History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 Volume II Part 29

SOUTH CAROLINA.--R. B. Rhett, R. W. Barnwell, L. M. Keitt, James Chestnut, Jr., C. G. Memminger, W. Porcher Miles, Thomas J.

Withers, W. W. Boyce.

A president and vice-president were chosen by unanimous vote.

President--Honorable Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi.

Vice-President--Honorable Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia. The following gentlemen composed the Cabinet:

Secretary of State, Robert Toombs; Secretary of Treasury, C. G.

Memminger; Secretary of Interior (Vacancy); Secretary of War, L. P.

Walker; Secretary of Navy, John Perkins, Jr.; Postmaster-General, H.

T. Ebett; Attorney-General, J. P. Benjamin.

The Const.i.tution of the Confederate Government did not differ so very radically from the Federal Const.i.tution. The following were the chief points:

"1. The importation of African negroes from any foreign country other than the slave-holding States of the Confederate States is hereby forbidden, and Congress is required to pa.s.s such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.

"2. Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of this Confederacy.

"The Congress shall have power:

"1. To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, for revenue necessary to pay the debts and carry on the government of the Confederacy, and all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the Confederacy.

"A slave in one State escaping to another shall be delivered, upon the claim of the party to whom said slave may belong, by the Executive authority of the State in which such slave may be found; and in any case of abduction or forcible rescue, full compensation, including the value of slave, and all costs and expense, shall be made to the party by the State in which such abduction or rescue shall take place.

"2. The government hereby inst.i.tuted shall take immediate step's for the settlement of all matters between the States forming it and their late confederates of the United States in relation to the public property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them; these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common liabilities, and common obligations of that Union, upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith."

At first blush it would appear that the new government had not been erected upon the slave question; that it had gone as far as the Federal Government to suppress the foreign slave-trade; and that n.o.bler and sublimer ideas and motives had inspired and animated the Southern people in their movement for a new government. But the men who wrote the Confederate platform knew what they were about. They knew that to avoid the charge that would certainly be made against them, of having seceded in order to make slavery a national inst.i.tution, they must be careful not to exhibit such intentions in their Const.i.tution. But that the South seceded on account of the slavery question, there can be no historical doubt whatever. Jefferson Davis, President, so-called, of the Confederate Government, said in his Message, April 29, 1861:

"When the several States delegated certain powers to the United States Congress, a large portion of the laboring population consisted of African slaves, imported into the colonies by the mother-country. In twelve out of the thirteen States, negro slavery existed; and the right of property in slaves was protected by law. This property was recognized in the Const.i.tution; and provision was made against its loss by the escape of the slave.

"The increase in the number of slaves by further importation from Africa was also secured by a clause forbidding Congress to prohibit the slave-trade anterior to a certain date; and in no clause can there be found any delegation of power to the Congress, authorizing it in any manner to legislate to the prejudice, detriment, or discouragement of the owners of that species of property, or excluding it from the protection of the Government.

"The climate and soil of the Northern States soon proved unpropitious to the continuance of slave labor; whilst the converse was the case at the South. Under the unrestricted free intercourse between the two sections, the Northern States consulted their own interest, by selling their slaves to the South, and prohibiting slavery within their limits. The South were willing purchasers of a property suitable to their wants, and paid the price of the acquisition without harboring a suspicion that their quiet possession was to be disturbed by those who were inhibited not only by want of const.i.tutional authority, but by good faith as vendors, from disquieting a t.i.tle emanating from themselves.

"As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated, and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves.

"With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperilled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avoid the danger with which they were openly menaced. With this view, the Legislatures of the several States invited the people to select delegates to conventions to be held for the purpose of determining for themselves what measures were best adapted to meet so alarming a crisis in their history."[72]

Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President, as he was called, said, in a speech delivered at Savannah, Georgia, 21st of March, 1861:

"The new Const.i.tution has put at rest _forever_ all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar inst.i.tution,--African slavery as it exists amongst us, the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. _This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution._ JEFFERSON, in his forecast, had antic.i.p.ated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that great rock _stood_ and _stands_, may be doubted.

_The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Const.i.tution, were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically._ It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the inst.i.tution would be evanescent, and pa.s.s away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Const.i.tution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Const.i.tution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the inst.i.tution while it should last; and hence no argument can be justly used against the const.i.tutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. _Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the a.s.sumption of the equality of races. This was an error._ It was a sandy foundation; and the idea of a government built upon it,--when the 'storm came and the wind blew, it _fell_.'

"_Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas.

Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth._ This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day."[73]

Now, then, what was the real issue between the Confederate States and the United States? Why, it was extension of slavery by the former, and the restriction of slavery by the latter. To put the issue as it was understood by Northern men--in poetic language, it was "_The Union as it is_." While the South, at length, through its leaders, acknowledged that slavery was their issue, the North, standing upon the last a.n.a.lysis of the Free-Soil idea of resistance to the further inoculation of free territory with the virus of slavery, refused to recognize slavery as an issue. But what did the battle cry of the loyal North, "_The Union as it is_," mean? A Union half free and half slave; a dual government, if not in fact, certainly in the brains and hearts of the people; two civilizations at eternal and inevitable war with each other; a Union with the canker-worm of slavery in it, impairing its strength every year and threatening its life; a Union in which two hostile ideas of political economy were at work, and where unpaid slave labor was inimical to the interests of the free workingmen. And it should not be forgotten that the Republican party acknowledged the right of Southerns to hunt slaves in the free States, and to return such slaves, under the fugitive-slave law, to their masters. Mr. Lincoln was not an Abolitionist, as many people think.

His position on the question was clearly stated in the answers he gave to a number of questions put to him by Judge Dougla.s.s in the latter part of the summer of 1858. Mr. Lincoln said:

"Having said this much, I will take up the judge's interrogatories as I find them printed in the Chicago 'Times,'

and answer them _seriatim_. In order that there may be no mistake about it, I have copied the interrogatories in writing, and also my answers to them. The first one of these interrogatories is in these words:

"Question 1. 'I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive-Slave Law?'

"Answer. I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive-Slave Law.

"Q. 2. 'I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day, as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave States into the Union, even if the people want them?'

"A. I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any more slave States into the Union.

"Q. 3. 'I want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a const.i.tution as the people of that State may see fit to make.'

"Q. 4. 'I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia?'

"A. I do not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

"Q. 5. 'I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States?'

"A. I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States.

"Q. 6. 'I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the territories of the United States, north as well as south of the Missouri Compromise line?'

"A. I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the _right_ and _duty_ of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States territories. [Great applause.]

"Q. 7. 'I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of any new territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein?'

"A. I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and, in any given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as I might think such acquisition would or would not agitate the slavery question among ourselves.

"Now, my friends, it will be perceived upon an examination of these questions and answers, that so far I have only answered that I was not _pledged_ to this, that, or the other. The judge has not framed his interrogatories to ask me any thing more than this, and I have answered in strict accordance with the interrogatories, and have answered truly that I am not _pledged_ at all upon any of the points to which I have answered. But I am not disposed to hang upon the exact form of his interrogatories.

I am rather disposed to take up at least some of these questions, and state what I really think upon them.

"As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive-Slave Law, I have never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think, under the Const.i.tution of the United States, the people of the Southern States are ent.i.tled to a congressional slave law.

Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive-Slave Law, further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency. And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to an alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question of slavery.

"In regard to the other question, of whether I am pledged to the admission of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you very frankly that I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in a position of having to pa.s.s upon that question. I should be exceedingly glad to know that there would never be another slave State admitted into the Union; but I must add, that if slavery shall be kept out of the territories during the territorial existence of any one given territory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt the const.i.tution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave const.i.tution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the inst.i.tution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into the Union. [Applause.]

"The third interrogatory is answered by the answer to the second, it being, as I conceive, the same as the second.

"The fourth one is in regard to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In relation to that I have my mind very distinctly made up. I should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia. I believe that Congress possesses the const.i.tutional power to abolish it. Yet, as a member of Congress, I should not, with my present views, be in favor of _endeavoring_ to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, unless it would be upon these conditions: _First_, that the abolition should be gradual; _second_, that it should be on a vote of the majority of qualified voters in the district; and, _third_, that compensation should be made to unwilling owners.

With these three conditions I confess I would be exceedingly glad to see Congress abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; and, in the language of Henry Clay, 'sweep from our capital that foul blot upon our nation.'

"In regard to the fifth interrogatory, I must say here that, as to the question of the abolition of the slave-trade between the different States, I can truly answer, as I have, that I am _pledged_ to nothing about it. It is a subject to which I have not given that mature consideration that would make me feel authorized to state a position so as to hold myself entirely bound by it. In other words, that question has never been prominently enough before me to induce me to investigate whether we really have the const.i.tutional power to do it. I could investigate it, if I had sufficient time, to bring myself to a conclusion upon that subject; but I have not done so, and I say so frankly to you here, and to Judge Dougla.s.s. I must say, however, that if I should be of opinion that Congress does possess the const.i.tutional power to abolish slave-trading among the different States, I should still not be in favor of the exercise of that power unless upon some conservative principle as I conceive it, akin to what I have said in relation to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

"My answer as to whether I desire that slavery should be prohibited in all territories of the United States, is full and explicit within itself, and cannot be made clearer by any comments of mine. So, I suppose, in regard to the question whether I am opposed to the acquisition of any more territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein, my answer is such that I could add nothing by way of ill.u.s.tration, or making myself better understood, than the answer which I have placed in writing.

"Now, in all this the judge has me, and he has me on the record.

I suppose he had flattered himself that I was really entertaining one set of opinions for one place, and another set for another place--that I was afraid to say at one place what I uttered at another. What I am saying here I suppose I say to a vast audience as strongly tending to abolitionism as any audience in the State of Illinois, and I believe I am saying that which, if it would be offensive to any persons and render them enemies to myself, would be offensive to persons in this audience."[74]