is sometimes counted plantations have been sold for less than a twice, perhaps thrice, in making up the tenth of their former value, and the estimates of the crop — for instance at Memphis, then at St. Louis, then at some diminution of live stock of all kinds, and Atlantic port. The cotton buyers, early we know that in particular parts of the in the season use every device to make the country planters who had large stocks of crop out larger than it really is; as that cattle, sheep and swine running at large, cheapens the staple to them. And they now have none. The idle and hungry find no more efficient agents for this Negroes killed them off secretly in the purpose than the officials of the United woods and swamps, and by night. Luckily States agricultural bureau, which reports they have not [105] acquired the French from time to time the prospects of the taste for horse-flesh. We know that not a crop. few planters still cultivating much land, Yet the bulk of the exports from the and who once had herds of a hundred head, Union are still furnished by these have not one cow. All the milk their impoverished Southern States, in the shape families now use is that which is of cotton, tobacco, and some other imported, dried and prepared for sale in products, much as they are reduced in packages. A cow would have to be kept quantity and value. And the greater part under lock and key to prevent the Negroes of the revenue of the United States is milking it, if they did not kill and eat still derived from a tariff system, which her. We knew other planters who had herds is simply a robbery of the South. of swine in their wooded swamps, and There is one interest in the South fattened and killed one or two hundred which, in many parts of the country, has every winter, who do not now get one from suffered even more than agriculture, and that source. that is pastoral industry. Great as have With the exception of the great grazing been the depredations of the Negroes on State of Texas the South has long failed the farmers’ crops; (and cotton affords to supply itself with animal food. The peculiar facilities to the thief, as it scanty supply of bacon eaten there is can be gathered and sold in the same night imported from the North-western States. to the receivers of stolen produce now Many countries and provinces have been infesting the country) their depredations conquered and revolutionized, yet their on his live stock exceed them. Although industry and their material resources the climate in the greater part of the little, often not at all, impaired by South is too hot for a line grazing these political changes. Poland, Algeria, country, these States formerly bred Alsace, vast regions in British India and numbers of horses, kine, swine, and sheep. elsewhere, afford proof that ruin is no The large amount of unenclosed land necessary result of conquest. But the furnishes a free and wide range for them. conquest of the Southern States, with the But the census shows a monstrous social revolution forced upon them, has permanently paralyzed rural industry, The moment he found that some people blasted the fertility of the more abroad had such natural facilities that productive soils, pollarded civilization they could make any particular article throughout the South, and is rooting it cheaper and better than he could, he out of large parts of it. hastened to his paternal government, and Previous to 1860 the Southern States got it to handicap the foreigner so were the most prosperous agricultural heavily that the Yankee alone could reach communities in the world. But even then the winning post, the home market of the their prosperity accrued, not so much to United States. Thirty, and forty, and their own benefit as to that of the fifty per cent duties on foreign goods Northern States; for the sovereign were long odds in his favour — but not majority in the North had contrived to always enough. We believe the duty on reduce the South, financially, to the foreign silks is sixty per cent. and on condition of tributary provinces, and drew woollen stuffs sixty-four. For a time an immense tribute from them. Now not this system of taxation served its purpose only is that tribute lost to the North, well. For although the Yankee but it is now burdened with the manufacturers could sell little or nothing maintenance of a costly pauper who has in the world abroad in competition with proved a great [106] consumer of its cheaper and better goods, they had the shrunken resources. The South has become monopoly of the home market, in most a paralyzed limb, to a by no means healthy articles, sustained by the immense amount, body. And the chief indication of and the artificially cheapened price of vitality in this paralyzed limb is an Southern produce, and by the great demand occasional, violent convulsion. in the South for manufactured goods; and But, it may be said, the United States this made a profitable little commercial have become a great manufacturing country. world of itself. Is not that a resource that may yet The great tribute paid by the South to maintain its prosperity? the Northern manufacturers on protected The Federal government, by a most articles, the great revenue it paid to the unnatural and unjust fiscal policy which government in duties on foreign goods, it has pursued for fifty years, succeeded (for after all [107] the manufacturers in building up an immense but forced failed to supply all the country wanted) system of manufactures throughout the added to the immense amounts borrowed Eastern and Northern States. The abroad and expended in developing the enterprising Yankee undertook to resources of the country, gave to the manufacture everything, even to the North the appearance of vast prosperity. natural productions of other countries. This prosperity brought on a great rise in wages, in the cost of materials, of the all things. The London ‘Times’ and ‘Pall necessaries of life, in the style of Mall Gazette’ are frightened at seeing living. For everyone thought that he was certain cotton stuffs from the United making his fortune. Living in New York States underselling even in Manchester, was more costly than in London, twice as the manufactures of [108] that locality. costly as in Paris. Ostentatious people, In their eyes the Yankee is bearding the becoming pinched in their incomes, went to British lion in his den. Here in Canada European capitals to economize. we recognise these cheap Yankee goods, But the country has lately waked up sold below the cost of making them, as from its dream of manufacturing and bankrupt stock, “slaughtered goods” sent commercial prosperity to find it only a abroad to be sold for whatever they will dream. bring, because the sale of them in the Its vast system of factories and United States would beat down the price of workshops, and commercial agencies, and all similar goods, which already hang so its network of railroads that covered the heavy on the manufacturers’ hands. These country, have lost their best and greatest marvellous cheap goods are the evidence of customer, and the bounty they made him pay some bankruptcies, but they foreshadow on their industry. Their customer, the many more. South, is worse than a bankrupt — he is a It is curious to trace the effects pauper, and it costs them money to keep which the protective system, the vast him. Under the changed condition of the borrowings, the vast expenditures, and the country they now find that all the outlay high cost of materials, and of living, they have made, chiefly of borrowed money, have had on the United States merchant in manufacturing, commercial, and marine. For a long time the United States transportation agencies, has been quite were a great ship-building country. over-done; and rival establishment are Thirty years ago, perhaps later, the cutting each other’s throats in their merchant marine of the United States was efforts to secure to themselves the the second in the world, and in tonnage diminished and embarrassed trade of an fell not far short of that of Great impoverished and mutilated confederation. Britain. Now, even with its river The country is now actually losing money steamers included, it is a poor shrunken on its investments in manufacturing thing, and the exports of the country go establishments and enterprises that have in foreign and safer bottoms to the run it deeply into debt. markets of the world. The United States It is curious to see how the signs of have lost their ship-building, and their the times are misconstrued by those carrying trade, and all the profits prophets who pretend to know and foresee derived from them. Yet the government has spent millions to bolster up lines of wheat. It will be worth one’s while to steamers; and some of the ugliest of the trace the migrations of this wheat-centre; numberless frauds perpetrated on the for it is not a stationary point. There public treasury have been connected with was a time within this century when the these efforts to revive the marine people of the six New England States grew interest of the country. the wheat for their own bread. Now they But the United States, it may be said, could not feed themselves with home-grown are still a country of vast resources; wheat for a fortnight. Since then New they can rely on their developed and their York was a great wheat growing State, and undeveloped agricultural wealth. If the the wheat centre stood in it. Now its South be permanently ruined, it is but a wheat crop cannot feed its people for five corner of the country that is ruined. The months. After that Pennsylvania was a great West, wide and fertile, can give great wheat-grower, and the wheat centre employment to all the factories and was found there. Now its people can eat workshops — to the great network of up the wheat crop in ten months. Stepping railroads that connect every part of the for a moment out of the line of the wheat country, to all the [109] commercial centre’s migrations, we will remark that depots, and agencies scattered over it. as late as 1860 Virginia produced twelve It can repay all that has been borrowed, bushels of wheat for every person in it. and replace all that has been lost. In 1870 it produced only six, and now Let us look into this great West. probably less. The wheat centre for a Through the blessing of a most favourable time took its station in Ohio. Then it season last year, it harvested a monstrous moved into Indiana and Illinois, but is crop of grain. In the midst of the now somewhere between Iowa, Wisconsin and distress and embarrassment of the whole Minnesota. But from its past history we country, men’s spirits rallied and revived [110] infer that it will not stop there at this prospect of plenty. But man is long; and as in its migrations it has never satisfied. One blessing only makes always moved westward, it must then take a him long for another; and all the wheat long leap over to Oregon and California. growers and wheat dealers, who believe in Let General Hazen tell us the reason why. a God, were praying for a general war in General Hazen is an officer in the Europe to raise the price of grain. United States army, and seems to have been All trades have their technical much employed in the far West, perhaps in phrases; and among the grain dealers in topographical exploration of the country. the United States you will often hear of A year or two ago he published an the “wheat centre” around which central interesting article, it may have been an point cluster the largest productions of official report, of what he had seen there. In it he tells us that there lies crops of the West will not prove a East of the Rocky Mountains a country permanent resource to the country. twelve hundred miles square, (1,440,000 The restless wheat centre, setting out square miles, seven-sixteenths of the from the coast, has already travelled territory of the United States) which is a twelve hundred miles from the Atlantic, desert with not five per cent. of and would travel further if it could. If improvable land. And General Hazen’s this wheat is grown for European account is confirmed by others who know consumption, it costs a great deal to get the country well. The cold winter there it to market. Of three bushels on their may be no fatal objection to any part of way to market, two eat up the third and this country, but the heat and drought in lose something of their own weight and summer would keep the soil for ever bulk before they get there; for wheat is a sterile, if nature had not already made it heavy and cumbrous article in comparison so. It may afford some good pasturage with its value, and soon eats up the price during a short season — but even for that in travelling expenses. purpose it is worth little. For the This was one of the great advantages measure oF the capabilities of a pastoral enjoyed by the cotton States, while there country, is its power of feeding stock, were cotton States, and while they made a not during the most plentiful, but during cotton crop worth talking about. Their the scarcest season of the year. It is great staple, even when sold cheap, was said to be a country of great mineral still of great value in proportion to its wealth. But all the treasures buried weight. If the farmer in the far west got beneath its strata, would not tempt the ninety cents per bushel for his wheat, it wheat centre to linger one moment on the was worth to him at most but one cent and soilless surface that covers them. a half per pound. The cotton planter If New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia quite as often, if not oftener, got twelve have been worn out as wheat growing cents a pound for his cotton. If the regions; if their be truth in the wheat and cotton set out together on their assertion attributed to Abraham Lincoln, travels in search of a market, when the who lived in Illinois and knew it well, wheat had expended its whole first cost in that the wheat fields of that once fertile travelling expenses, the cotton would have State had sunk to an average of eight spent only twelve and a half per cent. A bushels per acre; if the wearing out of great and remote traffic must be sustained virgin soil by successive croppings, by more costly commodities than food, and without rest or rotation, be the true especially grain, one of the cheapest characteristic of American [111] farming, forms of food. we may safely infer that the great wheat If in 1860 the people of the United abundance of land, and the consequent low States, from a praise-worthy wish to pay price and rent paid for it. But good land some small part of the money they owed in is not abundant. There are many drawbacks Europe, had denied themselves the use of to farming. The extremes of the seasons wheaten bread, and, while living on are one of the chief. North of latitude potatoes, maize and oatmeal, had sent all 40, except in some limited regions, the their wheat to market