Kitabı oku: «America. A history», sayfa 18

Book Fifth

CHAPTER I
REUNITED AMERICA

Long ago thoughtful men had foreseen that a permanent union between slave communities and free communities was impossible. Wise Americans knew that their country could not continue “half slave and half free.” Slavery was a fountain out of which strife flowed perpetual. There was an incessant conflict of interests. There was a still more formidable conflict of feeling. The North was humiliated by the censure which she had to share with her erring sisters. The South was imbittered by the knowledge that the Christian world abhorred her most cherished institution. The Southern character became ever more fierce, domineering, unreasoning. Some vast change was known to be near. Slavery must cease in the South, or extend itself into the North. There was no resting-place for the country between that universal liberty which was established in the North, and the favourite doctrine of the South that the capitalist should own the labourer.

The South appealed to the sword, and the decision was against her. She frankly and wisely accepted it. She acknowledged that the labouring-man was now finally proved to be no article of merchandise, but a free and responsible citizen. That acknowledgment closed the era of strife between North and South. There was no longer anything to strive about. There was no longer North or South, in the old hostile sense, but a united nation, with interests and sympathies rapidly becoming identical. It has been foretold that America will yet break up into several nations. What developments may await America in future ages we do not know. But we do know that the only circumstance which threatened disruption among the sisterhood of States has been removed, and that the national existence of America rests upon foundations at least as assured as those which support any nation in the world.

The South had laid aside all thought of armed resistance, and in perfect good faith had acquiesced in the overthrow of slavery. Her leaders did not, however, consent readily to those guarantees of future tranquillity which the North demanded. At the close of the war eleven States were without legal State government; and the North would not permit the restoration of the forfeited privilege until those constitutional changes were accepted by which the political equality of the negro was secured. It had become an easy thing to consent that the negro should be free; it was very hard to consent that he should sit in the State Legislatures, and exercise an influential voice in framing laws for those who had lately owned him. Several States withheld their concurrence from arrangements which humiliated them so deeply, desperately choosing rather to deny themselves for the time the privilege of self-government and to live under a government in whose creation they had no part. Very grave evils resulted from their pertinacious adherence to this unwise choice. Their affairs were necessarily taken charge of by the Federal executive, and President Grant sent them rulers from Washington. Unworthy persons were able by dexterous intrigue to gain positions of control, and hastened southwards, with no purpose to heal the wounds of the war; intent merely to plunder for their own advantage the impoverished and suffering States. The finances of the South were in extreme disorder. Public debt had increased enormously during the war; but the North averted the difficulty which this increase might have caused by insisting that no debt incurred for the purposes of the rebellion should be recognized as a public obligation. The temporary rulers of the South gave prompt attention to the possibility of obtaining loans, ostensibly for the restoration of railroads and other necessary works. It was not yet realized how fatally wasted the South had been, and men hastily concluded that her advantages of soil and climate must secure for her a rapid financial recovery. Cherishing such expectations, capitalists on both sides of the Atlantic were found willing to make loans on the credit of various Southern States. These moneys were applied only in very small measure to the uses of the States in whose name they were obtained; the larger portion was feloniously appropriated by the unscrupulous persons whose position gave them the opportunity of doing so. Afterwards, when the fraud was fully exposed, the defrauded States repudiated the obligation to repay moneys which they had not received, and which, as they averred, had been borrowed by persons who were in no sense their servants. The good name of the South suffered deeply and her recovery was seriously hindered by these unhappy transactions.

The inevitable difficulties of reconstruction were seriously aggravated by the violent conflict of opinion which raged between President Johnson and Congress. The President would not sanction the conditions which Congress considered it necessary to make with the South, and he steadily vetoed all measures which were at variance with his theory that the rebels were entitled to be received without stipulation. His resistance was not practically important, for the country was united, and Congress was able to pass all its measures over the veto of the President. The irritation caused by his opposition to the public wish grew, however, so intense, that it led to his impeachment and trial before the Senate, with a view to his forcible removal from office. His enemies failed to secure a conviction, although they came so near that one additional hostile vote would have brought Mr. Johnson’s presidency to an abrupt close. So smoothly does the constitutional machinery of America now move, that the trial and expected deposition of the head of the government were not felt either by the commercial interests of the country or in the carrying on of public business.

