Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863», sayfa 16
RIGHTS OF REBEL STATES
On this subject there are two theories, each of which has advocates among our most eminent statesmen.
By some it is claimed that the Rebels have lost all rights as citizens of States, and are in the condition of the inhabitants of unorganized territories belonging to the United States,—and that, having forfeited their rights, they can never be restored to their former position, except by the consent of the Federal Government. This consent may be given by admitting them as new States, or restoring them as old,—the Government having the right in either case to annex terms and conditions.
There are others who contend that the Rebel States, though in rebellion, have lost none of their rights as States,—that the moment they submit they may choose members of Congress and Presidential electors, and demand, and we must concede, the same position they formerly held. This theory has been partially recognized by the present Administration, but not to an extent that precludes the other from being adopted, if it is right.
If the people of the States which have seceded, as soon as they submit, have an absolute right to resume their former position in the Government, with their present constitutions upholding Slavery, it certainly will be a great, if not an insurmountable, obstacle to the adoption of those measures which may be necessary to secure our peace in the future. That they have no such right, it is believed may be made perfectly clear.
If we triumph, we shall have all the rights which, by the laws of nations, belong to conquerors in a just war. In a civil war, the rights of conquest may not be of the same nature as in a war between different nations; but that there are such rights in all wars has already been stated on the highest authority. If a province, having definite constitutional rights, revolts, and attempts to overthrow the power of the central government, it would be a strange doctrine, to claim, that, after being subdued, it had risked and lost nothing by the undertaking. No authority can be found to sustain such a proposition. A rebellion puts everything at risk. Any other doctrine would hold out encouragement to all wicked and rebellious spirits. If they revolt, they know that everything is staked upon the chances of success. Everything is lost by defeat. By the laws of war, long established among the nations,—laws which the Rebel States have themselves invoked,—if they fail, they will have no right to be restored, except upon such terms as our Government may prescribe. The right to make war, conferred by the Constitution, carries with it all the rights and powers incident to a war, necessary for its successful prosecution, and essential to prevent its recurrence.
But without resorting to the extraordinary powers incident to a state of war, the same conclusion, in regard to the effect of a rebellion by a State Government, results from the relations which the States sustain to the Federal Government. Though they cannot escape its jurisdiction, their position, as States, is one which may be forfeited and lost.
It has been objected that this doctrine is equivalent to a recognition of the right of Secession, because it concedes the power of any one State to withdraw from the Union. But the fallacy of this objection is easily demonstrated.
The Federal Government does not emanate from the States, but directly from the people. The relation between them is that of protection on the one hand and allegiance on the other. This relation cannot be dissolved by either party, unless by voluntary or compulsory expatriation. It subsists alike in States and Territories, not being dependent upon any local government. The Rebels claim the right to dissolve this relation, and to become free from and independent of the Federal Government, though retaining the same territory as before. We deny any such right, and hold, that, though they may forfeit their rights as a State, they are still bound by, and under the jurisdiction of, the Federal Government. This jurisdiction, though absolute in all places, is not the same in all.
In the District of Columbia, and in all unorganized territories, the jurisdiction of the Federal Government is exclusive in its extent, as well as in its nature. It must protect the inhabitants in all their rights,—for there is no other power to protect them. They owe allegiance to it, and to no other.
The inhabitants of the organized territories, though under the general jurisdiction of the Federal Government, are, to some extent, under the jurisdiction of the Territorial Governments. Each is bound to protect them in certain things; they are bound to support and obey each in certain things.
The people of a State are also under the absolute jurisdiction of the Federal Government in all matters embraced in the Constitution. They owe it unqualified allegiance and support in those things. But they are also, in some matters, under the jurisdiction of the State Government, and owe allegiance to that. There are many matters over which both have jurisdiction, and in which the citizens have a right to look to each, or both, for protection. The courts of each issue writs of habeas corpus, and give the citizens their liberty, unless there is legal cause for their custody or restraint.
Now, if a State Government forfeits all right to the allegiance and support of its citizens, they are not thereby absolved from their allegiance to the Federal Government. On the contrary, the jurisdiction of the Federal Government is thereby enlarged; for it is then the only Government which the citizens are bound to obey. Take, for illustration, the State of Arkansas. By seceding, the State Government forfeited all claim to the obedience of the citizens. The inhabitants no longer owe it any allegiance. If loyal, they will not obey it, except as compelled by force. But they still owe allegiance to the United States Government. And there being no other Government which they are bound to obey, they are in the same condition as before the State was admitted into the Union, or any Territorial Government was organized.