abroad, it would not ground is frozen hard and the plough have netted, at the average price of cannot enter it from December until April, wheat, as much as the cotton crop of the and often until May — so that all tillage Southern States in that year, but would is interrupted for five months, during have fallen short of the cotton at least which much could be done to the land on a ninety millions of dollars. farm in Western Europe. On the other hand [112] We do not know what the wheat the summers are very hot, throughout the crop may yield in this the most favourable country, compared with those of Europe, season in the United States within twenty north of the Alps — and in consequence, or thirty years. But after all the North America is by no means as good a boasting as to the wheat crops of the grain growing region as Western Europe. States — most people will be surprised to The summer is everywhere too hot, and learn that the little region of England, in the North the winter too cold and long; with but fifty thousand square miles wheat, oats, and barley, after lying (equal to one sixty-fourth part of the dormant for months, are hurried on by United States) produced not much less than sudden heat to premature maturity, with half as much wheat as all the States did too few months of growth to [113] produce in 1870, and more than half of their crop the full and heavy yield common in more in 1860. France in the last twenty years temperate climates. Every farmer knows has grown more wheat than the United that the more months a crop continues States in the same time. If all the progressing naturally to maturity, the people in the United States used no bread fuller the return it will make to his stuff but wheat, so far from exporting labour. In America the small grains are large quantities, they would often have to hurried on by the heat and dryness of the import it, for only a good crop could summer, to hardening before they have supply their wants. attained all their plumpness and weight. One who is familiar with farm labour A bushel of grain, wheat, barley, and and farm produce in England, Ireland, especially oats, weighs far less in the Germany and France, would not think the United States than in Great Britain, and United States a very advantageous country much fewer bushels are made to the acre. for farming. The chief advantage is the The climate of three-fourths of the disseminated a judicious system of United States is far better suited to culture, manuring, and rotation, it maize, the farinaceous grain which nature revived rapidly, became a large wheat sowed there. It is now the common bread producing region, and in 1860 was one of stuff of half the country; and should the the most thriving of the farnming States. Northern States ever become really It may be worth while to mention populous it will rival the potato in another instance, on a smaller scale, of feeding the other half. America is not an effectual restoration or rather destined to be the granary of Western creation of a fertile soil, also in a Europe. It is probably as much so now as slave State. There is a row of flat sandy it ever will be. There is much barren islands along the coast of South Carolina land, in every part of the continent. The and Georgia, many of them of considerable better soils have been or are being size. The climate and soil are peculiarly rapidly exhausted by continuous cropping; fitted for the growth of what is, or and little is done to restore their rather was known as sea-island cotton, fertility. Few lay stress on feeding that variety of the plant producing the their land, that their land may feed them. finest and longest fibre, and commanding a The ocean is both directly and indirectly treble, quadruple, and even quintuple the great source of the more fertilizing price. But the light soil was quickly manures; and on a large and compact worn out. These islands are separated continent the bulk of the land lies far from the mainland and each other, not only beyond the reach of that source of supply. by water courses, but also by salt mud Slave labour is supposed to have been flats, covered with a thick growth of always accompanied by a slovenly, vicious, coarse marsh grass, (the Spartina Glabra, and wasteful system of agriculture. Yet we believe) and they are covered at high the only instance in the United States, tides with salt water. The cotton known to us, in which an extensive region planters gradually adopted the laborious has been restored from exhaustion to and complicated process of cutting, at low renewed fertility, occurred in a slave tide, great quantities of this marsh State. In 1820 the soil of the Eastern grass, and of the salt mud on which it and larger part of Virginia was so much grew, spading it like peat or turf, then exhausted by unskilful cropping, and hauling it to their fields, where it was especially by the cultivation of tobacco, pulverized and harrowed into the soil, that there was a great and continued which was effectually renovated by this migration Westward in search of new lands. manure laboriously rescued from the arms But after some [114] enterprising and of the sea. But these artificially skilful planters had adopted and zealously fertilized islands are now barren of all influenced by the consideration, whether but weeds. the assessors and assessed belong to the We are satisfied that it is only under same or different political parties. peculiarly favourable circumstances that In one branch of industry and skill the effort is made to recuperate the soil in people of the United States have made the United States, Many things are there remarkable progress. No where have the adverse to farming, and even with cheap inventive faculties of the mechanician farms and large farms few men grow rich on been more earnestly and successfully them. Even in the healthier parts of the tasked, and besides their own inventions United States the extremes of climate they have laid claim to many that they discourage, perhaps forbid that [115] never made. The circumstances of the assiduous and continuous field labour country stimulated this development. throughout the year which marks the farm- Demand for labour and scarcity of labour labourer in Western Europe. In the United are father and mother to labour-saving States but a small proportion of farm- contrivances; and among these have been labourers will engage or can get many agricultural implements greatly engagements by the year. The natives grow expediting labour on the farm. But as up averse to steady farm work, and can be they almost always aimed only at getting a scarcely tempted to it by high wages; and crop out of the land speedily and cheaply, the farmer has to look chiefly among the and few or none at the recuperation of the newly come Irish and Germans to find his soil, they have [116] hastened, not hired man. retarded the impoverishment of that soil. The farmer struggles against many In some of the North Western States obstacles to profitable farming besides thousands of acres of rich prairie land in the seasons and the soil. The high wages one body, without tree or stump, root or of labour and the unreliable character of stone, lay ready for the plough. the labourer, the high price to which the Agricultural speculators eagerly secured protective system has raised most of the possessions of these tracts. In many supplies, materials and implements needed cases many thousand acres formed but one on the farm; the burdensome taxes on land farm — for the absence of all materials and on improvements on it, by State, and for fencing, made enclosures too costly a county, and township assessments sadly cut process for small holdings. The down his profits. We have been told by capitalist called to his aid all the most farmers that these last burdens often efficient implements and machinery for amount to three or four per cent. on the deep ploughing, thorough harrowing, assessed value of the land, and that the drilling, sowing and covering. When the amount of that assessment is much crop ripened, portable steam thrashers, travelling from one point to another of The farmers furnish the productions on this wide domain, thrashed out the wheat, which many classes of traders and leaving the straw to dry in the almost speculators make, and often lose immense rainless summer, and all its valuable fortunes, but the farmers seldom grow rich elements to be sublimated and dispersed by except in a very small way. In the United the scorching sun and the sweeping winds States the large land-holder finds no of the unsheltered prairie. We see class of tenants, with skill, capital, and admiring paragraphs published, commenting trustworthy character, to take leases of on these gigantic agricultural feats, farms at rents remunerative to the owner. which have extracted ship-loads of wheat And if, rather than let his land lie idle, from a single farm. But in a very few he undertakes to farm on a large scale, years the proprietors, — we will not call every one he employs makes all he can out them farmers — find that they have of him without scruple, for a large land- exported not only their crops, but their holder is looked upon as a monopolist, and farms. The land is well nigh dead from lawful prey; and he generally ends by exhaustion, and the bare site is far being ruined. The only available use for remote from the means of manuring and a large landed property, is to speculate recuperation. Fertile and productive upon it, by cutting it up into small regions have become barren and desolate allotments, and selling them out at retail before now. And some of these farming price, as the shop-keeper does with his merchants have become bankrupt even before stock in trade. their farms were worn out. One of the chief natural resources of In almost every civilized country most the United States is undergoing rapid of the wealth is represented by the land- extinction. When North America was first holders, the rural proprietors. Even colonized few countries were better clad where such property is widely distributed with valuable forest growth than the among many, not a few examples of great Eastern half of the continent. Throughout wealth are found among them. This class the earlier history of the country much of have the most fixed and permanent interest its wealth was derived from this source. in the country. Much of the refinement, The amount of timber of all kinds seemed cultivation and integrity in the country inexhaustible. Ship-building, the is found among them; and they exercise preparation and exportation of timber, and [117] great social and political of what are known in commerce as naval influence. It is not so in the United stores, were for a time the chief States. It was so in the older and long industries of the country. settled Southern States; but it is so no But the forest is cut down, and where longer. are the ships? How few compared with what they once were! What timber is left is of to that monstrous class, who are seeking inferior quality, remote from water to make their fortunes by bold strokes in courses, and will not repay the cost of the feverous and gambling markets of the bringing it to market. The forest, the United States. growth of centuries, can never be The United States have been for some replaced, and the want of it deteriorates years growing less prosperous in their the climate. Already a consider- [118] agriculture, their manufactures, their able part of the United States is commerce, their marine resources, and dependent on Canada for timber; and we their forest productions, than they ever have good assurance that this supply will have been for any prolonged period; and we not last long. believe that their present condition can The rich men in the United States are be distinctly traced to growing and not the proprietors of the fields, permanent causes. meadows, and pastures, the broad acres, the visible and tangible property of the country. They do not much care for this kind of property. Its annual yield is too moderate and comes in too slowly for them; and the burdens of general and local assessments fall too heavy on the proprietors of land. The rich men of the country, or the reputed rich, are bankers, merchants, manufacturers, and above all, successful gamesters in stock jobbing of all kinds, in government, and State, and municipal bonds, and railroad corporation stocks, in government contracts got by official favouritism for a high fee; and all these things are of most fluctuating and uncertain value. Most of these millionaires have been lately raised into notice by some lucky speculation or peculation, and on a change of luck may be never heard of again — like many a Croesus who has lately disappeared in bankruptcy. But they are the leading spirits of the day — the objects of envy and admiration CHAPTER VIII.
Political and Social Condition of the United States.