For five years after the end of the war some of the Southern States continued to refuse the terms insisted upon by the inflexible North, and continued to endure the evils of military rule. Gradually, however, as time soothed the bitterness of defeat, they withdrew their refusal and consented to resume their position in the Union on the conditions which were offered to them. In 1870 President Grant was able to announce the completed restoration of the Union which his own leadership had done so much to save.

The industrial recovery of the South was unexpectedly slow. The industrial arrangements of the country were utterly overthrown. Population had diminished; capital had disappeared; cultivation, excepting of articles necessary for food, had ceased; many of the coloured labourers had fled northwards, and the labour of those who remained had to be arranged for on conditions altogether new and unknown. The reconstruction of the shattered fragments of an industrial system was inevitably a tedious and difficult work. But the wholesome pressure of necessity, – laid equally on white men and on black, – obliged both to adapt themselves to the circumstances in which they were placed. The planters drew together as many labourers as they could obtain and were able to pay for, and cultivated such portions of their lands as they could thus overtake. The negroes were always ready to serve any man who paid regular wages; but it very often happened, at the outset, that there was no man with money enough to do that. In such cases the negroes cultivated for their own behoof. The progress made in reconquering the neglected soil was very slow. But in that fertile land no effort of man is suffered to go without a bountiful reward. Every succeeding crop left the cultivator a little richer than he had been before. Every seed-time witnessed a larger area under cultivation, until at length the quantity of cotton produced is as large as it had ever been before the war, and promises steadily to increase. A new and better industrial system gradually arose – less picturesque than that which had been destroyed, but no longer founded in wrong, and therefore more enduring and more beneficial to master as well as to servant.

The rebellion had drawn forth into energetic exercise among the Northern people a patriotic sentiment which nerved them for every measure of self-devotion. But war cherishes also into exceptional strength the evil that is in humanity, and this patriot war exerted an influence not less unhallowed than other wars have done. The fluctuating value of the currency and consequently of all commodities, the unprecedented opportunities of acquiring sudden wealth, fostered widespread corruption in the cities. Reckless personal extravagance, a frantic haste to become rich by whatever means, and a general decay of commercial morality, characterized the years which followed the restoration of peace. Political society, at no time distinguished by its elevation of moral tone, was deeply tainted. Even among the men whom President Grant had chosen as worthy of his fullest confidence there were some who yielded to the prevailing influence, and the President had the mortification of finding that several members of his Cabinet had incurred the shame of corrupt transactions. Habitual embezzlement was practised in the management of the finances of large cities. The municipal government of New York had fallen into hands exceptionally rapacious and base, and the career of the plunderers was not arrested till the city had been robbed of many million dollars.

For several years after the close of the war the industrial interests of America seemed to prosper exceedingly. Her foreign trade increased rapidly. The thriving people purchased freely of the costly luxuries imported from Europe, and the gains of merchants were liberal. New factories arose; villages swelled into towns; emigrants to the number of three hundred and fifty thousand annually hastened to exchange the poverty of Europe for the plenty of this land of promise; a million persons were added every year to the population. New railways were laid down at the rate of five to six thousand miles annually, involving an annual expenditure of thirty to forty million sterling. The confiding capitalists of Europe furnished the means requisite to sustain this perilously rapid increase. The census of 1870 reported that during ten years the wealth of the people had nearly doubled, and that their annual earnings now amounted to two thousand million sterling. It seemed as if, for the first time in history, a prolonged and costly war had been waged without pecuniary disadvantage to the combatants.

