Slavery and Four Years of War Part 19

Lovejoy had more than an ordinary excuse for using such violent language.

As long before as November 7, 1837, his brother, Elijah P. Lovejoy, had been murdered at Alton, Illinois, while defending his printing- press from a mob, chiefly from Missouri, his offence being that he published an Abolition paper (_The Observer_). His press had thrice before in a year been destroyed.

Pryor of Virginia, Barksdale of Mississippi, and others resented Lovejoy's expletives, calling him "an infamous, perjured villain,"

"a perjured negro-thief," and demanding of the Speaker to "order that blackhearted scoundrel and negro-stealing thief to take his seat."

Personal conflicts were imminent between opposing members. Potter of Iowa, Kellogg of Illinois, and others promptly and fiercely came to Lovejoy's defence. The latter finished his speech amid excitement and threats. Pryor afterwards demanded of Potter "the satisfaction usual among gentlemen," who promptly proposed to give it to him, naming bowie-knives as the weapons for the duel. This mode of gaining "_satisfaction_" was not accepted, because it was "vulgar, barbarous, and inhuman." Potter thenceforth became a hero, and less was heard of Northern cowardice.

This, and like incidents, kindled the fast-spreading flame,--real battle-fires were then almost in sight.

It must not be a.s.sumed the Republican party, before the war, favored the abolition of slavery. Its princ.i.p.al leaders denied they were abolitionists; on the contrary, they insisted that their party would not interfere with slavery where it existed by State law.

The sentiment of the people in that party, however, was, on this question, in advance even of its progressive leaders. The enforcement of the Fugitive-Slave Law caused many and most important accessions to the Abolitionists. Wendell Phillips became an Abolitionist on seeing Garrison dragged by a mob through the streets of Boston; Josiah Quincy by the martyrdom of Lovejoy; other men of much note, and mult.i.tudes of the moving, controlling ma.s.ses, were decided to oppose human slavery by kindred scenes all over the North. They took solemn, often secret vows, on witnessing men and women carried off in chains to slavery, to wage eternal war on the inst.i.tution; this, in imitation of the vow of Hannibal of old to his father, Hamilcar, to wage eternal war on Rome.

At last, through causes for the existence of which the South was chiefly to blame, the sentiment North was culminating so strongly against slavery that soon, had secession and war not come, slavery would have everywhere been a.s.sailed. It is impossible to stay the march of a great moral movement, when backed by enlightened ma.s.ses, as to stem the rus.h.i.+ng waters of a great stream in flood time.

Hence, the experiment of dissolution of the Union to save slavery was due, if ever, to be tried in _1861!_

Secession was made easier by reason of a long cherished habit of the Southern people to speak of themselves boastfully as citizens of their respective States, thus, "I am a Virginian"; "I am a Kentuckian," seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were citizens of the United States. This habit destroyed in some degree national patriotism, and promoted a State pride, baleful in its consequences.

In many of the slave State voting was done _viva voce;_ that is, by the voter announcing at the polls to the judges the name of the person for whom he voted for each office. This, it was contended, promoted frankness, manliness, independence, and honesty in elections.

On the other hand, it was claimed, with much truth, that it was a most refined and certain method of coercing the dependent poorer cla.s.ses into voting as the dominant cla.s.s might desire, and hence almost totally destructive of independence in voting.

An anecdote is told of John Randolph of Roanoke, who, when at the Court of St. James (England) was conspicuous for his boasting that he was a _Virginian_. He was introduced by an English official for an after-dinner speech with a request that he should tell the distinguis.h.i.+ng difference between a _Virginian_ and a citizen of the American Republic. He curtly responded:

"The difference is in the system of voting on election days; in Virginia a voter must stand up, look the candidates in the eye, and bravely and honestly name his preference, like a man; while generally a voter in other States of the Union is permitted to sneak to the polls like a thief, and slip a folded paper into a hole in a box, then in a cowardly way steal home; the one promotes manliness, the other cowardice."

XXIII SECESSION OF STATES--1860-1

From what has been said, it will be seen the hour had arrived for practical secession--disunion--or a total abandonment by the South of its defiant position on slavery. The latter was not to be expected of the proud race of Southern statesmen and slaveholders.

They had pushed their cause too far to recede, and the North, though conceding generally that there was no const.i.tutional power to interfere with slavery where it existed, was equally determined not to permit its extension. In secession lay the only hope of either forcing the North to recede from its position, or, if successful, to create a new government wherein slavery should be universal and fundamental. Never before had it been proposed to establish a nation solely to perpetuate human slavery.

The election of Lincoln was already announced as a sufficient cause for secession. The South had failed to make California slave; to make four more slave States out of Texas; to secure pledges that out of the New Mexico Territory other slave States should be formed; and to make Kansas a slave State. It had also failed to acquire Cuba, already slave, for division into more slave States. There was, moreover, a certainly that many more free States would be admitted from the territorial domain of the great West. The political equilibrium in Congress on the line of slavery had therefore become impossible for all the future. These were the grievances over which the South brooded.

But was it not in the divine plan that slavery in the Republic should come to a violent end? Nowhere among the kingdoms and empires of the earth had it become, or had it ever been so deeply implanted, as a part of a political system. In the proud, boastful, free Republic of America, in the afternoon of the nineteenth century, where the Christian religion was taught, where liberty of conscience was guaranteed by organic law, where civilization was a.s.sumed to exist in its most enlightened and progressive stage, there, _alone_, the slave owner marshalled boastfully his human slaves, selling them on the auction block or otherwise at will, to be carried to distant parts, separating wife and husband, parents and children, and in a thousand ways shocking all the purer instincts of humanity.

