Kitabı oku: «The Life of Jefferson Davis», sayfa 12

I desire no divided flag for the Democratic party, seek not to depreciate the power of the Senator, or take from him any thing of that confidence he feels in the large army which follows his standard. I prefer that his banner should lie in its silken folds to feed the moth; but if it unrestrainedly rustles, impatient to be unfurled, we who have not invited the conflict, shrink not from the trial; we will plant our flag on every hill and plain; it shall overlook the Atlantic and welcome the sun as he rises from its dancing waters; it shall wave its adieu as he sinks to repose in the quiet Pacific.

Our principles are national; they belong to every State of the Union; and though elections may be lost by their assertion, they constitute the only foundation on which we can maintain power, on which we can again rise to the dignity the Democracy once possessed. Does not the Senator from Illinois see in the sectional character of the vote he received, that his opinions are not acceptable to every portion of the country? Is not the fact that the resolutions adopted by seventeen States, on which the greatest reliance must be placed for Democratic support, are in opposition to the dogma to which he still clings, a warning that if he persists and succeeds in forcing his theory upon the Democratic party, its days are numbered? We ask only for the Constitution. We ask of the Democracy only from time to time to declare, as current exigencies may indicate, what the Constitution was intended to secure and provide. Our flag bears no new device. Upon its folds our principles are written in living light; all proclaiming the constitutional Union, justice, equality, and fraternity of our ocean-bound domain, for a limitless future.

CHAPTER VII

ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN – HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE EVENT – THE OBJECTS AIMED AT BY HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY IDENTICAL IN THE DISCUSSION OF EVENTS OF THE LATE WAR – NORTHERN EVASION OF THE REAL QUESTION – THE SOUTH DID NOT ATTEMPT REVOLUTION – SECESSION A JUSTIFIABLE RIGHT EXERCISED BY SOVEREIGN STATES – BRIEF REVIEW OF THE QUESTION – WHAT THE FEDERALIST SAYS – CHIEF-JUSTICE MARSHALL – MR. MADISON – COERCION NOT JUSTIFIED AT THE NORTH PREVIOUS TO THE LATE WAR – REMARKS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS – OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN – OF HORACE GREELEY – SUCCESSFUL PERVERSION OF TRUTH BY THE NORTH – PROVOCATIONS TO SECESSION BY THE SOUTH – AGGRESSIONS BY THE NORTH – ITS PUNIC FAITH – LOSS OF THE BALANCE OF POWER – PATIENCE OF THE SOUTH – REMARKS OF HON. C. C. CLAY – WHAT THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN MEANT – HIS ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY – REVELATIONS OF THE OBJECTS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY – WENDELL PHILLIPS – NO SECURITY FOR THE SOUTH IN THE UNION – MEETING OF CONGRESS – MR. DAVIS’ ASSURANCE TO PRESIDENT BUCHANAN – CONCILIATORY COURSE OF MR. DAVIS – HIS CONSISTENT DEVOTION TO THE UNION, AND EFFORTS TO SAVE IT – FORESEES WAR AS THE RESULT OF SECESSION, AND URGES THE EXHAUSTION OF EVERY EXPEDIENT TO AVERT IT – THE CRITTENDEN AMENDMENT – HOPES OF ITS ADOPTION – DAVIS WILLING TO ACCEPT IT IN SPITE OF ITS INJUSTICE TO THE SOUTH – REPUBLICAN SENATORS DECLINE ALL CONCILIATORY MEASURES – THE CLARKE AMENDMENT – WHERE RESTS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF DISUNION? – STATEMENTS OF MESSRS. DOUGLAS AND COX – SECESSION OF THE COTTON STATES – A LETTER FROM JEFFERSON DAVIS TO R. B. RHETT, JR. – MR. DAVIS’ FAREWELL TO THE SENATE – HIS REASONS FOR WITHDRAWING – RETURNS TO MISSISSIPPI – MAJOR-GENERAL OF STATE FORCES – ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT – MR. DAVIS PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES

As had been foreseen, and, indeed, as was the inevitable sequence of the disruption of the Democratic party, Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the Republican party, was, in November, 1860, elected President of the United States. This was the supreme and sufficient incitement to the adoption of the dreaded resort of disunion. As the occasion which finally brought the South to the attitude of resistance, the event acquires vast historical importance.