But the inevitable retribution was not abandoned; it was only delayed. Sept. 1873 A.D. While the currents of commercial activity still flowed with unwonted swiftness and smoothness, the failure of a large financial house in New York gave the signal for a panic, which speedily assumed an aspect of unprecedented severity. Business stood still; the exchanges were closed; the banks ceased to give out money; the payment of debts became impossible. In a short time the intensity of the excitement passed away, leaving a deep-seated depression, which continued for six years. It was now discovered that men had been deluding themselves with a merely visionary prosperity – that all values had been wildly inflated; and it became the sad and surprising experience of very many that their fancied wealth had, in part or wholly, disappeared. Factories were closed; artisans were unable to obtain employment; wages fell, step by step, till in many industries they had undergone reductions which were not less than forty per cent. All stocks and every description of property sank lamentably in value; railway companies and other borrowers of foreign capital discontinued payment of the promised interest; immigration almost ceased – for who would now seek a home in this afflicted and impoverished land?

America emerged from those miserable years with her vitality undiminished; with her financial position improved; with her industrial system organized, for the first time, upon a basis of rigorous economy; with the views of her people corrected, and their character braced by adversity. The operatives who were unable to find employment in the cities of the east had made their way westward, and were now contributing to the greatness of the nation by cultivating the soil. Personal extravagance ceased, and the imports of foreign commodities fell one-third. On the other hand, the exports increased largely. America had for many years been accustomed to use an amount of foreign goods very much larger than she was able to pay for by her own surplus productions. In settlement of the excess, she endured a drain upon her store of the precious metals, or she neutralized it for the time by the loans which her people obtained abroad. Now all this was changed. America exported so largely of her manufactures and of the products of her soil, and restricted so carefully her purchase of foreign commodities, that now she has to receive from foreigners an annual balance which exceeds fifty million sterling. And during the painful years through which she passed, while nearly all European countries continued to add to their public indebtedness, America continued to reduce hers. Her debt, which at the close of the war amounted to six hundred million sterling, thirteen years later was only four hundred million.² And whereas at one period an amount equal to one-half of her present debt was owing to foreigners, it is now, to the extent of five-sixths, owing to her own citizens. Her currency, which had been long at a discount, rose in value, step by step, till it stood at par. After seventeen years of an inconvertible currency specie payments were resumed, without the slightest inconvenience to the commerce of the country.

CHAPTER II
ENGLAND AND AMERICA

America looked to England for sympathy when the rebellion began. England had often reproached her, often admonished her, in regard to the question of Slavery. The war which threatened her existence was a war waged by persons who desired to perpetuate slavery, and who feared the growing Northern dislike to the institution. The North expected the countenance of England in her time of trial. It was reasonable to expect that the deep abhorrence of slavery which had long ruled in the mind of the English people would suffice to decide that people against the effort to establish a great independent slave-empire.

Most unfortunately, that expectation was not wholly fulfilled. The working-men of England perceived, as by intuition, the merits of the dispute, and gave their sympathy unhesitatingly to the North. In the cotton-spinning districts grievous suffering was endured, because the Northern ships shut in the cotton of the South and deprived the mills of their accustomed supply. It was often urged that the English Government should take measures to raise the Northern blockade. Hunger persuades men to unwise and evil courses; but hunger itself could never persuade the men of Lancashire to take any part against the North. So genuine and so deep was their conviction that the Northern cause was right.

But among the aristocratic and middle classes of England it was different. Their sympathy was in large measure given to the South. They were misled by certain newspapers, in which they erringly trusted. They were misled by their admiration of a brave people struggling against an enemy of overwhelming strength. They were misled by an unworthy jealousy of the greatness of America. Thus unhappily influenced, they gave their good wishes to the defenders of the slave-system. The North felt deeply the unlooked-for repulse; and a painful alienation of feeling resulted.

A variety of circumstances occurred which strengthened this feeling. A few weeks after the fall of Fort Sumpter, England, having in view that there had been set up in the South a new Government which was exercising the functions of a Government, whether rightfully or otherwise, acknowledged in haste the undoubted fact, and recognized the South as a belligerent power. This the North highly resented; asserting that the action of the South was merely a rebellion, with which foreign countries had nothing to do. A few months later the British mail-steamer Trent was stopped by a rash American captain, and two gentlemen, commissioners to England from the rebel Government, were made prisoners. The captives were released, but the indignity offered to the British flag awakened a strong sentiment of indignation which did not soon pass away. Yet further: there was built in a Liverpool dockyard a steam-ship which it was understood was destined to serve the Confederacy by destroying the merchant shipping of the North. The American Ambassador requested the British Government to detain the vessel. So hesitating was the action of Government, that the vessel sailed before the order for her detention was issued. For two years the Alabama, and some other ships also fitted in English ports, scoured the seas, burning and sinking American ships, and inflicting enormous loss upon American commerce. These circumstances increased the bitter feeling which prevailed.