The same is true of South Carolina. For, though it was an independent State before the Constitution was adopted, its citizens voluntarily yielded up that position, and became subject to the Federal Government, claiming the privileges and assuming the liabilities of a higher citizenship. And if, by reason of its rebellion, their State Government has forfeited its claim upon them, and its right to rule over them, they owe no allegiance to any except the Government of the United States.
But it is argued by some, that a State, once admitted into the Union, cannot forfeit its rights as a State under the Constitution, because it cannot, as such, be guilty of treason; that the inhabitants may all be traitors, and the State Government secede, and engage in a war against the Republic, and yet retain all its rights intact.
A State, in the meaning of public law, has been defined to be a body of persons united together in one community, for the defence of their rights. They do not constitute a State until organized. If the organization ceases to exist, they are no longer a State. If the State organization becomes despotic, and the inhabitants overthrow it by a revolution, it then ceases to exist. The people are remitted to their original rights, and must organize a new State.
A State, as such, may be guilty of treason. Crimes may be committed by organized bodies of men. Corporations are often convicted, and punished by fines, or by a forfeiture of all corporate rights. And though we have no provision for putting a State on trial, it may, as a State, be guilty. Treason is defined by the Constitution to be "levying war against the United States." This is just what South Carolina, as a State, is doing. Not only the people, but the State Government, has revolted. The people owe it no allegiance. It is their duty, not to support, but to oppose it. The Federal Government owes it no recognition. It has the right to destroy and exterminate it. A State Government in rebellion has no rights under the Constitution. It is itself a rebellion, and must necessarily cease to exist when the rebellion is suppressed.
And when the State Government which has revolted shall be conquered and overthrown, there will then be no South Carolina in existence. If there were loyal people enough there, bond or free, to rise up and overthrow it, they would be no more bound to revive the old Constitution, with its tyrannical provisions, than were our fathers to return to the British Government. Such a revolution is inaugurated in that State, by loyal men, to overthrow the despotic power of the State Government. If the State Government had remained loyal, it might have called on the Federal Government. But by seceding it has justified the Federal Government in aiding or organizing a revolution against it, for its utter overthrow and extinction.
It is true, indeed, the idea prevails that there is still, somehow, a State of South Carolina, besides that which is in rebellion. But the State must exist in fact, or it has no existence. There is no such thing as a merely theoretical State, separate and different from the actual. The revolted States are the same States that were once loyal. And when some loyal citizens in each of them, with the aid of the Federal Government, have overthrown and destroyed them, the ground will be cleared for the formation of new States, or the reorganization of the old; and they may be admitted or restored, upon such conditions as may be deemed wise and prudent, to promote and secure the future peace and welfare of the whole country.
There is no evidence that loyal persons in the Rebel States claim or desire to uphold the existence of those States, under their present constitutions, with the system of Slavery. But if there are any such persons, their wishes are not to override the interests of the Republic. It is their misfortune to reside in States that have revolted; and all their losses, pecuniary and political, are chargeable to those States, and not to the Federal Government. If they are so blind as to suppose that their losses will be increased by emancipation, that, also, will be chargeable to the rebellion of those States. Their loyalty does not save those States from being treated as enemies; it does not prevent their own condition from being determined by that of their States. As it is well known, a portion of their property has been confiscated by an Act of Congress, on the ground that they are, in part, responsible for the rebellion of those States. The theory, therefore, that such loyal men constitute loyal States, still existing, in distinction from the States that have rebelled, is utterly groundless. On this point we cannot do better than quote from the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in a case already referred to, sustaining the belligerent legislation of Congress.
"In organizing this rebellion, they have acted as States, claiming to be sovereign over all persons and property within their respective limits, and claiming the right to absolve their citizens from their allegiance to the Federal Government. Several of these States have combined to form a new Confederacy, claiming to be acknowledged by the world as a sovereign State. Their right to do so is now being decided by wager of battle. The ports and territory of each of these States are held in hostility to the General Government. It is no loose, unorganized insurrection, having no defined boundary or possession. It has a boundary, marked by lines of bayonets, and which can be crossed only by force. South of this line is enemy's territory, because it is claimed and held in possession by an organized, hostile, and belligerent power. All persons residing within this territory, whose property may be used to increase the revenues of the hostile power, are in this contest liable to be treated as enemies."
It is not to be presumed that Congress will do anything unnecessarily to add to the misfortunes of loyal men in the South. On the contrary, all that is being done is more directly for their benefit than for that of any other class of men. The vast expenditure of treasure and blood in this war is for the purpose of protecting them first of all, and restoring to them the blessings of a good government. And if it shall be found practicable to indemnify them for all losses, whether by emancipation or otherwise, no one will object.