When it is conceded that Mr. Lincoln was elected in accordance with the forms of the Constitution, having received a majority of electoral votes; that the mere ceremony of election was attended by no unusual circumstances, we concede every possible ground upon which can be based an argument denying its ample justification of the course pursued by the South. Such an argument, however, leads to a wholly untenable conclusion, and may be easily exposed in its hypocritical evasion of the real question. We are here required to note the distinction between cause and occasion. As the final consummation of tendencies, long indicating the result of disunion, this event has an appropriate place in the recapitulation of those influences, and can be rightly estimated only in connection with their operation.

Trite observations upon the influence of passion and prejudice, over contemporary judgment, are not necessary to a due conception of the obstacles which, for the present, exclude candor from the discussion of the late movement for Southern independence. In the face of the disastrous overthrow of that movement, the wrecked hopes and fortunes of those who participated in it, discussion is chiefly serviceable, as it throws additional light upon the development of those eternal principles in whose ceaseless struggles men are only temporary agents.

History and biography are here most intimately blended; beginning from the same stand-point, they encounter common difficulties, and aim to explore the same general grounds of observation. So far as a verdict – from whatever tribunal, whether rendered at the bar of justice or in the award of popular opinion, when the embers of recent strife are still fiercely glowing – can affect the dispassionate judgment of History, the Southern people can not be separated, either in fact or in sentiment, from Jefferson Davis. He was the illustrious compatriot of six millions of freemen, who struck for nationality and independence, and lost – as did Greece and Poland before them; or he and they were alike insurgents, equally guilty of the crime of treason.

With an adroitness which does credit to the characteristic charlatanism of the North, an infinite variety of special questions and side issues have been interwoven with the narrative of the late war, for the obvious purpose of confounding the judgment of mankind regarding the great question which really constitutes the gravamen of the controversy. Conspicuous among these efforts, from both audacity and plausibility, are appeals to the sympathies of the world, in consideration of the abolition of slavery, which it is well known was merely an incident, and not the avowed design of the war.

Persistent in its introduction of the moral question of slavery, the North seeks to shield itself from the reproach justly visited upon its perpetration of an atrocious political crime, by an insolent intrusion of a false claim to the championship of humanity. Whatever may be the decision of Time upon the merits of slavery, it is in vain for the North to seek escape from its responsibility for an institution, protected and sustained by a government which was the joint creation of Southern and Northern hands.

The attempted dissolution of the Union by the South was a movement involving moral and political considerations, not unlike those incidental to revolutions in general, yet presenting certain peculiar characteristics, traceable to the inherent and distinctive features of the American political system. These latter considerations constitute a vital part of its justification. The South did not appeal only to the inalienable right of revolution, which is the natural guarantee of resistance to wrong and oppression. Nor did the States, severally, as they assumed to sever their connection with the Union, announce a purpose of constitutional revolution, or adopt a course inviting or justifying violence. Mr. Davis and those who coöperated with him, neither by the acts of secession, nor the subsequent confederation of the States under a new government, could have committed treason against Mr. Lincoln, since they were not his subjects. Nor yet were they traitors to the Government of the United States, since the States of which they were citizens had rescinded the grant of powers voluntarily made by them to that Government, and begun to exercise them in conjunction with other powers which they had withheld by express reservation.

