Part 10 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXII

HOW THEY DIFFERED

If the typical Secessionist and the typical Unionist, as just described, could rally a united South and a united North to their respective views, there was no escape from a violent clash. Whether the two sections could be so united each in itself appeared extremely doubtful. But below these special questions of political creed were underlying divergences of sentiment and character between North and South, which fanned the immediate strife as a strong wind fans a starting flame. There was first a long-growing alienation of feeling, a mutual dislike, rooted in the slavery controversy, and fed partly by real and partly by imaginary differences. Different personal and social ideals were fostered by the two industrial systems. The Southerner of the dominant cla.s.s looked on manual labor as fit only for slaves and low-cla.s.s whites. His ideal of society was a pyramid, the lower courses representing the physical toilers, the intermediate strata supplying a higher quality of social service, while the crown was a cla.s.s refined by leisure and cultivation and free to give themselves to generous and hospitable private life, with public affairs for their serious pursuit. He regarded the prominence of the laboring cla.s.s in Northern communities as marking the inferiority of their society, and in the absorption of the wealthier cla.s.s in trade he read a further disadvantage. The virtues he most honored were courage, courtesy, magnanimity,--all that he delighted to characterize as ”chivalry.” He was inclined to consider the North as materialistic and mercenary, and even its virtues as based largely on ”honesty is the best policy.”

This low opinion was heartily reciprocated by the Northerner. He believed the very foundation of Southern society to be injustice,--the unpaid labor of the slave,--and the superstructure to correspond. He looked on the slave-holders as cruel to their slaves and arrogant toward the world at large, especially toward himself. The popular opinion of slavery fastened on its abuses and ignored its mitigations.

On the average reader of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, Legree made a deeper impression than St. Clare or Mrs. Shelby.

Even the religious and intellectual life of the two sections had grown unsympathetic and often antagonistic. The South held tenaciously to the traditional orthodox theology. In the North there was free discussion and movement of thought. Even the conservative Presbyterian church had its New School and Old School; and in New England the Congregational body was divided by the birth and growth of Unitarianism. At all this turmoil the South looked askance, and was genuinely shocked by the disintegration of the old creed. The North in turn looked with something like suspicion, if not scorn, on a Christianity which used the Bible as an a.r.s.enal to fortify slavery. The Northern brood of reforms and isms,--wise, unwise, or fantastic,--moved the South to a hostility which made little discrimination between the idealism of Emerson, the iconoclasm of Parker, and the vagaries of ”free love.” The group of literary lights,--Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, and their compeers,--won Southern dislike by their hostility to slavery. The South itself, singularly barren of original literature,--its prolific new births in our own day are one of the most conspicuous fruits of emanc.i.p.ation,--clung fondly to the cla.s.sical and feudal traditions, and hardly admitted any literary sovereign later than Scott and Byron.

In a national union, as in marriage, there may be long continuance and even substantial happiness in spite of many differences. So was it with England and Scotland, so is it with Germany and with Italy. But in slavery there was so profound an incompatibility with the fact and idea of personal freedom as held by the American people at large, that the inevitable opposition of the two systems was desperate almost beyond cure. That opposition, and all the attendant circ.u.mstances of divergence, were aggravated in their divisive effects by the extreme bitterness of the foremost debaters on both sides. The very nature of the subject tempted to vehement criticism, and defense of equal vehemence. But there was a great aggravation of bitterness when, in the van of the attack on slavery, the temper of Woolman and Lundy, of Jefferson and Franklin and Channing, was replaced by the temper of Garrison and his followers. Their violence inflamed alike the North and the South, and, with the answering violence it provoked, worked the two peoples into a largely false and unjust conception of each other's character. The South's retort was no less pa.s.sionate in words, while in act it took form in expulsion of citizens and suppression of free speech. Garrison's burning words, and the polished invective of Phillips, live in literature; the wrath which answered them in Southern orators and newspapers has left less of record; but on both sides the work was effectually done of sowing mutual suspicion and hate.

If only North and South could have known each other's best, as they knew each other's worst! They were kept apart by the want of any stream of migration between them, like that which united East and West, with the resulting network of family connections and friendly intercourse.

Sometimes a Northern visitor, or an English traveler like Thackeray, saw and appreciated the cultivated society of Charleston or Richmond, or plantation life at its best,--a hospitable, genial, outdoor life, with masters and mistresses who gave their best thought and toil to the care of their servants. Sometimes a Southerner had a revelation like that of General Zachary Taylor, when, looking from one of the heights in Springfield, ”the city of homes,” on a landscape thick dotted with the cheerful abodes of an industrial community, he exclaimed: ”You can see no such sight as that in a Southern State!” And always there were some men and women who out of wide knowledge or a natural justice recognized and loved the people of the whole land. But too frequently, in those days, the Southerner saw in the North only a ma.s.s of plebeian laborers excited by political and religious fanaticism; while the Northerner looked south to a group of tyrannical and arrogant slaveholders lording it over their victims. To the one, the typical figure of the North was John Brown; to the other, the representative of the South was Brooks of South Carolina.