The object of this article is to prove that the Government possesses ample power, according to the law of nations, to suppress the Rebellion, and secure the country against the danger of another, by Emancipation, through the military power; that, though Emancipation is a policy, and not a law, the war may be prosecuted until this end is accomplished, and Slavery in future forever prohibited; that, by secession and rebellion, the revolted States have forfeited all right to the allegiance of their citizens, who are thereby remitted to the condition and rights of citizens solely of the United States; and that the Federal Government, as well under the Constitution as by right of conquest, may impose such terms upon the reorganization and restoration of those States as may be necessary to secure present safety, and avert danger in time to come. These views are presented in as brief and simple terms as possible, with the hope that they may be adopted by the people and by the Government. It is confidently believed, that, if the President and Congress will act in accordance with them, their acts will be fully sustained by the Supreme Court,—and that, the element and source of discord being at last entirely removed from the country, a career of peace and prosperity will then begin which shall be the admiration of the world.
At this time we present a humiliating spectacle to other nations: nearly half of our national temple in ruins,—the work of blind folly and mad ambition. The people of the North claimed no right to tear it down, or even to repair it. But since the people of the South have risen in rebellion, let us believe that there is now an opportunity, nay, an imperative necessity, to remove from its foundations the rock of Oppression, that was sure to crumble in the refining fires of a Christian civilization, and establish in its place the stone of LIBERTY,—unchanging and eternal as its Author. Let us rejoice in the hope, already brightening into fruition, that out of these ruins our temple shall rise again, in a fresher beauty, a firmer strength, a brighter glory,—and above it again shall float the old flag, every star restored, henceforth to all, of every color and every race, the flag of the free.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39. By FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Those who remember the "Journal of a Residence in America," of Frances Anne Kemble, or, as she was universally and kindly called, Fanny Kemble,—a book long since out of print, and entirely out of the knowledge of our younger readers,—will not cease to wonder, as they close these thoughtful, tranquil, and tragical pages. The earlier journal was the dashing, fragmentary diary of a brilliant girl, half impatient of her own success in an art for which she was peculiarly gifted, yet the details of which were sincerely repugnant to her. It crackled and sparkled with naïve arrogance. It criticized a new world and fresh forms of civilization with the amusing petulance of a spoiled daughter of John Bull. It was flimsy, flippant, laughable, rollicking, vivid. It described scenes and persons, often with airy grace, often with profound and pensive feeling. It was the slightest of diaries, written in public for the public; but it was universally read, as its author had been universally sought and admired in the sphere of her art; and no one who knew anything of her truly, but knew what an incisive eye, what a large heart, what a candid and vigorous mind, what real humanity, generosity, and sympathy, characterized Miss Kemble.
The dazzling phantasmagoria which life had been to the young actress was suddenly exchanged for the most practical acquaintance with its realities. She was married, left the stage, and as a wife and mother resided for a winter on the plantations of her husband upon the coast of Georgia. And now, after twenty-five years, the journal of her residence there is published. It has been wisely kept. For never could such a book speak with such power as at this moment. The tumult of the war will be forgotten, as you read, in the profound and appalled attention enforced by this remarkable revelation of the interior life of Slavery. The spirit, the character, and the purpose of the Rebellion are here laid bare. Its inevitability is equally apparent. The book is a permanent and most valuable chapter in our history; for it is the first ample, lucid, faithful, detailed account, from the actual head-quarters of a slave-plantation in this country, of the workings of the system,—its persistent, hopeless, helpless crushing of humanity in the slave, and the more fearful moral and mental dry-rot it generates in the master.