The United States cover a vast region of country not unblest in climate and soil, not wanting but rather abounding in mineral wealth; and inhabited by a highly capable population. Why should they not prosper? Because evil agencies, political and moral, are, and long have been making war upon their prosperity. The people of those States which first formed the Union were fortunate in inheriting, with their Anglo-Saxon blood, valuable political and social institutions which, while kept pure and unperverted, protected their rights and promoted their welfare. But they gradually lost sight of the principles, on which political and social life can be safely organized, and gave themselves up to the guidance of false maxims in government and sociology, which have led them a long way towards moral and material ruin. We will specify some of those principles which they have thrown away. The colonies quarrelled with the mother country because they were taxed by its parliament in which they were not represented, “No taxation without representation!” This sounds like a safeguard to one’s rights; yet it is but a half truth, valueless and deceptive until rights, on the protection and security of you add the suppressed half to it. “No which the welfare and civilization of the representation without taxation!” country depend. This class may be very Government is a necessary agency. numerous, or may consist of comparatively Society cannot do without it. But it is a few, according to the circumstances of the costly and burdensome agent; and moreover particular country. But in every one whose powers have often been grossly civilized country it forms but a minority, abused [120] and perverted from their true and usually a small minority of the people objects. Yet its powers must be entrusted in it. Yet their right to be intrusted to some person, or persons, or class of with the ultimate control over the persons. The only class of persons to government and its officials will not be whom the ultimate control over the hard to see when we have considered two government can be entrusted with other suppositions. 1st. That of one man reasonable hope of good results, is that being the imposer, collector, and expender which furnishes the means of supporting of taxes. 2nd. That while the property- the government, and feels the burden of holders pay the taxes, those who hold no its costly maintenance. This class are property and pay no taxes, should impose the tax-payers, the holders of visible, them. Do not say that this is an tangible property, which cannot hide impossible case. But it is certain to itself from taxation. This class has a prove a [121] ruinous arrangement. These direct and obvious interest in watching imposers of the taxes have no motive for the government and the officials who enforcing on the government economy and administer its powers, in checking honesty in its expenditures. They may extravagance and enforcing economy and become interested in its extravagance, its honesty in government expenditure; for dishonesty, and in the perversion of its they furnish the means. They have every powers. Is not this what has happened in motive for watching that the operations of the United States? It has certainly come government are directed to the protection to pass in New York and all the large of the rights and the redress of the cities in the Union. Their expenditures wrongs of individuals, and the safety of have been most reckless and corrupt. The the community; and not perverted to estimates of the amount required to carry purposes for which it was not created. on the city government of New York during For this class have not only personal and the current year, the population being social rights, like other people, but they about one million, reach nearly possess vast acquired and vested rights $30,000,000. Does London, with a peculiarly apt to suffer from the neglect population of three and a half millions, or abuses, or perversion of government; spend more? We have just learned, long since the secure that all who ultimately controlled paragraph above was written, that the city the government and its officials, should of Memphis, in Tennessee, a town with have a direct interest in preserving that about forty thousand inhabitants, has government from corruption, and the surrendered its charter, in order to rid perversion of its powers. Accordingly itself of a debt of more than five these State governments were, for many millions of dollars; and the legislature years, efficient without becoming of Tennessee, to facilitate this burdensome or corrupt. bankruptcy without assets, has accepted But the ultimate control of government the surrender of the corporate existence and of its officials is not now in the of Memphis. Its creditors can now find no hands of those who have a direct and legally existing body against which to obvious interest in the economical, bring suit. There are many cities, both honest, and unperverted exercise of its in the Northern and the Southern States, powers. That class has but a very small as hopelessly encumbered with debt as voice in the matter, and no power to Memphis was lately; and they will seek and protect themselves or other people, except find a similar way to rid themselves of by bribing the multitude of needy and their burdens. It may not be very long mercenary voters, and paying exorbitantly before New York will get rid of its for their votes. growing debt, already amounting to one By the theory of the government, in the hundred and fifty millions, by a similar States and in the United States, all power process. This necessity originates is in the hands of the majority of voters altogether from the fact that the people on the basis of universal manhood who impose the taxes, incur the debt, and suffrage; and nothing but some forms of an expend or appropriate the proceeds, are effete political organization, termed the not the people who have to pay the money. “Constitution of the United States” stand The individual States originally had in between the sovereign majority and their their political organization this safe- absolute despotism. The minority are guard against the extravagance, nothing. This sovereign majority consists dishonesty, and perversion of their chiefly of men who have no direct and governments. We believe [122] that in obvious interest in the honest and every one, certainly in nearly all of them economical administration of the powers of the franchise was limited to the government. So far from its burdens freeholder, a basis of political power apparently falling on them, they feel a wide enough to secure attention to the direct and obvious interest in its protection of the personal and social expenditures being not only liberal but rights of every citizen, choice enough to extravagant. It is their aim that it should multiply offices, undertake great public life. The more adroit courtiers of public works, give out great contracts, the people, those “flattering prophets who embark in every kind of undertaking, prophesy smooth things, prophesy deceits;” assume every duty that can be forced into who pander to every passion, prejudice, the sphere of government operations, to and animosity, and every extravagant and swell its patronage and multiply [123] the groundless hope — nay the very jesters and paid dependants on its bounty. It is buffoons that divert the crowd, become the their government, and ought to be their chosen counsellors of the mob; and the mob servant, bound to do their work in is king. securing to them prosperity in the shape The lower the stratum of population on of good employment at high wages at least, which you lay the foundation of political if not a fat office, or a profitable power, the more mixed the ingredients of contract. that stratum in race and character, the The vast majority of this sovereign more completely you throw the government people derive all their political notions into the hands of demagogues, and the more from the harangues of the demagogues of unscrupulous these demagogues become. the platform and the press, men seeking It is by no means yet ascertained that their favour and vote for office, or their an unmixed Anglo-[124] Saxon population, support to some measure in which the whose hereditary institutions and customs orator has a direct but unseen interest. have best tended to train them for it, can The vast majority of the sovereign people maintain a decent, orderly government on have most confused and false notions as to the principles of democracy and universal what the best and most powerful government suffrage. It is certain that all other can do, and cannot do for those who live races have signally failed (unless the under it. In commenting on the conduct of Swiss, under their very peculiar public affairs there are many unwelcome circumstances, form an exception, and we facts to be dealt with, many unpleasant do not know that). It is certain that truths to be told. But the telling of when you introduce citizens of inferior unpleasant truths is not the way to win races you increase and complicate the the mass of voters. Those public men difficulties. But to the original Anglo- whose good sense, foresight and honesty Saxon population of the United States have lead them to raise a warning voice and been added millions of foreigners, most of utter unwelcome truth, to point out them of races that have shown peculiar obstacles that obstruct the people’s aptitude for popular government, several wishes, or evil consequences that will millions of Negroes incurably ignorant and follow their wilful course — these men, incapable by race, and probably far more one after another are dropped out of future millions of Chinese; for it would be treason against what has become the and oppose the frauds and peculations of fundamental principle of the government to politicians and placemen. They formed an attempt to exclude them. This system of opposition which, although it failed to sovereign democracy verges close upon a prevent the systematic robbery of the reference of all measures of legislation South by the government, yet could check and taxation by parliament chosen by the the operations of individual thieves in loafers and tramps that swarm over every office and of rings or combinations of part of the country. How will it work for them; and although there was peculation the paupers to decide how much shall be and knavery in almost every branch of the raised for the relief of the poor? public service, it was on a comparatively It has already come to this, that the small scale, and not seldom exposed and sovereign popular majority can never again punished. be represented by any considerable number But the overthrow and conquest of the of decent and honest men. Men who respect South swept every Southern statesman and truth, fair dealing, and themselves, patriot from the halls of Congress, and cannot go through the training necessary filled their places with Northern to secure the favour and support of the adventurers and Southern turn-coats, who local constituency of a section of this could be bought up with a round sum, or sovereign mob. And he who has Negro representatives who could be bribed successfully gone through that training, at less cost. Since then, frauds and is not fit to be trusted by any honest plundering in high places have multiplied man, or in any honest transaction. The and grown to gigantic stature. Millions, direct effect of this basis of government untold millions have been the prize — for is to fill all offices with the most no one knows to what extent the government artful and unscrupulous demagogues. It is and the country have been robbed. What a only by a rare combination of chances, or startling narrative of rascality in high by the influence of very great abilities places, involving senators and that an honest man can get into a post of representatives in Congress — and the importance; and then he is quite out of Vice-President, is furnished by the coun- [125] tenance, on looking into the history of the ‘Credit Mobilier’ and the faces of his brother officials around him. sixty millions of government bonds lent to Previous to 1860 the Southern States aid the Pacific railroad; and by the undoubtedly exercised a conservative purchase of the utterly worthless influence which checked the growing territory of Alaska, and the difference corruption of men in office. Most of the between the millions the United States Southern representatives were sent to paid and what the Russian government Washington expressly to watch and expose received! Need we refer to the manifest corruption in procuring subsidies to the As every one that imported foreign Pacific Steam Navigation Co. — to goods needed gold to pay the duties, there appointments to Indian agencies and to sprung up a market for gold coin; and the post sutler-ships — to the [126] immunity great but fluctuating demand for gold to from prosecution of the Whiskey ring — and pay duties, caused a corresponding to a multitude of transactions of the same fluctuation in the value of paper money. stamp? We will dwell for a moment on one Some times it took more paper money, and of them. sometimes less, to buy a fixed sum in Perhaps the most skillful and gold. The notorious gold room in New York profitable series of stock-jobbing was the scene of the excited and noisy transactions the world ever witnessed transfer of golden millions daily; and emanated from Washington, and from the became the financial gamester’s hell. For treasury department there. soon stockjobbing operations by Everybody knows that while the currency individuals, and by conspiring rings of of the United States for years has been adventurers, became far more the source of National bank notes, and the legal tender these transactions than the commercial notes of the government, yet nothing but demand for gold. gold is received at the custom-house in [127] The government was the great payment of duties. The paper money (lying receiver of gold, through the custom- promises to pay) being plentiful, and gold house, and the great holder of gold; for, being scarce, paper money fell many per keeping it, it paid all its current cent below gold; or, in Yankee parlance, expenses in paper money. When in want of gold rose many per cent. above paper paper money, the Secretary of the Treasury money. Their phraseology avoided stating would put some millions of gold in the the simple and obvious truth that it was market, and sell it for the paper with the paper money that fell and fluctuated which he paid the current expenses of the in value, not the gold that rose in price. government. As to him, who is gliding down the river A judicious and patriotic treasurer on a swift boat, every object on the shore would not miss the chance of doing a seems to be hurrying up the stream, so little financiering for the relief of a those, who had embarked themselves and needy government and depleted treasury, by their fortunes on a fluctuating paper withholding the sales of gold until, in currency, said that gold was rising in Yankee parlance, the price rose very high, value, whenever they found themselves that is until a great deal of depreciating swept downward by the ebb of the financial paper money could be got for it. Then, by tide. suddenly putting it into the market, the government might make many a good bargain out of the buyers of gold. In order, the gamesters, but threatened to prove however, to do this effectually it would that this government paper money might be be necessary to have a private agent worth nothing after all. authorized to contract to deliver gold at After this catastrophe the treasury a price at an appointed day to come. For department felt compelled to use the the moment the government millions came government gold as the means of steadying into the market, the price of gold was the value of the paper currency; and as it sure to tumble down several per cent. has been able to do this ever since, it is Thus the value of paper money — in evident that it might have done so before. Yankee parlance, the price of gold — was But there seem to have been other ends made, we will not say to oscillate, for aimed at, to the attainment of which these oscillations are measured by equable sudden fluctuations in the value of the times, but to fluctuate greatly, going up currency, and the power of producing them, and down at most uncertain periods, which appear to have been essential. nobody could foresee, except those who The “Black Friday” with other days of were in the secret of the golden ebb and this series of sudden financial flow of the treasury millions. The gold fluctuations, ruined crowds of gamesters room at New York furnished a most gigantic who became bankrupt for vast amounts. But and exciting game of hazard, immensely as we never heard that any high officials profitable to those who, by fee or favour, at Washington were losers on these could get a timely hint