It is impossible to conceive a movement, contemplating such important political changes, more entirely unattended by displays of violence, passion, and disorder. A simple assertion, with due solemnity, by each State, of its sovereignty – a heritage which it had never surrendered, but which had been respected by innumerable forms of recognition in the history of the Union – and the exercise of those attributes of sovereignty, which are too palpable to require that they shall be indicated, was the peaceable method resorted to of terminating a political alliance which had become injurious to the highest interests of one of the parties. Could there have been a more becoming and dignified exercise of the vaunted right of self-government? It is that right to which America is so conspicuously committed, and which has been such an inexhaustible theme for the tawdry rhetoric of Northern eloquence.

Even in the insolence of its triumph, the North feels the necessity of at least a decent pretext for its destruction of the cardinal feature in the American system of government – the sovereignty of the States. With habitual want of candor, Northern writers pretend that the Constitution of the United States does not affirm the sovereignty of the States, and that, therefore, secession was treason against that Constitution to which they had subscribed; in other words, the created does not give authority to the creator —i. e., the Constitution, which the States created, does not accredit sovereignty to the States, and, therefore, the States are not sovereign. It is not pretended that the States were not, each of them, originally independent powers, since they were so recognized by Great Britain, in the plainest terms, at the termination of the first revolution. Nor is it asserted that the union of the States, under the title of United States, was the occasion of any surrender of their individual sovereignty, as it was then declared that “each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence.” A conclusive demonstration of the retention of sovereignty by the States is seen in the entire failure of the Constitution, either by direct assertion or by implication, to claim its surrender to the Union.

If the sovereignty of the States be conceded, the South stands justified as having exercised an unquestionable right. It was never formally denied, even at the North, until Mr. Webster, in his debate with Mr. Calhoun, affirmed the doctrine of the supremacy of the Union, to which conclusion the Northern masses sprung with alacrity, as an available justification for compelling the submission of the South to the outrages which they had already commenced.

Volumes of testimony have been adduced, proving the theory of State sovereignty to have been the overwhelmingly predominant belief among the statesmen most prominent in the establishment of the Union, and in shaping the policy of the Government in its earlier history. Argument proved an unavailing offset to the stern decrees of the sword, and is quite unnecessary so long as the unanswerable logic of Calhoun, Davis, and a score of Southern statesmen remains upon the national records – a perpetual challenge, as yet unaccepted, to the boasted intellect of the North, and a significant warning of the final adjudication of the centuries. We shall intrude no argument of our own in support of State sovereignty, upon which rests the vindication of the South and her leaders. Before us are the apposite and conclusive assumptions of men who have been the revered sources of political inspiration among Americans.

The Federalist, that most powerful vindication of the Constitution, and earnest plea for its adoption by the States, assumes that it was a “compact,” to which “the States, as distinct and independent sovereigns,” were the parties. Yet this doctrine, the basis upon which rests the august handiwork of Madison and Hamilton, the “architects of the Constitution,” when applied by Davis and his compatriots, becomes treason! Such is the extremity to which despotism, in its wretched plea of expediency, is driven; and the candid, enlightened American of to-day realizes, in his country, a land in which “truth is treason, and history is rebellion.”

Chief-Justice Marshall, the great judicial luminary of America, and an authority not usually summoned to the support of doctrines hostile to the assumptions of Federal power, gave most emphatic testimony to the propriety of the States’ Rights view of the relations of State and Federal authority. In the Virginia Convention which ratified the Constitution, he said: “The State governments did not derive their powers from the General Government. But each government derived its powers from the people, and each was to act according to the powers given it. Would any gentleman deny this? He demanded, if powers not given were retained by implication? Could any man say, no? Could any man say that this power was not retained by the States, since it was not given away?” The view so earnestly urged by Marshall, was not only avowed generally, but Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania insisted upon a written declaration, in the Constitution, of the principle that certain attributes of sovereignty, which they did not delegate to the Union, were retained by the States.

Mr. Madison, whose great abilities were taxed to the utmost to secure the ratification of the Constitution by Virginia, vigorously and earnestly defended it against the allegation that it created a consolidated government. With the utmost difficulty, he secured a majority of ten votes, in the Virginia Convention, in favor of the Constitution, which his rival, Patrick Henry, denounced as destructive of State sovereignty.