We have had plenty of literature upon the subject. First of all, in spirit and comprehension, the masterly, careful, copious, and patient works of Mr. Olmsted. But he, like Arthur Young in France, was only an observer. He could be no more. "Uncle Tom," as its "Key" shows, and as Mrs. Kemble declares, was no less a faithful than the most famous witness against the system. But it was a novel. Then there was "American Slavery as it is," a work of authenticated facts, issued by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, and the fearful mass of testimony incessantly published by the distinctively Abolition papers, periodicals, books, and orators, during the last quarter of a century. But the world was deaf. "They have made it a business. They select all the horrors. They accumulate exceptions." Such were the objections that limited the power of this tremendous battery. Meanwhile, also, it was answered. Foreign tourists were taken to "model plantations." They shed tears over the patriarchal benignity of this venerable and beautiful provision of Divine Providence for the spiritual training of our African fellow-creatures. The affection of "Mammy" for "Massa and Missis" was something unknown where hired labor prevailed. Graver voices took up the burden of the song. There was no pauperism in a slave-country. There were no prostitutes. It had its disadvantages, certainly; but what form of society, what system of labor has not? Besides, here it was. It was the interest of slaveholders to be kind. And what a blessing to bring the poor heathen from benighted Africa and pagan servitude to the ennobling influences of Slavery, as practised among Southwestern Christians in America, and "professors" in South Carolina and Georgia! See the Reverend Mr. Adams and Miss Murray passim. This was the answer made to the statements of the actual facts of the system, when it was found that the question had gone before public opinion, and would be decided upon its merits by that tribunal, all the panders, bullies, assassins, apologists, and chaplains of Slavery to the contrary notwithstanding. In fact, when that was once clearly perceived, the issue was no less visible; only whether it were to be reached by war or peace was not so plain.
Yet in all this tremendous debate which resounds through the last thirty years of our history, rising and swelling until every other sound was lost in its imperious roar, one decisive voice was silent. It was precisely that which is heard in this book. General statements, harrowing details from those who had been slaveholders, and who had renounced Slavery, were sometimes made public. Indeed, the most cruel and necessary incidents, the hunting with blood-hounds, the branding, the maiming, the roasting, the whipping of pregnant women, could not be kept from knowledge. They blazed into print. But the public, hundreds of miles away, while it sighed and shuddered a little, resolved that such atrocities were exceptional. 'Twas a shocking pity, to be sure! Poor things! Women, too! Tut, tut!
Now, at last, we have no general statement, no single, sickening incident, but the diary of the mistress of plantations of seven hundred slaves, living under the most favorable circumstances, upon the islands at the mouth of the Altamaha River, in Georgia. It is a journal, kept from day to day, of the actual ordinary life of the plantation, where the slaves belonged to educated, intelligent, and what are called the most respectable people,—not persons imbruted by exile among slaves upon solitary islands, but who had lived in large Northern cities and the most accomplished society, subject to all the influences of the highest civilization. It is the journal of a hearty, generous, clear-sighted woman, who went to the plantation, loving the master, and believing, that, though Slavery might be sad, it might also be mitigated, and the slave might be content. It is the record of ghastly undeceiving,—of the details of a system so wantonly, brutally, damnably unjust, inhuman, and degrading, that it blights the country, paralyzes civilization, and vitiates human nature itself. The brilliant girl of the earlier journal is the sobered and solemnized matron of this. The very magnitude of the misery that surrounds her, the traces of which everywhere sadden her eye and wring her heart, compel her to the simplest narration. There is no writing for effect. There is not a single "sensational" passage. The story is monotonous; for the wrong it describes is perpetual and unrelieved. "There is not a single natural right," she says, after some weeks' residence, "that is not taken away from these unfortunate people; and the worst of all is, that their condition does not appear to me, upon further observation of it, to be susceptible of even partial alleviation, as long as the fundamental evil, the Slavery itself, remains."
As the mistress of the plantation, she was brought into constant intercourse with the slave-women; and no other account of this class is so thorough and plainly stated. So pitiful a tale was seldom told. It was a "model plantation"; but every day was darkened to the mistress by the appeals of these women and her observation of their condition. The heart of the reader sickens as hers despaired. To produce "little niggers" for Massa and Missis was the enforced ambition of these poor women. After the third week of confinement they were sent into the fields to work. If they lingered or complained, they were whipped. For beseeching the mistress to pray for some relief in their sad straits, they were also whipped. If their tasks were unperformed, or the driver lost his temper, they were whipped again. If they would not yield to the embrace of the overseer, they were whipped once more. How are they whipped? They are tied by the wrists to a beam or the branch of a tree, their feet barely touching the ground, so that they are utterly powerless to resist; their clothes are turned over their heads, and their backs scarred with a leathern thong, either by the driver himself, or by father, brother, husband, or lover, if the driver choose to order it. What a blessing for these poor heathen that they are brought to a Christian land! When a band of pregnant women came to their master to implore relief from overwork, he seemed "positively degraded" to his wife, as he stood urging them to do their allotted tasks. She began to fear lest she should cease to respect the man she loved; "for the details of slaveholding are so unmanly, letting alone every other consideration, that I know not how any one with the spirit of a man can condescend to them." The master gives a slave as a present to an overseer whose administration of the estate was agreeable to him. The slave is intelligent and capable, the husband of a wife and the father of children, and they are all fondly attached to each other. He passionately declares that he will kill himself rather than follow his new master and leave wife and children behind. Roused by the storm of grief, the wife opens the door of her room, and beholds her husband, with his arms folded, advising his slave "not to make a fuss about what there is no help for." The same master insists that there is no hardship or injustice in whipping a woman who asks his wife to intercede for her, but confesses that it is "disagreeable." At last he tells her that she must no longer fatigue him with the "stuff" and "trash" which "the niggers," who are "all d–d liars," make her believe, and henceforward closes his ears to all complaint.
