Part 11 (2/2)
[Sidenote: Tendency towards Centralization.]
It happened that the social inst.i.tution and evil of slavery, which had become confined to the Southern States, needed the defence of the doctrine of State rights for its continuance. Nullification, in 1833, and secession, in 1861, were the ultimate conclusions of that doctrine, practically applied for the purpose of sustaining the system of human bondage. A State had a right, it was said, to break her ”compact”
with the Union; and the Southern States, following in the line of this doctrine, did attempt to secede in order to maintain slavery. The war which followed was the rock upon which the doctrine of State rights split. The tide at once turned towards a strong central government.
Extraordinary powers, civil, military, and financial, were exercised to put down the rebellion; and some of these powers, once a.s.sumed by the general government, have been continued to this day. They have been greatly strengthened by the enormous patronage which has acc.u.mulated in the hands of the Executive; by the army of office-holders which, scattered through the land, is subject to the influence of the central power.
[Sidenote: Results of Emanc.i.p.ation.]
[Sidenote: The Fifteenth Amendment.]
Connected with this change are some other changes, scarcely less important. One of these is the establishment, throughout the Union, of universal male suffrage. The emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves wrought a social and economic change the final results of which are still problematical.
It also introduced a new political element, by endowing millions of ignorant men with electoral rights for their own protection. Gradually yet steadily through our political history, restrictions upon the suffrage have been swept away. At first, not only was there a property qualification in many of the States, but foreigners and negroes were in some of them altogether excluded from the polls. The fifteenth amendment to the Const.i.tution crowned the edifice of universal suffrage in the United States; and the floodgates, once open, can never be shut again.
A set of men once armed with the vote cannot be deprived of it: and all the efforts of Know-nothing movements will probably be vain, whether directed against the freedman, the Chinaman, or the European emigrant.
The only way to meet the evils which accompany universal suffrage is by paths of education, and the creation of a pure and sincere public spirit.
[Sidenote: The Political Changes Gradual.]
[Sidenote: Changes Effected by the Civil War.]
It may be said, then, of the few great political changes which have come over the spirit of our body politic, that they have been, like the English revolutions, gradual, and, if on one occasion violent, at least long contemplated and foreshadowed. On questions of commercial finance, we are still where we were half a century ago. The antagonistic principles of a protective tariff and of free trade are still struggling for the mastery. The greatest changes--that produced on the government in aggrandizing it at the expense of the States, and that produced on the South by freeing and enfranchising the blacks--were brought about by the civil war. The evil results which have flowed from them, mingled with great good, are evident in many ways. Is it too much to hope that, a generation hence, those of us who survive will look back gratefully upon a survival of the good only wrought by these changes; and upon a completed reform of the civil service, a purified government and Congress, a people no longer eager to grow suddenly rich by wild speculation, but content with the moderate prosperity attained by steady enterprise and wholesome trade; and a South educated and reconciled, with its civil and political freedom a.s.sured by its own enforcement of equal law?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Monroe was chosen for his second term by every vote but one in the Electoral College. That vote was given by Mr. Hummer of New Hamps.h.i.+re, on the ground that it was a dangerous precedent to elect a President unanimously.]
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