There were two other marked differences between the sections. The first was the greater concentration of interest in the South on national politics, and the leaders.h.i.+p conceded to the political cla.s.s. In the North, the general occupation in laborious and gainful pursuits, and the wide variety of social interests which competed for attention,--education, reform, the debating society, the town-meeting,--all acted to hold men in other fields than those of national politics. The best brains were invited by commerce, the factory, the railroad, the college, the laboratory, the newspaper,--as well as by the Capitol. But to the Southern planter and his social compeer no pursuit compared in attraction with the political field, and above all the public life of the nation. The ma.s.s of the people, especially in the country districts, found in the political meeting an interest whose only rival was the camp-meeting. Besides, when the burning political question was slavery, it came home to the business and bosoms of the South, while to the North it was remote. And thus, when the secession movement broke upon the land, the Southern people grasped it with a concentration, energy, and response to their habitual leaders, in strongest contrast to the surprise, hesitation, and division, which at first characterized the North.

And, as the last distinction to be here noted, one section was far more habituated than the other to methods of physical force in private and public affairs. It was an instance of this that the duel was in common practice at the South up to the Civil War, while at the North it had disappeared sixty years earlier, after the encounter of Burr and Hamilton. At the South the street affray was common. There is a picture of Southern life which ought to have a wide reading, in _Kate Beaumont_, a story of South Carolina, written by J. W. De Forest, a Northerner and a Union soldier. Its tone is sympathetic, and neither the negro nor the sectional question plays a part. It portrays admirable and delightful people; old Judge Kershaw is indeed ”the white rose of South Carolina chivalry,” and the Beaumonts and McAllisters, with all their foibles, are a strong and lovable group. But the pistol is the ready arbiter of every quarrel; the duelist's code is so established that it can hardly be ignored even by one who disapproves it; and the high-toned gentleman is no whit too high for the street encounter with his opponent. Old-time Southerners know how faithful is that picture. So, too, the Southern people turned readily to public war. They supplied the pioneers who colonized Texas and won by arms its independence of Mexico. They not only supported the Mexican war by their votes, but many of the flower of their youth enlisted for it. From their young men were recruited the ”filibusters” who, from time to time, tried to revolutionize or annex Cuba or some Central American State. The soldier figured largely in the Southern imagination. But the North inclined strongly to the ways of peace. That is the natural temper of an industrial democracy. It is the note of a civilization advanced beyond slavery and feudalism. And of the moral leaders of the North, some of the foremost had been strong champions of peace. Channing had pleaded for it as eloquently as he pleaded for freedom. Intemperance, slavery, and war had been the trinity of evil a.s.sailed by earnest reformers. Sumner had gone to the length of proclaiming the most unjust peace better than the justest war,--an extreme from which he was destined to be converted. Garrison and Phillips, while their language fanned the pa.s.sions whose inevitable tendency is toward war, had in theory declared all warfare to be unchristian. And, apart from sentiment or conviction, the industrial and peaceful habit was so widely diffused that it was questionable how much remained of the militant temper which can and will fight on good occasion. The South rashly believed that such temper was extinct in the North, and the North on its part doubted how far the vaunts of Southern courage had any substance.

CHAPTER XXIII

WHY THEY FOUGHT

Now, when the issue was about to be joined, let it be noted that Secession based itself, in profession and in reality, wholly on the question of slavery. There lay the grievance, and for that alone a remedy was to be had even at the price of sundering the Union. Later, when actual war broke out, other considerations than slavery came into play. To unite and animate the South came the doctrine of State rights, the sympathy of neighborhood, and the primal human impulse of self-defense. But the critical movement, the action which first sundered the Union and so led to war,--was inspired wholly and solely by the defense and maintenance of slavery. The proposition is almost too plain for argument. But it receives ill.u.s.tration from the great debate in the Georgia Legislature, when Toombs advocated Secession and Stephens opposed it. Toombs, evidently unwilling to rest the case wholly on slavery, alleged three other grievances at the hands of the North--the fishery bounties, the navigation laws, and the protective tariff.

Stephens easily brushed aside the bounties and navigation laws as bygone or unimportant. As to the tariff, he showed that the last tariff law, enacted in 1857, was supported by every Ma.s.sachusetts member of Congress and every Georgia member, including Toombs himself. What further he said belongs to a later chapter. But he was unquestionably right, and all rational history confirms it, that the one force impelling the South to Secession was the imperilled interest of slavery.

But the resistance which Secession encountered from the North was from the outset other and wider than hostility to slavery. Anti-slavery feeling was indeed strong in the Northern heart; the restriction of slavery was the supreme principle of the Republican party; the resentment that the national bond should be menaced in the interest of slavery gave force to the opposition which Secession instantly aroused.