from Washington, occasions, we infer that, either they took the head-quarters from which the game was no part in the game, or had the luck to be played. always on the winning side. Much money It is not to be supposed that the was doubtless made by well timed sales of Secretary of the Treasury ventured to take government gold. But how much accrued to upon himself the whole responsibility of the benefit of the treasury, and how much this game, which so seriously affected the to that of individuals, we know not, and value of the whole [128] currency and never shall know. indebtedness of the country. He must have We will have occasion later to allude consulted the President and his cabinet, to the official robbery of almost every and secured their assent, or they, not Southern State to the amount of tens and understanding it, would soon have put a twenties of millions each, by the stop to this game which was played most intrusive governments forced upon them by briskly in 1870 and 1871, until in the the North. But it is impossible to latter year gold suddenly ran up to 1.40, exhaust the list of official robberies, and higher, and brought on the “Black and difficult to over-state the amounts. Friday” which not only ruined a crowd of [129] The people of the United States the senatorial chair, as the have become so much accustomed to fraud representative most worthy of his and robbery to the amount of millions by constituents. (This was written before high officials and prominent politicians, Tweed’s death in the penitentiary.) by great bankers, merchants, manufacturers Boss Tweed, we believe, was originally and others controlling great capital and a chair-maker, or chair painter, or of high influence, that nothing of this kind some such trade, but got his title of now startles them. They have ceased to “Boss” by becoming a master workman in a look or ask for honesty in men high in very different line. But let no man place. They have lost their perception of imagine that Boss Tweed is an anomalous infamy; and, in politics at least, quite character, or has run an anomalous career. as readily trust and sustain a rogue as an He [130] is simply a well marked type of honest man. Indeed they rather prefer the a numerous, and in many cases still rogue, as they hope to get something out prosperous, class of officials, to be of him, and his ill-gotten gains. found in every considerable municipal We will give an instance proving this. corporation, in every State government, in When Mr. Charles O’Connor, sacrificing every department of the United States for a time his professional interests to government, in the House of his patriotism, devoted himself to Representatives and the Senate, in the ferreting out the official rascalities of Cabinet and the diplomatic corps. Many of the notorious “Boss” Tweed and his them, like Boss Tweed, have come to grief. colleagues, by which they had robbed the But not a few, whose tortuous and city of New York of twenty-five millions dishonest careers are well known, still of dollars, six of which millions at least retain popular favour and high place. went into the pocket of Tweed alone — Nothing can be more false than the after Mr. O’Connor had made these supposition that under democratic monstrous rascalities, and especially institutions the people, or a majority of Tweed’s, manifest to all men, but before the people, or any considerable number of he could obtain his criminal conviction, them rule and govern. Under any form of Tweed’s constituents, the mob of New York, government whatever, the exercise and sent him back as a senator in the State administration of the offices and powers senate, to Albany, the very scene of many of government, must fall into the hands, of his most remarkable acts of corruption. not of the many, but of the few. The most Could he even now wriggle himself out of that any considerable part of a nation can the clutches of the law, while yet do, is to choose the official agents by retaining some of his plunder, they are whom the country is governed. To do this quite ready to send him back again to fill wisely and honestly is a very nice and difficult duty; and the election of all secret plotting, at war with private and officials by universal suffrage is the social rights and interests, than among certain way to turn all the duties and both the labouring and the idling classes powers of government into the hands of the in the United States. most designing, intriguing, and It is true that this government by the unscrupulous demagogues — and of rings or people has for years past been very combinations of conspiring demagogues, to successful in making the fortunes of those be used for their own purposes, to the who could obtain office under it, or damage and possible ruin of the country. exercise influence over those who are in Their statesmanship consists in office. It has made many men rich; but it hoodwinking one part of the people, has increased, not diminished the number bribing another, and plundering the rest. of the poor, and deepened their poverty. The United States are far too sparsely No country is more overrun with loafers peopled a country for them naturally to and tramps, and the surplus of the latter feel that pressure of population on the flow over the borders to the great means of subsistence, which seems to be annoyance and damage of their Canadian almost unavoidable in old and populous neighbours. The country is overrun with countries. Yet they have come in for more abandoned and criminal characters of all than their share of all these evils. They kinds, many of whom have enjoyed and have their crowds of work-people, availed themselves of good opportunities periodically, and also at uncertain, of obtaining an education. For under this unexpected occasions, thrown out of popular government much has been expended employment, and on the verge of [131] in educating the people; but little can be starvation; strikes and lock-outs on a said of the moral effects of this giant scale; leading to conflicts between education. The literary training of the labour and capital, to conspiracies for people serves chiefly to enable them to secret but wholesale murder, of which the enjoy the Newgate calendar narratives of Molly McGuires are but one example; and to fresh rascalities and atrocities committed the open conflicts of armed thousands, in various parts of the country, and amounting to civil war. In the lawless industriously disseminated by the most outrages in the Pennsylvania coal regions, licentious and libellous press that ever and in the bloodshed and conflagrations infested any country. It serves to growing out of the great strikes of familiarize them with crime and how to railroad employes on scores of roads commit crimes. And of that portion of the running through many States, we have seen people who make a profession of religion, only the beginning, not the end. In no the greater part [132] are chiefly country is there more open discontent and interested in the fulminations, satires, and slanders issuing from most licentious administration of the law. The judicial pulpits. office was made the object of ambition to One of the most obvious results of the the best members of the legal profession. boasted development of the “American Mind” It was entrusted to a lawyer of learning, is that monstrous proportion of the people ability, and unspotted reputation. His who are seeking to live by their wits, not position was permanent. Dum bene gesseret their work — ever on the look-out to avail (During good behavior). Nothing short of themselves of happy strokes of fortune. impeachment could remove him. He stood on This has filled the country with a pedestal, the representative embodiment disappointed and desperate men; and no of impartial, passionless law — apart from period of its history has so abounded in professional influence, from partisan fraud, lawlessness, and violence as the strife, from [133] political alliances, last ten years. Even that boasted reform from the low and corrupting intrigues of in manners and morals, which repealed and election politics, from busy, money- trampled upon “the code of honour,” has seeking pursuits; his time and attention merely substituted twenty assassinations engrossed by the study of a high and broad for one duel. system of ethics, and in the application Government by the people, from the of its principles to the disentangling and broad platform of universal suffrage as the just decision of those perpetually the sovereign source of all law, has occurring contests and litigations between utterly failed to fulfil its promise to man and man, and of society with elevate the material and moral welfare of individuals. If he came but half honest the country. It has utterly degraded to his official position, he was both. surrounded during his official career by The essential nature of the government all those influences which most strongly excludes the possibility of reforming it. tend to make a man wholly honest; and It cannot economize in expenditure: the more, a learned, wise, and independent sovereign mob have a communistic property judge, a safe-guard and a treasure to the in extravagance; it cannot purify the state. administration: those in office have a That dignified and trustworthy vested interest in corruption. magistrate, the judge dum bene gesseret, Having said so much of the source of whose official life lasts until he resigns government and law, we will now speak of his office, unless it can be proved on the administration of the law in the impeachment that he has been guilty of United States. acts that render him unworthy of his post, The people of these States inherited, has almost vanished from the horizon of with English law, wise usages in the the United States. It is true that the remnant of that document called “The The government seems, however, to have had Constitution of the United States” yet influence enough with the court to induce retains that clause which provides that it to suppress the publication of this “judges of the Federal courts shall hold decree for some months; and death office during good behaviour.” But the meanwhile removing one of this stubborn judges of these courts have long been majority of the judges, a more subservient selected and put into office, not from man was put in his place. The question consideration of their legal attainments was then reconsidered, and it was decided, and integrity of character, but for their five to four, that as the States had usefulness and subservience to the party denied to themselves the prerogative of in power. Numberless facts prove this, cheating the people with false money, but one of rather late occurrence will therefore they must have granted that suffice for an example. power to their common agent, the Federal The States, on entering into the Union, government. This is but one sample of the bound themselves and each other on this many perversions of constitutional point: “That no State should make anything provisions, and of the usurpation of but gold and silver coin a tender in powers by the United States government. payment of debts.” They had just had late In nearly all, if not all the States, and sad experience of the ruinous and the judges are, now, elected by the dishonest effects of paper money. A very popular vote, or in some cases by the few years ago, however, the United States legislative assembly. They hold office government, being in urgent need of the for short terms, two or four years — means of meeting its vast and corrupt receive very moderate salaries, and are expenditures, Congress authorized the seldom lawyers of the better class, in issue of a great amount [134] of Treasury learning, ability, or character. They are notes, and made them a legal tender in in fact far more politicians than lawyers. payment of debts. Most unexpectedly They owe their places far more to party however to the government, the point affiliations than professional coming up in a case in court, a majority qualifications, and must keep in with and consisting of the older judges of the serve their party without scruple, or some Supreme Court of the United States other dominant party, if they seek to suddenly remembered the law, the retain their places when another election Constitution, and their own independent comes round. We have at times seen one of position, and decreed, five against four, the most inferior lawyers in court, that Congress had no power to make paper sitting on the bench as judge — and this money a legal tender; that this was not is a natural result of the mode of among the powers granted by the States. appointment. [135] Trial by jury has been called the interest with the officials to that end. palladium of Anglo-Saxon liberties and In the large towns there are men, part of rights. It is so in England to this day. whose trade is to be jurors. The pay is But the United States have preserved the the first object. And many stand open- form rather than the substance of the old handed for a bride far outweighing that trial by jury. The officials of an pay. A jury in the United States is often English court, in open court, draw a panel less intelligent, less patriotic, and more of jurors, taking by lot forty-eight names corrupt than those drawn, of old, from the from the roll of the freeholders and tax- turbulent democracy of Athens. The payers in the county. This panel consists Lazzaroni of Naples would furnish as of men who have some position and stake in trustworthy juries as not a few impanelled the county, and usually some character to in the United States. Of this great [136] uphold in it. Most of them are Anglo-Saxon institution the substance will responsible men, not voluntarily offering often be found to have vanished, while the their services, but, interrupted in their form has been most carefully preserved. private pursuits, they are called upon to We believe that in ordinary cases the perform, often at no small sacrifice of decisions are in conformity with the law their interests, an irksome but important and the evidence. But there are solid public duty. They are usually not unfit, grounds for the belief that, where large as a body, to represent the intelligence amounts and great interests are at stake, and the integrity of the county. which can afford heavy bribes, neither But in the United States courts and the judges nor juries are often found State courts it is not difficult for any incorruptible; and that both decrees, and man to avoid this irksome duty. For every verdicts frequently have been, and man in the multitude may be a juror, and continue to be bought, perhaps in every to numbers, who have little or no State in the Union. Justice is growing occupation or means of living, it is a more and more corrupt at the fountain- boon to put them on the jury. For the head, and the longest purse furnishes the juror’s pay in the United States courts is