Defining the expression, “We, the people,” Mr. Madison said: “The parties to it were the people, but not the people as composing one great society, but the people as composing ‘thirteen sovereignties.’” To quote Mr. Madison again: “If it were a consolidated government, the assent of a majority of the people would be sufficient to establish it. But it was to be binding on the people of a State only by their own separate consent.” Under the influence of these arguments, and others of the same import from Mr. Madison, whom she thought, from his close relations to the Constitution, high authority upon all questions pertaining to its character, Virginia finally acceded to the Union. It is especially noteworthy, however, that Virginia, when becoming a party to the Constitution, expressly affirmed, in the most solemn manner, the right to “resume” her grants of power to the Federal Government.

In deference to the accumulated evidence upon this subject, came the unqualified statement, from eminent Northern authority,¹⁴ that, “This right [of secession] must be considered an ingredient in the original composition of the General Government, which, though not expressed, was mutually understood.”

But whatever may be thought of the prescriptive and inherent right of sovereignty, exercised by the South in withdrawing from the Union, as deducible from the peculiar nature of the American system, and as expounded by the founders of that system, there can be no question as to its entire accordance with the spirit of American polity. Authority is abundant in support of the assertion that, not even in the North, previous to the inception of the present revolution, was the idea of a constrained connection with the Union entertained. From every source of Northern opinion has come indignant repudiation of a coerced association of communities, originally united by a common pledge of fealty to the right of self-government.

Upon this subject Mr. John Quincy Adams spoke in language of characteristic fervor: “The indissoluble link of union between the people of the several States of this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come (may heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other – when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship from each other than to be held together by constraint.”

Even Mr. Lincoln, whose statesmanship is not likely to be commemorated for its profundity or scholarship, fully comprehended the exaggerated reverence of the American mind for the “sacred right of self-government.” Now that his homely phrases are dignified by the Northern masses with the sanctity of the utterances of Deity, assuredly there should be no apprehension that his opinions may not be deemed conclusive. In 1848, Mr. Lincoln said: “Any people whatever have the right to abolish the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right.”

A brave affirmation was this of the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, that “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;” and one which would have commanded the united applause of the North, then and now, had the application concerned Hungary, Poland, Greece, or Mexico. But, with reference to the South, there was a most important modification of this admirable principle of equity and humanity. When asked, “Why not let the South go?” Abraham Lincoln, the President, in 1861, said: “Let the South go! Where, then, shall we get our revenue?” And the united North reëchoed: “Let the South go! Where, then, shall we look for the bounties and monopolies which have so enriched us at the expense of those improvident, unsuspecting Southerners? Where shall we find again such patient victims of spoliation?”

Mr. Horace Greeley frequently and emphatically, previous to the war, affirmed the right of changing its political association asserted by the South. Three days after the election of Mr. Lincoln, in November, 1860, his paper, the New York Tribune, said: “If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace… We must ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union, and nullify or defy the laws thereof. To withdraw from the Union is quite another matter; and whenever any considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets.” On the 17th of December, 1860, the Tribune said: “If it [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the Federal Union in 1861.”

Such are a few illustrations, to which might be added innumerable quotations, of the same import, from the most prominent sources of Northern opinion. Never has there been a question so capable of positive solution and easy comprehension, when subjected to the test of candid investigation, and never so successful a purpose to exclude the illumination of facts by persistent and ingenious misrepresentation. The North has reason for its extravagant exultation at the skill and audacity with which the brazen front of hypocrisy, for a time, at least, has successfully sustained, in the name of humanity and liberty, the most monstrous imposition and transparent counterfeit of virtue ever designed upon an intelligent age.