The American Government held that England had failed to perform the duty imposed upon her by international law, and had therefore made herself responsible for the depredations of the Alabama. English lawyers of eminence expressed the same unacceptable opinion; and a few years after the war closed the English Government wisely determined to seek the settlement of the question. 1869 A.D. There was arranged by the Foreign Secretary and the American Minister a treaty, in terms of which the subject was disposed of by a reference to the arbitration of impartial persons. This treaty was sent to Washington for confirmation, according to the judicious American rule that treaties with foreign powers must receive the sanction of the Senate. But American feeling was not yet prepared for any adjustment of differences which had wounded the nation so deeply. It was not that the terms of the proposed settlement were objected to; it was rather that no immediate settlement was desired. The American people chose that the question should, for the time, remain an open question. Their irritation had not yet subsided, and many of them solaced their angry minds with the purpose that, when England was again involved in some one of those European embarrassments which habitually beset her, this matter of the Alabama should be pressed to a settlement. The Senate gave effect to the general wish by withholding sanction from the treaty, and President Grant instructed his minister at the English Court to abstain from further negotiation.

1871 A.D. But the passage of a little time calmed the irritation of the not implacable Americans. England renewed her proposal to refer the dispute to arbitration, coupling the offer with an expression of regret that injuries so grave had been inflicted upon the shipping of America. She further consented that the arbitrators should guide themselves by a definition of neutral duties so framed that, in effect, it condemned her conduct, and made an adverse decision inevitable. America accepted the proposal, and a dispute which at an earlier period would have brought upon two nations the miseries of a great war was found to come easily within the scope of a peaceful arbitration. The transaction is of high importance, for it is the largest advance which has yet been made towards the settlement of national differences by reason rather than by brute force.

The arbitrators were five persons, named by the Queen, the President, the King of Italy, the President of Switzerland, and the Emperor of Brazil. Their deliberations were conducted in the tranquil city of Geneva, remote from the influence of the disputants. America presented a statement of her wrongs, and of the compensation to which she deemed herself entitled. Her case was stated with much ability, and it produced numerous and painful evidences that the neutrality with which England regarded the conflict had been a neutrality very full of sympathy with the slave-holders. But the claim tabled was extravagantly large. America argued that England should indemnify her for the expenses of the war-ships which were employed to pursue the piratical cruisers. She argued that, since her ship-owners had been compelled to sell their ships to foreigners, England should bear the losses arising from these enforced sales. Above all, she alleged that the prolongation of the war after the battle of Gettysburg was traceable to the influence of the pirate-ships; and she made the huge demand that England should refund to her the cost of nearly two years of fighting. The arbitrators gave judgment that England was responsible for the property destroyed by the Alabama and the other cruisers, and ordained that she should repair the wrong by a payment of three million sterling. The claim for losses arising indirectly out of these unhappy transactions was rejected.

When the claims of sufferers by the piratical vessels were investigated it was found that the arbitrators had over-estimated them. The American Government, having satisfied every authenticated demand, found itself still in possession of about one million of the English money. It was the wish of many Americans that this sum should be restored to England, but Congress did not rise to the height of this generosity.

When the Alabama dispute was closed, there remained no cause of alienation between the two countries. All good men on both sides of the Atlantic desire earnestly that England and America should be fast friends. It was possible for England, by bestowing upon the North that sympathy which we now recognize to have been due, to have bound the two countries inalienably to each other. Unhappily the opportunity was missed, and a needless estrangement was caused. But this was not destined to endure, and it has long ago passed wholly away. England and America now understand each other as they have never done before. The constant intercourse of their citizens is a bond of union already so strong that no folly of Governments could break it. It may fairly be hoped that the irritations which arose during the war have been succeeded by an enduring concord between the two great sections of the Anglo-Saxon family.