best plea. a dollar and a half per day, and probably Marriage and a due regard to the as much in most of the State courts. obligations of marriage are the foundation Thus, while many of those men most fit to of society, of morals, and of be jurors shun that duty, and are aided by civilization. The people of these States the officers of the court in getting inherited from their English ancestors the excused or exempted from it, there are true principles as to the objects and many who hang about the court for the obligations of the marriage bond. chance of being put upon juries, and make Eschewing the loose morality of the Civil law which facilitated divorce, and assembly. The great cost of obtaining a permitted him who had grown old in a lewd decree by act of parliament (which was career to legitimate his neglected and always founded on a previous legal grown-up bastards by and on marrying their decision) led not many years ago to the loose-lived mother, the English law taught establishing of a special court for the that among the objects of marriage the decision of such cases. Divorces have nurture of children took a leading place, become more frequent in England, but are and that legitimacy consisted in being still rare, and only decreed for very born in lawful wedlock. It moreover laid weighty causes. In one or two of the down the Christian rule as to the binding States this necessity of a decree by nature of the marriage contract, allowing legislative enactment was retained even no divorce except for one offence against later than in England; and in one State, the marriage vow. The true wisdom and at least, but a few years ago, there had sound morality of this law as to the never been a decree for divorce. And indissoluble obligation of marriage, and while the law stood thus, cases calling this rigid limitation of divorce, is for relief by divorce never were rarer in proved by the observed fact that wherever any country. it is most difficult to obtain a divorce But a sad change has taken place in the there will be fewest cases in which it is States, in the frequency of divorces, and desirable, or desired by married people. in the frequency of the cases which would Where divorces are easily obtained there justify divorce even under more stringent are an ever-increasing number of cases in laws than those which now regulate them. which there are good grounds for seeking The Federal courts have not as yet we it; and moreover that it is often eagerly believe, usurped any jurisdiction in [137] sought for insufficient causes, and matters so foreign to the purposes of obtained by fraudulent and criminal means. their creation, as marriage and divorce. There is no one test from which we can But in almost every State the old rules as better infer the social and moral to the indissoluble character of the condition of a people than that of the marriage bond have been fearfully relaxed. difficulty or the ease with which divorce In many of them divorces can be decreed may be obtained. for utterly insufficient causes. In some The laws of England and of its of them marriage seems to be little more offshoots in America long discountenanced binding than a partnership which may be divorce from the bonds of matrimony to terminated by a three months notice by one such a point, that a decree for divorce of the partners. Indeed, practically, could only be obtained in England by act notice of intention to sue for divorce of parliament, in the colonies by act of [138] does not always seem to be necessary. Married parties living in one Thus the people of these States State, have found themselves divorced from inherited from their English ancestors a husband or wife by the decree of a court many valuable institutions. Among these, in another State, in a suit which they one, the guarded franchise, limited to never heard of until the decree was those who have a direct and obvious pronounced — the husband or wife having interest in good government, was the best gone thither and resided in that State for safeguard against the corruption and abuse a month or two in order to give the court of political power, and preserved the a colourable jurisdiction. It is not possibility of reforming the government. unusual to see in some of the chief A second secured learning, ability, and journals in the United States, integrity to the judicial office. A third advertisements by legal firms, announcing provided independent yet responsible that they pay especial attention to juries, which, in union with the second, divorce cases, and guarantee to procure gave the best security for the wise and decrees for divorce speedily, cheaply, and [139] impartial administration of justice. secretly. Such an advertisement itself A fourth upheld the sanctity of the should be made a felony. marriage bond, the foundation-stone of We are far from having yet seen the society, morals, and civilization. But full effect of this relaxation of the the people of these States have ruthlessly marriage bond. The morals of a people thrown away these securities as valueless; never rise above, often sink far below the and it is scarce worth while to inquire morality of their legislation. It is in what more they have thrown away with them. vain that the more important Christian bodies, the church of Rome, the Anglican church, and some others, set their faces against the recognition of these divorces. The tide of profligacy is too strong for them. We know of no case in which have been considered the legal effects of loosening in one State the bond of a marriage made fast in another. It seems to us that in the latter State such a decree should be treated as a nullity. But we fear that in many States their courts would decide otherwise. CHAPTER IX.
The Vast Indebtedness of the Country — and Its Effects.
Few people are aware of the immense amount owing in the United States by the Federal government, by the State governments, by municipal corporations, by railroad, manufacturing, mining, and other great companies, which have long been offering tempting inducements for the vesting of capital and lending of money. We cannot ourselves approximate the amount; but we know that it is so great, that the government debt, large as it is, makes no large part of it. But we must not speak too precisely of the debt of the government; for nobody seems to know its exact amount, not even the Secretary of the Treasury. For the statements respecting it, published officially, have been several times inconsistent with each other. There has been for some years a growing suspicion that the treasury department cannot publish a true balance sheet if it would, and would not if it could. Few people know how much of all these borrowings, investments, and expenditures in the United States have little or no profitable or useful results to show for them. Out of numberless examples we will refer to two, one of a public, the other millions of these railroad bonds on which of a more private character. the companies cannot pay one cent of Three or four years ago the yearly interest; and the amount is on the expenditure of the United States on the increase. Is the principal of these debts army and navy and other military objects too to be buried under the monumental was more than $80,000,000, more than two mounds that stretch across the country? thirds [141] that of Great Britain. But This class of debts is only one, although Great Britain has a navy more powerful the greatest, of many classes of bankrupt than that of any two, perhaps three other enterprises, and of indebtedness ruinous powers, and one of the most powerful alike to the debtor and the creditor. armies in the world. The United States We might give numberless proofs of the can hardly be said to have an army, some fall in the value of property. A few will 22,000 or 23,000 troops; and as to the suffice: Much real estate in New York has navy, it has not one single powerful been lately sold for less than it was ironclad; and some four years ago it was mortgaged for. Very lately a factory in prevented from picking a quarrel with Salem, Massachusetts, costing $3,000,000, Spain and stealing Cuba, simply by utter sold for $160,000— one nineteenth of the inability to face the Spanish navy. When, ori-[142] ginal outlay. And still worse — after appropriating $80,000,000 a year to we see announced the sale, in New York on maintain the army and navy, the United the 20th June, 1877, of 360,000 acres of States government has so very little to land in McDowell County, Western Virginia, show for it, we can only conclude that at an average of one cent per acre. This official sharpers have intercepted two is probably mountain land, but is said to thirds of the money, and applied it to be well wooded. Being on the borders of their own uses. the Northern and Southern States, the That network of railroads, which covers price indicates a monstrous fall in the the United States, was built, not so much value of property all over the country. with the money of the stock-holders as Passing over the great banking, mining, with the two or three thousand millions and manufacturing enterprises, and the which they borrowed on the bonds of the land speculations, involving vast amounts, companies and the mortgages of the roads. most of which have ended so disastrously Very few of these roads have proved good for the undertakers and their creditors, investments. More than three-fourths of we will dwell for a moment on a minor them are but monumental mounds raised over class of enterprises, which are very the money buried there by the stock- characteristic of the Yankee. holders. By the last accounts we have The people of the United States, who seen there are already nine hundred have among them, and know, very little of what people of the higher class in other country, and have got heartily sickened of countries call “society,” have yet a making their investments in the debtor craving for it, and, as a substitute, are country — that alters the case. For fond of the publicity of “hotel life.” instance: At the end of the wars with This is the most vulgar taste imaginable; France in 1815, Great Britain owed eight but it serves their purpose. The amounts hundred and forty millions, sterling. expended in building monstrous hotels in This money was well spent. Better owe the most costly styles, in commercial that amount than be overrun and torn to cities, and at places of summer resort, is pieces as Prussia was in 1806. But this astounding. And the rival amounts debt was monstrous; and the population of expended in furnishing them in the most Great Britain was not half, nor its gorgeous manner, no less astounding. They resources one third, of what they are now. put to the blush most English noblemen’s Yet from that day to this the government mansions and many a princely palace. Most has punctually paid twenty-seven or of these ambitious temples of mercenary twenty-eight millions, sterling, of yearly hospitality have of late proved utter interest on the debt; and did so without failures. Hotels costing each one, two, difficulty, because the creditors lived in and even two millions, and the furniture Great Britain, spent their incomes and costing many hundreds of thousands, after made their investments there. If these a year or two have been sold for 15 or 20 millions had to be sent annually to per cent. on their cost. Just at this creditors in Germany or France, the time the Yankee cannot afford luxurious payment would have been a heavy burden on living, and the ostentatious mimicry of the country. We doubt whether it would refined society, afforded by a fashionable long have continued to he paid at all. public house. The predicament not only of the United Having said some things as to the debts States government, but of the States, of of the people of [143] the United States, the municipalities, and other great let us inquire how they are to pay their corporations all over the Union is this: debts. They have borrowed freely, for their It is difficult to fix a limit to the credit was immense; they have spent amount a government may owe, and also to freely, and often extravagantly through how much the people in the country may corrupt and unscrupulous officials, and owe, without causing serious financial they have very little to set off against embarrassment — provided the creditors their debts. There are cities in the live in the country, and make their Union that proclaim themselves bankrupt. expenditures and investments there. But There are other bankrupt cities that do when the creditors live in another not proclaim the fact. There are cities that reject their own [144] coupons in property — for most of the holders of payment of city taxes; just as the United property had been disfranchised. The States government rejects its own legal taxation was raised to eight or ten fold tender notes in payment of duties at the that of former times. But this did not custom house. Now although the United satisfy these harpies in office, chiefly States and the State governments cannot be Northern men. With the sanction of their sued — cities are merely corporate bodies, bribed legislature they issued state bonds and can be sued in theory of law; but it by millions and tens of millions, and sold seems that there is not law enough in the them in the New York money market at 20, country to enforce payment of debts by 40, and 50 per cent. discount. Forty such debtors. millions of the Louisiana state bonds There is another class of debts of a represent, not the extravagance, but the peculiar character. There is not one of bribery and direct stealings of [145] the the Southern States which does not intrusive officials whom the United States apparently owe many millions. Louisiana government put upon the State and long for instance owes fifty millions. The helped to maintain there, in order to State was not much in debt in 1865 — at avail itself of the Negro vote. the end of the war owing but ten millions. This picture of the condition of The other forty millions accrued under the Louisiana is applicable to that of most of intrusive government, thrust on the State the Southern States. But in spite of all by the United States government, after the efforts to exasperate the Negroes, and first disfranchising most of the chief men band them together, in opposition to the and property-holders in the State. This white people, the latter have begun to intrusive government was maintained partly regain their influence and control over by the support of the Negro voters, but the State governments — and most of the more by the intrigues of the so-called late officials have found it convenient to State officials with those in power at avoid the investigation of their doings by Washington, and by the presence of the leaving the South. United States military force; but for the The people of Louisiana and of the presence of which this revolutionized other Southern