Nor did its evil effects begin or cease with the black slave.

Jefferson, speaking of slavery in the United States when it existed in a more modified form, described its immoral effect on the master and his family thus:

"The whole commerce between master and slave is perpetual exercise of the most boisterous pa.s.sions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it... . The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of small slaves, gives a loose to the worst of pa.s.sions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities."(101)

The virtue of the white race was necessarily involved in the inst.i.tution. The blood of the dominant race became intermingled with the black, and often white blood predominated in the slave.

The offspring of slaveholders became slaves, and were dealt in the same as the pure African. Concubinage existed generally where slaves were numerous.

The rule was that any person born of a slave mother was doomed to perpetual slavery.

As early as 1856, perhaps earlier, conferences were proposed among leaders in some of the Southern States looking to secession. They were repeated again in 1858, and before the election of Lincoln in 1860.(102) And Southern secret societies were formed in 1860 to promote the same end.

The existence of a disunion cabal in Buchanan's Cabinet, working to bring about disunion, was hardly a secret.

Howell Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, John B. Floyd of Virginia, Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and possibly others, were of the Cabinet cabal.

Buchanan, though himself desiring to preserve the Union, had not the bold temperament, and he had too long been a political tool of the slave power to effectually resist its violent aggressions; nor did he have the discernment to discover that his official household was the centre of a disunion movement. His Secretary of War distributed officers of the army believed to be friendly to the South where they could become available to it; he sent from the North small arms and cannon, ammunition and stores where they could be seized at the right time.(103) Members of the Cabinet kept the secession leaders advised of all acts of the administration, and generally aided them. The auspicious time, if ever, seemed to have come for a successful dissolution of the Union. The army and navy were full of able Southern men, ready, as the sequel proves, to go with their States, abandon the country that had nurtured and educated them, and the flag that had been their glory.

Governor Wm. H. Gist, of South Carolina, October 5, 1860, by confidential letters to the governors of the cotton States, fairly inaugurated disunion, based on the antic.i.p.ated election of Abraham Lincoln a month thence.(104)

One week later, without waiting for a consultation of governors of slave States, he, by proclamation, convened the Legislature of South Carolina to "_take action for the safety and protection of the State_."

This body met November 5th, the day preceding the Presidential election.

The alleged grounds of justification for this early meeting were:

"The strong possibility of the election to the Presidency of a sectional candidate by a party committed to the support of measures which, if carried out, will inevitably destroy _our equality in the Union_," etc.

This was the avowed reason, finally, for secession, though the true reason was the absolute restriction of slavery and the overthrow of the slave power in the Republic. The election of a Republican President was, of course, a disappointment to Southern statesmen, long used to absolute sway in Congress and in the administration of the government. The charge that Lincoln was a sectional President was true only to the extent that freedom was sectional. Slavery only was then, by secessionists, regarded as national.

The first important step of the South Carolina Legislature was to appropriate $100,000 to be expended by the Governor in purchasing small-arms and a battery of rifled cannon. Without opposition a convention was called to take "into consideration the dangers incident to the position of the State in the Federal Union." Her two United States Senators and other of her Federal officers forthwith resigned. A grand ma.s.s meeting was held, November 17th, at Charleston, generally partic.i.p.ated in by the ladies, merchants, etc. The Stars and Stripes were not displayed, but a white palmetto flag, after solemn prayer, was unfurled in its stead. Disunion was here inaugurated. November 13th the Legislature of South Carolina stayed the collection of all debts due to citizens of non- slaveholding States. It was not sufficient to repudiate the Union, but honest debts must also be repudiated.

The convention thus called first met at Columbia, December 17th, thence adjourned to Charleston, where (appropriately) on December 20, 1860, an Ordinance of Secession was pa.s.sed reading thus:

"_An Ordinance,

"To dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact ent.i.tled 'The Const.i.tution of the United States of America_.'

"We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention a.s.sembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained: That the Ordinance adopted by us in convention on the 23d day of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Const.i.tution of the United States was ratified, and also, all acts and parts of acts of the General a.s.sembly of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Const.i.tution, are hereby repealed, and the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved."

This action was taken in Buchanan's administration while secessionists and promoters of disunion were yet in his Cabinet, and Jefferson Davis and others were still plotting in Congress.

Great stress was laid upon the right to rescind the original Ordinance of 1788 ratifying the Const.i.tution of the United States, and the Union of the States was denominated only a "_compact_."

The pa.s.sage of the Ordinance of Secession was followed by "bonfires and illuminations, ringing of bells, insults to the Stars and Stripes," partic.i.p.ated in by South Carolina aristocracy, especially cheered on by the first ladies of the State and city, little dreaming that slavery's opening death-knell was being proclaimed.(105)

It was fitting that South Carolina should lead the van of secession.

She had, in a Colonial state, furnished more Tories in the Revolution of 1776 than any of the other colonies; she had initiated secession through nullification in 1832; and her greatest statesman, Calhoun, was the first to propose disunion as a remedy for slavery restrictions.

Events succeeded rapidly.

An Alabama convention met, and, on January 8, 1861, received commissioners from South Carolina, and on the 11th pa.s.sed, in secret session, an Ordinance of Secession, refusing to submit it to a vote of her people.

Mississippi, on January 9, 1861, pa.s.sed, through a convention, a like Ordinance.

Georgia, January 19th, by a convention pa.s.sed her Ordinance of Secession.

Louisiana's convention pa.s.sed an Ordinance of Secession January 25, 1861.

Texas pa.s.sed, in convention, on February 1, 1861, a like Ordinance, which was ratified by a vote of her people February 24th.(106)

Thus seven States resolved to secede before Abraham Lincoln became President.