To the triumphant historical vindication of the South, there remains only the essential condition of a clear and truthful statement of the provocations which impelled her to adopt that long-deferred remedy, which is the last refuge of a people whose liberties are imperiled. Secession, however strong in its prescriptive or implied justification as a principle, was not to be undertaken from caprice, or trivial causes of dissatisfaction.

Abuses, numerous, serious, and consecutive, were required before disunion became either desirable or acceptable to the South. The native conservatism of the Southern character renders it peculiarly averse to agitation; to this were added social features, the safety of which would be greatly imperiled by civil war, and thus a train of influences tended to make Southern soil, of all others, the least favorable to the growth of revolutionary principles.

In the development of this volume, we have glanced at the progress of those sectional differences, at various periods precipitated by the insolent aggressions of Abolitionism, which steadily depreciated the value of the Union in Southern estimation. Continued aggressions by her enemies; their Punic faith, illustrated in a series of violated pledges, and habitual disregard of the conditions of the covenant which bound South and North together; petty outrages, taunts and insults, emanating from every possible source of public expression at the North, for many years had banished fraternal feeling and precluded those interchanges of comity between the sections which were the indispensable requisites to national harmony. It is undeniable, that for years previous to secession, the sentimental attachment to the Union, which was the distinctive characteristic of Southern patriotism – unlike the coarse, utilitarian estimate of the Union as a source of pecuniary profit, which constituted its value to the North – had been greatly impaired. Since 1850, and to a considerable extent during the preceding decade, the most sagacious statesmen of the South contemplated disunion as an event almost inevitable, unless averted by a contingency of very improbable occurrence. There must be an awakening by the North to a more just appreciation of its constitutional and patriotic obligations, or an unmanly submission by the South, to a condition of degrading inferiority, in a government to whose construction, prosperity, and distinction, she had contributed more than a proportionate share of influence.

Chief among the considerations which admonished the South of the perils which environed her situation in the Union, was the total destruction of that sectional balance, which had been wisely adjusted by its founders, as the safeguard of the weaker against the stronger influence. Having in mind the wise saying of Aristotle, that “the weak always desire what is equal and just, but the powerful pay no regard to it,” the statesmen of 1787 designedly shaped the chart of government with a view to the preservation of equality. The struggle between the weaker element, naturally contending in behalf of the equilibrium, and the stronger striving for its overthrow, was, at an early period, distinctly foreshadowed. With characteristic prevision, Alexander Hamilton, probably the foremost statesman of his day, foretold the nature of this contest over the principle of equality. Said that sagacious publicist: “The truth is, it is a contest for power, not for liberty.”

This contest, indeed, so long waged, was, many years since, decided overwhelmingly against the South. In 1850, the Northern majority in the House of Representatives, the popular branch of the government, had increased from a majority, in 1790, of five votes, to fifty-four. Years before, the legislation of Congress assumed that sectional bias, which was undeviatingly adhered to for the purpose, and with ample success, of the material depression of the South. Under the baleful influences of hostile legislation, of tariffs aimed directly at her commercial prosperity, of bounties for fostering multifarious Northern interests, her position in the Union was helpless and deplorable in the extreme. Yet, like a rock-bound Prometheus, with the insidious elements of destruction gnawing at her vitals, the South suffered herself to be chained by an influence of sentiment, of association, and reminiscence to the Union, fully conscious of the growing rapacity of her despoiler and of her own hopeless decline. Her infatuation was indeed marvelous, in trusting to the dawning of justice and generosity in a fierce, vindictive, and remorseless sectional majority.

The alarming portents of ultimately complete material prostration, to be consummated by these perversions of the purposes of the Union, were terribly significant, in view of the venom which actuated the enemies of the South. The sectional balance was hopelessly gone; Southern material prosperity destroyed by sectional legislation; not a check, originally provided by the Constitution for the protection of the weaker section, but had been virtually obliterated; Northern perfidy illustrated in the violation of every compact which, in operation, proved favorable to the South, while the latter was held to a rigid fidelity in all agreements favorable to her enemies; the nullification, by the legislatures of half the Northern States, of Federal laws for the protection of Southern property, are a few of those grievances which presented to the South the hard and inexorable alternative of resistance, or abject submission to endless insult and outrage.