States would only be doing government would not have lasted one day. themselves justice by sponging out every The policy of this intrusive government dollar of debt accruing since 1865 — that was confiscation by taxation. This was is, on an average, seven-eights of what enjoined them by their allies at the they nominally owe. They will find it North. The legislature consisted largely difficult to pay what they justly owe. of Negroes whose votes were easily and cheaply bought, and it represented no The condition of the Southern States Negroes both in Africa and elsewhere, have renders this repudiation certain, and the seldom practised any but an enforced sooner it comes the better. industry. We have said that the agricultural But we have said little, and will here industry of the South is paralyzed, and take occasion to say some things as to the its productions diminishing, although not condition and feelings of the white as fast as they formerly increased. We people, the true people of the Southern have said that the Negroes, no longer in States. habitual intercourse with, and under the They are fearfully impoverished. The control of a superior race, are dwindling rich have become poor, and the poor, with in number, and falling back from few exceptions have become poorer. One civilization and Christianity, into effect of this poverty is that the young savagedom. Remembering that civilization are growing up, or have grown up with few and industry walk hand-in-hand, what can of those advantages of education which we anticipate for the indolent and their parents enjoyed. Higher education improvident Negro? How unreliable is free requires money and leisure, and the Negro labour, is proved by the fact that present generation have neither. Most of the sugar planters of Jamaica, Demerara, the better class of schools have died out and elsewhere, although surrounded by from starvation. The colleges, such as swarms of idle and needy Negroes, go to survive, dwindle for want of patronage, the expense of contracting for, and and of funds to maintain competent importing Coolies from the other side of instructors, always difficult to find. the world, to labour on their plantations. Many of the more able and learned clergy Why is this? Because agriculture, have been driven by want to seek livings depending on the seasons, requires labour in other parts of the Union, not readily that can [146] be relied on. The Negro is found there. Numbers of churches, more able bodied than the Coolie, and more especially in country neighbourhoods, are at home under the tropical sun. But by closed from utter inability to support a physical constitution he is a drone, and pastor. The military schools, of which mentally, little capable of keeping to a there were formerly one or more in each contract. A careless worker at best, he Southern State, were imperiously closed by is most apt to absent himself when most the Federal government. The consequence wanted, as in seed time and harvest — when is that, in all the attributes of higher every day lost, hazards the returns of the education and civilization, a very toil and outlay of the whole year. The inferior generation is taking the place of Coolies, as a race, are steady and skilful that which preceded it. It took several labourers; while with some exceptions, the generations to raise society in the South to the [147] position it had reached, and themselves in the Confederate service, who which was highly progressive. It will now render themselves conspicuous by their require but one to bring it down to a very eager efforts to conciliate their old low level. Nothing has contributed more enemies. These men belong to that class to the rapid fall of tone and feeling, whose souls revolt at having been caught than the fact that when the South sprang on the losing side of a conflict. They to arms, to defend itself against its feel an irresistible craving for office assailants and invaders, the educated and prominent position, and these things classes were naturally most awake to the are now in the gift of the enemies of danger, and most alive to the duty of their country. To satisfy this craving promptly defending their country. The they are eager to fraternize with the ranks of the volunteer army were largely, enemy. They not long since thoroughly perhaps chiefly, filled by the young men detested the United States flag as the of the best, and best educated classes, symbol of a [148] usurping tyranny. Now those that more often furnish the officers they feel a reviving affection for the old than the privates of an army. The greater stars and stripes. They seek occasions to part of this class of volunteers fell in display it ostentatiously and to parade the four years’ war, many of them as under its folds. The ranks of the old officers, but many still in the ranks. volunteer corps, reduced to skeletons in There are few large and well-known family the war, they refill with new recruits, connections in the South which cannot and exchange military visits with similar count up several of its most valued scions bodies in Northern cities, feast with thus lost to them; and many a family them, and pledge themselves to patriotic circle is left without a male heir. The union and personal friendships, better part of the high spirit, of the disgraceful if false, more disgraceful if mental culture, of the noble aspirations true. They escort Yankee orators on their in the South was prematurely cut off — tours through the conquered South, and thus happier than the part that survived listen to and applaud their advice to, and it. comments upon, the people of the conquered But changed and fallen as the South is, country. They lackey the heels of a it cannot yet have forgotten the position prominent enemy of their State and it once occupied, or what and who they country, assiduously seeking his favour were that reduced it to its present and patronage, because he is the condition. It is true that there are some successful usurper of what is itself a men, once the foremost and loudest among usurpation, having stolen the chief the patriots of the Southern States, and magistracy of a government, the existence some of whom had even distinguished of which is robbery and tyranny, and ruin to the Southern States. After the unhappily subjected, is a sound, wholesome disastrous issue of the war in their feeling of detestation. He can only lose defence, these are the men, whose restless this feeling by the perversion of his vanity and self-seeking for office and moral sense, by losing his perception of favour thrust them forward as the healers the distinction between truth and and patchers-up of the breach between the falsehood, between right and wrong. If he two parts of the “Union.” be vindictive as well as conscientious, he But surely we misjudge the South if we may find some consolation on seeing that interpret the silent many by the talking in bringing down an avalanche on the few. It is not thirteen years since the South, his enemies have covered themselves people of the Southern States were engaged with the same mass of ruin. in a war in defence of all that was dear The people of the Southern States have to them. Those who can think and feel, at times lately shown an animosity at cannot doubt, to-day, that the cause in least partially misdirected, the result of which they took arms was quite as just as the natural antipathy between different they imagined it to be in 1861. All the races. Many of them have exhibited more consequences that have followed the bitterness against the Negroes, who have failure of the “lost cause” make the been, for all political purposes, mere justice of that cause more manifest. In tools in the hands of others, than against the official thieves and robbers, who have the true enemies of the South. It is true plundered the Southern States for the last that the insolence and outrages of the twelve years, they cannot fail to Negroes, when stirred up and spurred on by recognize the emissaries of that whole agents who cautiously kept themselves in people who have been plundering and the background — have been most insulting, and striving to degrade them exasperating. But nothing can justify for fifty years. As to any part they can that animosity against the Negroes, if it take in the [149] struggles for power in be not backed by a deeper animosity the Union, it is merely choosing which against the people of the Northern States. party they shall be robbed by, for this It would be strange and unnatural if systematic robbery of the agricultural the people of the South silently and South continues in full force. With this quietly acquiesced in the domination of experience of their character and conduct, the government, for any other reason than the only natural and just sentiment a that they see no prospect of getting rid right-thinking Southern man can cultivate of that domination. They are still towards the mass of that people, with systematically robbed, but their poverty which his State was formerly unhappily yields little plunder. confederated, and to which it is now more Having said thus much of what the North Carolina, twenty-five millions; the feelings of the people [150] of the very poor State of Florida, fifteen Southern States are, and ought to be — we millions. will return to their financial condition. In order to give a sort of sanction and Most of the States owed some debt security to their spoils, these official before the war. But the heaviest was robbers, in some of the States, called in small compared with the resources of the all the bonds or certificates of State at that time. These debts are still indebtedness, held by creditors of the justly due, but it will task these now State for money justly and long due — and impoverished States to pay them. Some of compelled them, under the threat of these States incurred further debts during receiving nothing, to exchange their old the war and for its maintenance. But the bonds for equal amounts in the new bonds United States government compelled them to lately [151] issued; the object being to repudiate these obligations. It taught render the honest and the fraudulent debts them a lesson in repudiation. Yet these undistinguishable from each other. were honest debts binding on the Now that the true people of the conscience of the States. Southern States are regaining the control When the State governments were of their own State governments in spite of overthrown and remodelled according to the machinations of their Northern orders from Washington, the Northern men enemies, they have two financial duties to and Southern turncoats into whose hands fulfil. One is to look back for proofs as place and power fell, availing themselves to who the real creditors of the State of the aid of the Negro majorities in the were, and to what amount; and the second State legislatures, issued from time to is, to repudiate every State bond that has time large amounts of State bonds, as the been issued since 1865. These are merely means of bribing the legislature, but yet the evidences of the frauds perpetrated on more of making their own fortunes. Many them by their enemies. When they have of these bonds had not even the sanction done themselves that justice we will hear of a bribed legislature, but were mere no more of nearly three hundred millions forgeries by the chief officers of the of fraudulent State bonds. State. We do not remember the amount of Some foolish people will object that the whole of these issues; but we believe, this will destroy the credit of these although these sums sound fabulous, that States. But that will prove a blessing. the Georgia bonds amounted to fifty Their credit has been a curse to them, millions; those of Louisiana to forty being the chief means by which their millions; South Carolina, thirty-four enemies plundered them. millions; Alabama, thirty-three millions; But nothing is more contagious than of their manufacturing investments, based repudiation. It will become epidemic, as on their command of the trade and tribute catching as small-pox among an of these provinces. They have sunk a vast unvaccinated crowd. What the Southern amount in a network of railroads all over States can do honestly, and will be great the country, which barely yield the cost fools not to do, will be eagerly imitated of running them. They have lost their as the means of getting rid of honest once profitable ship-building, and their debts. And who can say how many thousand carrying trade. They have laid waste millions are owed abroad, exactly where it their forests, and lost their timber is most difficult to pay them? It is very trade. They have exterminated the wild inconvenient to the United States animals of the country, from the buffalo government, the greatest debtor in the to the beaver, and have lost their fur and country, to pay one hundred and twenty peltry trade. They have exhausted the millions of interest yearly; and most of virgin soil of the country, and are making this goes out of the country. Many of the half crops from worn out lands. They have Northern States owe large amounts. Many turned the fertility of the country into cities are deeply in debt. New York owes money, and have now neither the money nor at least one hundred and fifty millions, the fertility. They have borrowed, Philadelphia ninety millions, and so on. traded, built, invested and spent, as if A multitude of corporations, besides the they were very rich; and are just municipal, owe many millions each. Who beginning to find out that they are very knows how much of all this is due to poor. foreign creditors? We do not. But much As one proof of this, we refer to the as the people of the United States [152] return lately made to the government of boast of the immensity and value of their the State of Massachusetts, showing grain crops, we doubt whether, on an twenty-seven and a half millions less of average year, they could spare enough to deposits in the savings banks of that pay the interest on their foreign debt. great manufacturing State, than there was In their day of prosperity both the at a former prosperous period, and eighty government and people made the most of thousand fewer depositors. What a falling their credit by running boundlessly into off does this show in the condition of the debt on the faith of resources, which have industrious and economical classes! The failed or are fast failing them. They population of the State is not one and a have lost the productions of their half million. tributary Southern provinces, where the The inventive Yankee has lately added a crops at the best barely repay the cost of new term to [153] commercial and financial growing them. They have lost the profits phraseology; but not before he had urgent need of it. It is that ominous word Like other such crises, they think, it “Shrinkage.” They now find frequent will soon pass away. occasion to use it. With