Yet this was a model plantation, and this was probably not a hard master, as masters go. "These are the conditions which can only be known to one who lives among them. Flagrant acts of cruelty may be rare, but this ineffable state of utter degradation, this really beastly existence, is the normal condition of these men and women; and of that no one seems to take heed, nor had I ever heard it described so as to form any adequate conception of it, till I found myself plunged into it.... Industry, man's crown of honor elsewhere, is here his badge of utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here surrounded,—pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance, squalor, dirt, and ineffable abasement."
And yet this is the system which we have been in the habit of calling patriarchal, because the model masters said it was so, and trade was too prosperous to allow any difference with them! And these are the model masters, supported in luxury by all this unpaid labor and untold woe, these women-whippers and breeders of babies for sale, who have figured in our talk and imaginations as "the chivalry" and "gentlemen"! These are they to whom American society has koo-too'd, and in whose presence it has been ill-bred and uncourteous to say that every man has rights, that every laborer is worthy of his hire, that injustice is unjust, and uncleanness foul. No wonder that Russell, coming to New York, and finding the rich men and the political confederates of the conspirators declaring that the Government of the United States could not help itself, and that they would allow no interference with their Southern friends, sincerely believed what he wished to, and wrote to John Bull, whose round face was red with eager desire to hear it, that the Revolution was virtually accomplished. No wonder that the haughty slaveholders, smeared with sycophantic slime, at Newport, at Saratoga, in the "polite" and "conservative" Northern circles, believed what Mr. Hunter of Virginia told a Massachusetts delegate to the Peace Congress,—that there would be no serious trouble, and that the Montgomery Constitution would be readily adopted by the "conservative" sentiment of the North.
Mrs. Kemble's book shows what the miserable magic is that enchants these Southern American citizens into people whose philosophy of society would disgrace the Dark Ages, and whose social system is that of Dahomey.
The life that she describes upon the model plantation is the necessary life of Slavery everywhere,—injustice, ignorance, superstition, terror, degradation, brutality; and this is the system to which a great political party—counting upon the enervation of prosperity, the timidity of trade, the distance of the suffering, the legal quibbles, the moral sophisms, the hatred of ignorance, the jealousy of race, and the possession of power—has conspired to keep the nation blind and deaf, trusting that its mind was utterly obscured and its conscience wholly destroyed.
But the nation is young, and of course the effort has ended in civil war. Slavery, industrially and politically, inevitably resists Christian civilization. The natural progress and development of men into a constantly higher manhood must cease, or this system, which strives to convert men into things, must give way. Its haughty instinct knows it, and therefore Slavery rebels. This Rebellion is simply the insurrection of Barbarism against Civilization. It would overthrow the Government, not for any wrong the Government has done, for that is not alleged. It knows that the people are the Government,—that the spirit of the people is progressive and intelligent,—and that there is no hope for permanent and expansive injustice, so long as the people freely discuss and decide. It would therefore establish a new Government, of which this meanest and most beastly despotism shall be the chief corner-stone. In a letter to C.G., in the appendix of her book, Mrs. Kemble sets this truth in the clearest light. But whoever would comprehend the real social scope of the Rebellion should ponder every page of the journal itself. It will show him that Slavery and rebellion to this Government are identical, not only in fact, but of necessity. It will teach him that the fierce battle between Slavery and the Government, once engaged, can end only in the destruction of one or the other.
This is not a book which a woman like Mrs. Kemble publishes without a solemn sense of responsibility. A sadder book the human hand never wrote, nor one more likely to arrest the thoughts of all those in the world who watch our war and are yet not steeled to persuasion and conviction. An Englishwoman, she publishes it in England, which hates us, that a testimony which will not be doubted may be useful to the country in which she has lived so long, and with which her sweetest and saddest memories are forever associated. It is a noble service nobly done. The enthusiasm, the admiration, the affection, which in our day of seemingly cloudless prosperity greeted the brilliant girl, have been bountifully repaid by the true and timely words now spoken in our seeming adversity by the grave and thoughtful woman.