A Southern Senator,¹⁵ announcing the secession of his State, and his own consequent withdrawal from the Senate, stated the question in a form, which even then had the authority of history.

“Not a decade, nor scarce a lustrum, has elapsed (since Alabama became a State) that has not been strongly marked by proofs of the growth and power of that antislavery spirit of the Northern people, which seeks the overthrow of that domestic institution of the South, which is not only the chief source of her prosperity, but the very basis of her social order and State polity. It is to-day the master-spirit of the Northern States, and had before the secession of Alabama, of Mississippi, of Florida, or of South Carolina, severed most of the bonds of the Union. It denied us Christian communion, because it could not endure what it calls the moral leprosy of slave-holding; it refused us permission to sojourn, or even to pass through the North with our property; it claimed freedom for the slave, if brought by his master into a Northern State; it violated the Constitution, and treaties, and laws of Congress, because designed to protect that property; it refused us any share of lands acquired mainly by our diplomacy, and blood, and treasure; it refused our property any shelter or security beneath the flag of a common government; it robbed us of our property, and refused to restore it; it refused to deliver criminals against our laws, who fled to the North with our property or our blood upon their hands; it threatened us by solemn legislative acts, with ignominious punishment, if we pursued our property into a Northern State; it murdered Southern men when seeking the recovery of their property on Northern soil; it invaded the borders of Southern States, poisoned their wells, burnt their dwellings, and murdered their people; it denounced us by deliberate resolves of popular meetings, of party conventions, and of religious, and even legislative assemblies, as habitual violators of the laws of God and the rights of humanity; it exerted all the moral and physical agencies that human ingenuity can devise, or diabolical malice can employ, to heap odium and infamy upon us, and to make us a by-word of hissing and of scorn throughout the civilized world.”

There was no room for uncertainty as to the significance of the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, in 1860, by a party exclusively sectional in organization, and upon a platform, which virtually declared the Union, as then constituted, in opposition to justice, humanity, and civilization.

The real danger to the South, involved in this election, was that it was a sectional triumph – a victory of North over South, in a contest where the South risked every thing, the North nothing. From time immemorial sincere patriots of both sections had deprecated the formation of sectional parties, organized upon geographical interests, or upon ideas confined to limited portions of the Union. Washington, in his farewell injunction, admonished his countrymen of the deplorable results which must follow the presentation of such issues.

The Chicago platform was more than a menace to the South; it was a defiance of law, a declaration of war upon the Constitution. The election of Lincoln was both a legal and moral severance of the bonds of Union. While he received the united vote of the North, save New Jersey, he did not receive one electoral vote from the South. His shaping of his administration was consistent with the character of the party which elected him. All his constitutional advisers were Northern men or Southern Abolitionists; social outlaws in their own section, in consequence of their notorious personal depravity, and infidelity to their immediate fellow-citizens. Of like character were the subordinate appointments of the Federal Government in Southern communities.

Nor was there reason to doubt the policy of the Government under its new management. Mr. Lincoln had been sufficiently communicative of his own bitter hostility to Southern institutions. In fact, with much show of justice, his admirers claimed for him the original suggestion of the idea of an “irrepressible conflict,” afterwards so elaborately pronounced by William H. Seward. Public announcements, from prominent speakers of the successful party, amply revealed the feast to which the South was invited. Wendell Phillips, the most able, eloquent, and sagacious of the original Abolitionists, thus pointedly defined the situation: “No man has a right to be surprised at this state of things. It is just what we have attempted to bring about. It is the first sectional party ever organized in this country. It does not know its own face, and calls itself national; but it is not national – it is sectional. The Republican party is a party of the North pledged against the South.”