them now But in those crises the causes were everything is shrinking. Until lately temporary, and the effect temporary. Now every one of them has been revelling in the causes are permanent, and the effect the hope of making his fortune by some will be permanent. The means of stroke of genius or luck. Whatever he got production are permanently diminished, and hold of he exaggerated its value, even to further diminution goes on. The fertility himself, and yet more to other people. He of the South is as unavailable for spent money and incurred debt on it, and profitable production as if its soil had looked for great profit from it. He was been stricken with barrenness. continually buying, selling, borrowing [154] All the vast outlay of the North money, and lending credit, until gradually in order to avail itself of the production he finds that his promising investments and the market of the South and the are making very poor returns, and his tribute it drew from thence, is utterly profits are turned into losses. thrown away. The Southerner was their Everything in his hands, stocks of all best customer once, but he is bankrupt now kinds, banking, railroad, manufacturing, and in gaol. His assets do not pay the mining, and lands both for building and whole cost of keeping him there. When the farming — all his speculations shrink, and rest of the Union come to look into their shrivel, and wither up, unveiling the vast own resources at home, those from field amount of folly and rascality which has and forest, from manufactures, commerce been at work behind them. Everything of and the merchant marine, they are found to theirs has shrunken but their be wasting away from year to year. As the indebtedness. population of the United States grows, the But they do not see how permanent this more exhausted and bare and stubborn will shrinkage is. Sanguine people in the they find the regions out of which they United States look upon the present must draw the means of living. A Chinese financial embarrassment and industrial industry and economy must revolutionize distress as a crisis caused by over- their habits of life. trading and the abuse of credit in its Of the immense indebtedness of the various forms, especially that of credit government and people of the United money, paper promises to pay coin. This States, more than half is due to they think has caused a disturbance in the foreigners. It is peculiarly difficult to distribution, for a time interrupting the pay foreign debts. Perhaps that is not production, of all that makes wealth. the worst point of view for the creditor. There is very little desire to pay them. There is a strong prejudice everywhere debtor does not seek the protection of the against absentee proprietors. And that is bankrupt law; but the creditor does. exactly the position the foreign creditors But by the legerdemain of the United hold. To pay them their rent the United States Congress it became the debtor of States must every year export at least two every kind, not traders only, who took hundred millions worth more than they advantage of the law, while the creditors import. Yet there is a school of sought to keep him out of bankruptcy. The economists who absurdly say that the intention of that clause in the balance of trade is in favour of a country Constitution was that Congress should — when it exports more than it imports. provide one permanent statute of But the United States government has bankruptcy, to be enforced in all the educated the people not to pay debts when States and in the State courts. Congress they become burdensome; and they have did something very different. For not a learned their lesson thoroughly. We will few years it provided no bankrupt law at give one proof of this. all. But on the first great financial The States, when they formed the Union, crisis, such as once or twice in a were well aware of the mischief produced generation seems to befall every by having different laws on the subject of commercial country, Congress was beseiged bankruptcy in each of the thirteen States by all the rash and wild speculators and so closely allied in commerce as well as reckless runners into debt, who clamoured politics. So one of the powers [155] they for a bankrupt law for their relief. The delegated to the Congress of the United prayer was granted. It may well be States was “To establish uniform laws on supposed that a bankrupt law passed in the subject of bankruptcy throughout the this spirit made very imperfect provision United States.” Now the conceptions as to for guarding the creditors from the what bankrupt laws were, in the minds of grossest frauds. When all the the State delegations which drew up and enterprising but luckless speculators of executed that treaty called “the that day had been relieved of their Constitution of the United States” were burdens, in order that they might start, derived from British legislation. Every lightened of all encumbrance, in a new lawyer knows that the chief object of the pursuit of vast and speedy gains, the British bankrupt laws, and of those of bankrupt law was repealed; and not until a other European nations, was to protect new financial crisis, and fresh clamours honest creditors against fraudulent from ruined gamesters called for it, was debtors; and that the bankrupt laws another [156] bankrupt law provided for applied only to persons in trade. The their relief. The United States have had several of these temporary bankrupt acts — and have at times been for years without Like a large fleet of merchantmen, any, until a new financial crisis called hurrying full sail into port, to discharge for one. In truth, they were not bona their cargoes, and make ready for another fide bankrupt laws — but an occasional voyage, the traders of the United States provision made for the wiping out of debt. crowded into the bankrupt courts, getting The people have been thoroughly educated unladen of their burdens that they might on this point. go forth unencumbered, in search of new We will give the proof. Of the ventures and gains. successive United States bankrupt acts, [157] But as to the matter of how to which have been in force, each for several avoid fulfilling their engagements, and years — but with long intervals between how to circumvent those who deal with them, during which intervals there was no them, the diplomatic dealings of their own bankrupt law — the last expired on the government afford them many valuable 31st of August just passed (1878). We are lessons. not able to number the crowd of reckless, We have not time to refer to more than luckless, and lucky debtors it relieved of one or two of these many achievements in their debts, or even to count over the negotiation. While the United States has long roll of commissioners in bankruptcy, given no indemnification or even apology who have grown rich in their busy but for, or security against such national gainful offices. Each part of the whole outrages as the Fenian expeditions, country, so boastful of its prosperity, planned, organized, and openly set on foot has emulously rivalled the others in in the United States, and which the furnishing its full quota of bankrupts. government made no earnest effort to We cannot go into details. But the city prevent, and by which the British Dominion of Buffalo, with a population of about of Canada was invaded by armed and 130,000, but aided by the judicial organized forces marching out of the district dependent upon it, seems to have United States and which had to be driven borne off the palm, adding to its already back by Canadian volunteers and British long roll, on the 31st of August, the last soldiers — while the sympathisers in the day the law was in force, three hundred United States with the Cubans, in arms and seventy-five fresh applicants for the against the Spanish government, were benefits and bounties of the bankrupt act. fitting out in the ports of the United Only cities like New York, Philadelphia, States armed expeditions in aid of the and perhaps one or two others, could Cuban rebels — at this very time the surpass this second-rate place. New York United States government had the assurance had about four hundred of these eleventh to demand of the British government hour bankrupts on the last day. indemnification for the damage done to the commerce of the United States by certain insulting outrages as the Fenian invasions confederate cruisers, the Alabama and of Canada, openly gotten up in the United others, on the ground that these steamers States, and without exacting security had been bought in England — and their against their recurrence, should have armaments had also been procured there. listened for one moment to so flimsy a The Confederate agents had indeed made claim as that for the damage done by the these two descriptions of purchases Confederate cruisers. separately, and then skilfully brought It can only be accounted for by the them together at sea, or in foreign ports. peculiarity of Mr. Gladstone’s Now British ship-builders have been statesmanship, which consists in yielding constantly selling ships to foreign up a little of the rights of his friends, governments and individuals, and in order to pacify and conciliate his manufacturers of arms of all sorts enemies — be they Fenian Irish, carrying on a similar trade. As long as interloping Yankees, or bullying Germans. armed vessels prepared for war, and It is just in this spirit that Mr. organized military expeditions, do not Gladstone’s colleague for foreign affairs, sail from British ports, the government is Lord Granville, dealt with Bismarck’s not responsible for the ultimate use of insolent and bullying complaint, that the these warlike appliances. British manufacturers were selling arms The strange part of this affair is that and munitions of war to the French the Yankees were successful in making good government, with which Germany was at war; their claim for damages. They [158] doing exactly the same thing that the induced the British government, in a German government permits the great Krupp quaker-like spirit, to refer the question cannon foundry to do: to supply hundreds to arbitration, and they manipulated the of heavy rifle cannon to Russia, which is arbitrators so skilfully that they at war with Turkey, Germany being at peace adjudged to them sixteen millions of with both countries. dollars damages; and when they carried the The diplomatic Lord Granville did not money home they found out that the real reply, that, Great Britain being at peace damage their merchants and ship-owners had with France, British manufacturers had a suffered amounted to only half that sum. right to sell to France whatever France What sort of inducement had they used to wanted. That if this supplying France lead the arbitrators to adjudge double the with British made arms embarrassed [159] amount? the German government, it had only to What we cannot understand is how any blockade the French ports in accordance British ministry, without having demanded with the law of nations. Until that was indemnification for such notorious and done the British government would see that British trade was not interfered with by raise the money necessary to carry it on. any foreign power. To every million expended in efficient The diplomatic secretary returned no preparation and operations, a margin of such manly answer. It was not in him. two millions and more must be allowed for But he bowed, and polished one palm peculation, waste, and stealage. against the other, and apologized and Another instance at home, will show the explained, and protested that Great peddling little-[160] ness, as well as the Britain beamed with good will towards fraudulent nature of Yankee diplomacy. Germany, and begged leave to assure the Within five years or so, the government German chancellor that he felt for him the made a treaty with a tribe of Indians, by most distinguished consideration. which the tribe had allotted to them as We must go at least as far back in their reserve, that is their permanent English history as the reign of Charles territory, a region embracing the Black the 2nd., to find so cringing a ministry, Hills in Dakota, and some of the so ready to sacrifice the honour, surrounding country. This region was interest, and safety of their country, to wretchedly poor, and nobody wanted it. keep themselves in power. What chance had But the Indians, being in the power of the such states-men with the cunning Yankee, government, accepted the treaty, taking who had impressed them with the conviction what they could get. But, a year or two that he was a great power, and who knew after, it was rumoured that rich veins of their dread of war, and their readiness to gold had been found in the Black Hills. pay Dane-gelt to buy their peace? Had the At once adventurers of the most reckless United States been some petty state they character began to flock thither. The would have treated the claim for damage government found that the lands were too from the Confederate cruisers with valuable to be left in the hands of the contempt. Little did they know the true Indians, and at once set about upsetting condition of the United States, and their its own treaty; and the Indian chiefs were inability to wage war with anybody. They summoned to Washington to make a new one. had just sneaked out of a war with Spain, We need not tell our readers that the from whom they wished to steal Cuba. The Indians lost the Black Hills. There is a United States have no real navy, although good deal of obscurity in these they pay for one; not even one powerful negotiations, of which we get only the ship. A few British ironclads could seal Yankee account. But the terms in which up their ports, and let them fume away they report the events in their Indian their rage under blockade. The United wars betray their mode of dealing with the States cannot now wage war even with so Indian. When some hero like General feeble a power as Mexico. They cannot Custer rides with his dragoons into an encampment of a hundred Indian lodges, while the Yankees are racking their brains and, the warriors being all away hunting, for excuses for not paying it. But the he massacres four or five hundred squaws Gladstone ministry being no longer in and children — that is a glorious victory! power, it may be hazardous to refuse to When the same hero rides into another pay the money due. Indian village, but there happen to be at One of the latest and greatest hand a thousand or twelve hundred lodges political frauds ever perpetrated in the which he did not see, and all the warriors United States is the late Presidential being at home, fall upon him, and cut off election. It is peculiar in this, that it his command to the last man, the whole was high treason against their lord and Yankee country raise a howl at this master, the sovereign majority, to whom “horrid massacre!” They have so perverted they