But, on the one hand, the extreme opponents of slavery, Garrison and his followers, were now, as they had always been, willing and more than willing that the South should go off and take slavery with it. And on the other hand, the anti-secessionists of the nation included a mult.i.tude, North and South, who were either friendly to slavery or indifferent to it. Even of the Republican party the ma.s.s were more concerned for the rights of the white man than of the black man. They were impatient of the dominance of the government by the South, and meant to unseat the Southern oligarchy from the place of power at Was.h.i.+ngton.

They intended that the territories should be kept for the free immigrant, who should not be degraded by slaves at work in the next field. Only a minority of the party,--though a minority likely in the long run to lead it--looked with hope and purpose to ultimate emanc.i.p.ation. And when the question of Secession was at issue by the people's votes and voice, and had not yet come to the clash of arms, the rights and interests of the slave fell into the background. The supreme question of the time was felt to be the unity or the division of the nation.

The Secessionists' plea was in two clauses; that their States were aggrieved by Northern action, and that they had a legal right to leave the Union without let or hindrance. A double answer met them, from their fellow-Southerners that it was impolitic to secede, and from the North that secession was illegal, unpermissible, and to be resisted at all costs.

The Secessionists were fluent in argument that the framers of the Const.i.tution intended only a partners.h.i.+p of States, dissoluble by any at will. However difficult to prove that the original builders purposed only such a temporary edifice, there was at least ground for maintaining that they gave no authority for coercing a State into obedience or submission, and indeed rejected a proposal to give such authority. If there were no legal or rightful authority to keep a State in the Union by force, then for all practical purposes its right to go out of the Union was established. But against that right, as ever contemplated by the fathers, or allowable under the Const.i.tution, there was strong contention on legal and historic grounds.

But deeper than all forensic or academic controversy was the substantial and tremendous fact, that the American people had grown into a nation, organic and vital. That unity was felt in millions of b.r.e.a.s.t.s, cherished by countless firesides, recognized among the peoples of the earth.

There had developed that mysterious and mighty sentiment, the love of country. It rested in part on the recognition of material benefits. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, the tides of commerce flowed free, unvexed by a single custom-house. The Mississippi with its traffic united the Northern prairies and the Louisiana delta like a great artery. Safety to person and property under the laws, protection by an authority strong enough to curb riot or faction at home, and with a s.h.i.+elding arm that reached wherever an American traveler might wander,--these benefits rooted patriotism deep in the soil of homely usefulness. And the tree branched and blossomed in the upper air of generous feeling. Man's sympathy expands in widening spheres, and his being enlarges as he comes into vital union, first with wife and children, then successively with neighborhood, community, country, and at last with humanity. The Russian peasant, in his ignorance and poverty, or facing the foe in war, is sublimated by his devotion to the White Czar and Holy Russia. Still more inspiring and profound is the patriotism of a citizen whose nation is founded on equal brotherhood. Deeper than a.n.a.lysis can probe is this pa.s.sion of patriotism. Gladstone characterized it well, when, writing in August, 1861, he recognized among the motives sustaining the Union cause, ”last and best of all, the strong instinct of national life, and the abhorrence of Nature itself toward all severance of an organized body.”

This sentiment, though strained and weakened in the South, was still powerful even in that section. This was especially true of the border States, where slavery was of less account than in the Gulf and Cotton States. The spirit of Clay was still strong in Kentucky, and was represented by the venerable John J. Crittenden in the Senate. Of a like temper was John Bell of Tennessee, Presidential candidate of the Union and Const.i.tutional party in 1860. From the same State Andrew Johnson, in the Senate, stood for the st.u.r.dy and fierce Unionism of the white laboring cla.s.s. Virginia was strongly bound to the Union by her great historical traditions. North Carolina, Missouri, and Arkansas were, until the war broke out, attached to the Union rather than the Southern cause. It was in the belt of States from South Carolina to Texas, in which the planter cla.s.s was altogether dominant, that the interest of slavery, and the pride of cla.s.s and of State, had gradually loosened the bonds of affection and allegiance to the national idea. Calhoun himself had been an ardent lover of the Union. The clash between the national and sectional interests had been to him a tragedy. Nullification was his device for perpetuating the Union while allowing its members relief from possible oppression,--but nullification had failed, in fact as in logic.

Now the Secessionists went further than Calhoun had ever found occasion to go. They proposed to break up the nation, at first by the withdrawal of their separate States, to be followed by the organization of a Southern Confederacy. Their grievance was the restriction of their industrial system, and its threatened destruction, and the failure of the Union to serve its proper ends of justice and fraternity. But they wholly disclaimed any revolutionary action. They maintained that the withdrawal of their States was an exercise of their strictly legal and const.i.tutional right. This is the plea which is insistently and strenuously urged by their defenders. Their foremost actors in the drama, Davis and Stephens, became at a later day its historians, not so much to record its events, as to plead with elaboration and reiteration that Secession was a const.i.tutional right. But all their fine-spun reasoning ran dead against a force which it could no more overcome than King Canute's words could halt the tide,--the fact of American unity, as realized in the hearts of the American people.

The ma.s.s of men live not by logic, but by primal instincts and pa.s.sions.