had hitherto been faithful. Even if the use of language that they have lost it consisted of the veriest mob, it was, the sense of truth. until now, sure of their allegiance. We have not time to quote further Two parties, the Republicans and the examples of their diplomacy. We have Democrats, have for years divided the heard of Punic faith, we know some-[161] people of the United States. The thing of Russian diplomacy, we are foreigner should be warned that these familiar with Napoleonic negotiations, party names afford no indication of their both “par moi et mon oncle,” we have seen principles, if they have any. Nor do we something of Bismarck policy; but for mean to imply that one party is more solid, downright political swindling, both honest than the other. But the Democrats, at home and abroad, we back the Yankee having been for years out of office, have against the field. He is fully educated been long practising, as to official up to his long-established point of duties and public money, an enforced honour: to circumvent everybody, and not honesty. But they were heartily tired of tolerate the disgrace of being himself being robbed, while they got no share of taken in. As a sample of their dealings. the plunder. They bound themselves by treaty to admit Some years ago a number of prominent fish from Canada free of duty, and then people, in the city [162] of New York, collected heavy duties on the barrels and whose pockets were drained by city tin cans in which the fish was packed for taxation, combined to force an importation. It is not too soon to refer investigation, by process of law, into the to the five and a half millions adjudged monstrous frauds and rascalities practised to Canada by the joint commission on the on the city treasury; and they induced Mr. fisheries question — money which the Charles O’Connor to become their chief Canadians are enjoying in anticipation; counsel and agent in the matter. We have before alluded to Mr. O’Connor’s success. It was hoped that by making him perseverance and partial success, and the governor he would be in a position to do exposure of Boss Tweed, as the New York his work more thoroughly still. His zeal mob loved to call him, and that of his and ability were great; but we understand colleagues. Now Tweed was a Democrat, who that corruption was so firmly planted and played into the hands of the Republicans. so strongly propped by [163] party This partial success at reform support, that he was not able to perfect strengthening the hands of the Democratic his reforms. Both he and Mr. O’Connor, party in the State, they with much in pursuit of justice, found some of the difficulty procured the election of Mr. most stubborn obstacles blocking up the Tilden as governor of New York. We know road, in the persons of some judges on the nothing of Mr. Tilden except that he is a bench, put in office on party and corrupt great lawyer, is believed to be an honest considerations. man, and not much given to politics. He Now the Democratic party, having been was made governor for a special purpose. long out of office, had become great While Boss Tweed and his colleagues reformers and very honest men. Probably were plundering the city treasury to the they did embody most of that class. The amount of twenty-five millions or so, greatest rogues had long since gone over another ring were plundering the State to the party in power. A Presidential treasury to an unknown amount. The State election was coming on. Mr. Tilden’s had spent upon the great Erie canal a success in his late undertakings had made great many more millions than the canal him widely and favourably known throughout will ever pay back to it. Besides its the Union; and he seemed to be the most first cost, it has proved a source of available candidate they could take up. great yearly expenditure. For, being In this they were mistaken. His managed by a Board of Canal Commissioners, reputation was based altogether on his and needing constant repair, the zeal and ability in ferreting out commissioners and the contractors for rascality in office. But after sixteen repairs laid their heads together, and, by years of office and power enjoyed by one false estimates and extravagant payments, party — the Republicans — the government cheated the State out of many millions, had become more than an Augean stable; to which, we suppose, they fairly divided clean it out would have engendered a with each other. This game had been pestilence. So vast an amount of evidence played for many years, perhaps from the of peculation, fraud, and direct stealing first laying out of the canal. At length had accumulated in the bureaus of every Mr. Tilden was set to work to ferret out department of government, and in every these rascalities, and achieved much clerks desk, that it would ruin thousands of the most influential men in the country persevere in and perfect their plans, by to bring these things to light. drawing together troops and armed vessels The Republican politicians had been so at Washington, by repairing and mounting long in office, that almost every man had guns on the old earthworks commanding the grown rich in it; and besides their own roads leading thither; and by forbidding money and patronage, they had command of an assembly and great procession at all the resources of the government, Washington, planned by the Democrats as a including the army and treasury; and manifestation of their joy at Tilden’s banding together like a band of brothers, supposed election. Grant thus manifested or rather robbers, they resolved to use his resolution to see Mr. Hayes, and no all possible means of defence. When the one else, placed as his successor in the chairman of an election returning board in Presidential chair. It would have suited a Southern State was instructed as to what Grant as little as any of his party, to was expected of him in his manipulation of have unfriendly and prying successors the returns as to the Presidential investigating the transactions of their election, well might he say, “There is predecessors in office. money in it; yes, a million of money in The Republican conspirators had made the job!” the utmost efforts, in every State where [164] The alarm and indignation of the the vote was much divided, to suppress the Republicans was intense, but they strove true result, where it told against them. to conceal it: “What! Tilden in the And by inducing the returning boards, Presidential chair, searching into every which investigated and registered the official and party transaction that cannot result of the election, in Louisiana and bear the light! No! we will move heaven, Florida, to suppress the true returns and earth, and hell to defeat him.” And they substitute false returns, they deprived did, and with success. Mr. Tilden of a majority of thirteen It were long to tell the intrigues and votes in the electoral college, and gave corruption by which this result was Mr. Hayes a majority of one; and when brought about. And they have already been Congress appointed a commission of fifteen well explained and exposed, especially by to decide on the result of the election, Judge Black of Pennsylvania, in his of the five judges of the [165] Supreme article published in the ‘North American Court placed on this commission, three Review.’ made themselves ready and zealous tools When the election had taken place, but for perfecting the fraud; to give one before the result was officially declared, instance — they promptly decided a point General Grant, the President in office, of law one way when it told in Mr. Hayes’ emboldened the conspiring Republicans to favour, but another way when it would have no means an erroneous exposition of the told against him. present condition of the United States. Mr. Hayes, a mere usurper, coolly It may be very difficult, but far from walked into an office to which he was not impossible to recuperate the soil of the elected; and Mr. Tilden, the real great democratic republic, but what can President, was left at leisure to resume regenerate the people? his practice at the bar; to return to spreading the net of the law to catch THE END. shoals of small rogues; but the great rogues who steal State and Federal VIVIAN, PRINTER, governments, and their treasuries, easily CLARENCE STREET, LONDON, ONT. broke through the meshes of his net. We hope, for the honour of manhood, that there are few countries, in which such a transaction would not have raised a row. But the Yankees, unless they have very long odds of numbers in their favour do not fight. The voters, who elected Mr. Tilden President, being only a considerable and not a great majority, took their strategic defeat like lambs. They tamely pocketed their sovereign rights, to be pulled out at some more convenient season; and left laws, rights, liberties, and the tattered remnant of the Constitution to take care of themselves. They prudently argued that any political agitation and conflict, just at this time, would aggravate the financial crisis; and there was already more of that in the country than they knew how to deal with. Let the world slide and each man take care of himself. Although want of access to documentary evidence, and an occasional hasty inference may have led us into some errors, we are confident that this is by APPENDIX.
(See page 142 as to the sale of 360,000 acres of land in McDowell county, Western Virginia, at one cent per acre). This translation is explained in the ‘New York World’ of October 2nd; but the explanation does not much mend the matter. On the contrary, it exhibits the monstrous frauds attempted and accomplished in the sale of the most solid property in the model republic. The ‘New York World’ states that: “ On the 26th of last June, at the Exchange Sales-room, No. 111, Broadway, there was sold by T. Robinson Warren and Co., by order of an unnamed trustee, to close a trust, 360,000 acres of land in McDowell county, Western Virginia. The land was described as being heavily wooded, with white oak principally, and other timber, underlying which it was claimed that there were extensive beds of coal and iron ore. An abstract tracing the title back to the issue of letters patent, dated May 10th 1795, by the commonwealth of Virginia to the Hon. George F. Wythe, and showing them to have come into the possession of James M. Flagg in 1874 was printed and circulated through the sales-room at the time of the sale. To this abstract was appended the following certificate:
“ 61, Wall Street, New York,June 13th, 1878. “ I have been furnished by James M. unblemished. This precaution saved their Flagg, Esq., of Chicago, with a copy of an money; and some weeks afterwards it was abstract of title to 360,000 acres of handed back to them by Messrs. T. land, chiefly in McDowell county, Western Robinson Warren and Co. which firm had, Virginia; and a deed from Frank H. Baker it appeared, been duped. to A.P. Downer. “ Charles Harft, of Price Street, Albert “ From an examination of these papers I Karutz of Brooklyn, and some others at the am led to believe that the fee title to time of the sale were owners of the premises is in Mr. Downer. 320,000acres in the same county; and as “(Signed), Charles E. Whitehead. there were only 600,000 acres of land, including some several lots in the county, [167] “The attendance was large, but they were anxious to ascertain how 680,000 the bidding was not very active. For the acres could be compressed into its limits. convenience of purchasers it was announced Thinking that a portion of their own that the tract had been plotted off in property might be included in Flagg’s lots of 1000 acres each, bidders having wholesale real estate transaction, Harft the privilege of taking any part or the and his friends communicated with the whole of the property offered. As the authorities of McDowell county, and asked sale went on, Mr. Charles Harft, of No. for information as to the title under 104, Prince Street, made inquiries as to which the property had been offered for the title to the property, and was sale in this city. Mr. Harft has just referred by the auctioneer to Mr. received a reply. It contains a Whitehead, who referred him back to the certificate under the seal of the county, auctioneer for the information he desired. and is signed by the President of the This episode raised suspicion among the county court and his two associates, a bidders. Ten thousand acres had been up former president of the same court, and to that time sold, at figures varying from the clerks of the county and circuit 19 cents to 3 cents an acre, and courts, and the commissioner of School afterwards, when the lots hung fire, they London. These officials unite in saying: were bid in at half a cent an acre by Mr. — James M. Flagg. The sale came to a “ It is but a repetition of the many termination, and those who had purchased gross deceptions practiced by the sale of felt uneasy as to the safety of their fraudulent titles to lands purporting to investment. They called on the auctioneer be situated [168] in our section and to hold their money until they were county, all of which is a great injustice assured that the title deeds were to those owning substantial and lawful titles to real estates among us, and who settled States of Virginia, Maryland, would people our country with good and Pennsylvania, and Kentucky, and would useful citizens, so needful to the never have been thrown in block on the development of the vast acknowledged market, and sold for a trifling price, wealth of this region. perhaps a few cents per acre, in any other “ They further certify that the property than a most unwholesome political and held by Harft and Co., is the only large financial condition of the country. tract which has been redeemed in the county from forfeiture to the State, and that no valid title to any tract such as was described at the Exchange sale exists. The printed abstract which was circulated in New York was purely imaginary. “ The parties on whose account the sale was conducted represented themselves as James M. Flagg and Co., Chicago, real LONDON: PRINTED BY EDWARD STANFORD, 55, estate agents. They left the city CHARING CROSS, S.W. immediately after the sale, and it is reported now that Flagg has been arrested in Chicago for having obtained $70,000 on a similar transaction in the West.” The ‘New York World’s’ account throws much light on transactions in real estate in the model republic. But it leaves much unexplained. Yet its statement that Harft, Karutz and Co. (probably Americanized Germans, and not particularly well known in the financial world) have been able to purchase 320,000 acres, in block, in McDowell county, West Virginia, which land had been forfeited to the State, probably for default in payment of taxes, strongly sustains our assertion as to the disastrous fall in real estate. These lands lie in no remote region, but are surrounded by the fertile and long