The slave power: its character, career, and probable designs: being an attempt to explain the real issues involved in the American contest

Front matter

II] 8UtIHf.il

S. G. and E. L. ELBERT it

~ m&

Preface To The American Edition

Little by way of introduction is needed for an American edition of the present volume. The object of the work is stated clearly and concisely. in the author's preface. Considering Slavery as the true origin of the civil war now existing, he treats of its economic basis, of the organization, tendencies, development, and external policy of slave societies, and of the career and designs of the slave power, with the calmness of an impartial and philosophic observer, and in a popular and practical manner. Democratic institutions, territorial extension, tariff questions, state rights, secession, and all other subjects, which either at home or abroad have been made use of to complicate the quarrel, are here put aside as irrelevant ; and the philosophic observer concentrates the attention of his readers on the simple issue at stake — " whether the Power which derives its strength from slavery shall be set up with enlarged resources and increased prestige, or be now once for all effectually broken." Similar views and arguments relating to this all-absorbing topic may no doubt be found scattered through the current literature of the day, expressed with all the warmth natural to those whose feelings and interests are immediately affected. Earnest and thoughtful books have also been written here by men whose testimony may be relied upon, and which have had more or less influence upon public opinion. But the present volume has an advantage over any work written on this side of the Atlantic, that it is free from any imputation of party or sectional bias; that it has something of the tone of a historic analysis of a grand social drama which has been acted, rather than of one of which the curtain of the fifth act has just risen ; and it will on that account be acceptable to men of all shades of political opinion, while its clear style and systematic arrangement of subject will be grateful to all, young as well as old. The chapter relating to the career of the Slave Power is particuvm PREFACE TO TEE AMERICAN EDITION.

larly distinguished for the compact and clear summary of its operations in important political crises, from the date of the Missouri Compromise Act to that of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. In the concluding pages the author ventures to foretell how the drama will end. As prophecy nowadays is not an irreversible fiat, but pimply an impressive form of admonition, those who do not like its intimations can easily take precautions against their fulfilment, but it must be by the argument of acts, not by that of words.

From the present date to the first of January next, the project of Emancipation proposed in the recent Proclamation by the President will engross the minds of all. This proclamation, which has been added to the American edition, will be found on the next page. It marks an important crisis in the war. The whole question of Slavery will for the next three months be canvassed wTith renewed energy.: and the American publisher conceives that in issuing this work he will furnish a hand-book which contains a well digested survey of the political and social problems involved. Though the position of affairs has changed since these pages were originally written, they will be none the less a timely aid and guide to thought.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

A PROCLAMATION.

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare, that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States and the people thereof, in which States that relation is or may be suspended or disturbed.

That it is my purpose at the next meeting of Congress to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure, tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all the Slave States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits, and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the governments existing there, will be continued.

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or any designated part of a State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and for ever, free ; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognise and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States, or parts of States, if any, in which, the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States ; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not in rebellion against the United States.

That attention is hereby called to an Act of Congress, entitled, " An Act to make an additional article of war," approved March 13, 1862, and which Act is in the words and figures following : — xvi PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S PRO CLAM A TION

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter the following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war for the government of the army of the United States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such: —

Article — . All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may have escaped from any person to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due, and any officer who shall be found guilty by court-martial of violating this article shall be dismissed from the service.

Section 2. And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect from and after its passage.

Also to the 9th and 10th sections of an Act entitled " An Act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion, to seize and confiscate property of rebels, and for other purposes," approved July 17, 1862, and which sections are in the words and figures following : —

Section 9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the Government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons, and taking refuge within the lines of the army, and all slaves captured from such persons, or deserted by them, and coming under the control of the government of the United States, and all slaves of such persons found on or being within any place occupied by rebel forces, and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captures of war, and shall be for ever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves.

Section 10. And be it further enacted, That no slave, escaping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any of the States, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime, or some offence against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that the person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not been in arms against the United States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto ; and no person engaged in the military Or naval service of the United States shall, under any pretence whatever, assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such person to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service.

And I do hereby enjoin and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce within their respective spheres of service, the acts and sections above recited; and the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion, shall, upon the restoration of the constitutional relations between the United States and their respective States and people, if the relations shall have been suspended or disturbed, be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this 22d day of September, in the year of our Lord 1862, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

By the President, Abraham Lincoln.

Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State.

Preface

It is proper that I should state the circumstances under which the present volume is offered to the public. The substance of it formed the matter of a course of lectures delivered about a year since in the University of Dublin. In selecting the subject of North American slavery I was influenced in the first instance by considerations of a purely speculative kind — my object being to show that the course of history is largely determined by the action of economic causes. To causes of this description, it seemed to me, the fortunes of slavery in North America— its establishment in one half of the Union and its disappearance from the other — were directly to be ascribed; while to that institution, in turn, the leading differences in the character of the Northern and Southern people, as well as that antagonism of interests between the two sections which has issued in a series of political conflicts extending over half a century, were no less distinctly traceable. The course of events, however, since I first took up the subject, has given to it an interest far other than speculative, and has rendered conclusions, of which the value (if they possessed any) was little more than scientific, directly applicable to problems of immediate and momentous/interest.; Under these circumstances I have been induced to extend considerably the original plan of my investigations, and to give the whole subject a popular and practical treatment, in the hope of contributing something to the elucidation of a question of vast importance,- not only to America, but to the whole civilized wTorld.

The rapid movement of events, accompanied by no less rapid fluctuations in public opinion, during the progress of the work, will explain, and, it is hoped, will procure indulgence for, some obvious imperfections. Some topics, it is probable, will be found to be treated with greater fulness, and some arguments to be urged with greater vehemence, than the present position of affairs or the present state of public feeling may appear to require. For example, I have been at some pains to show that the question at issue between North and South is not one of tariffs — a thesis prescribed to me by the state of the discussion six months ago, when the affirmative of this view was pertinaciously put forward by writers in the interest of the South, but which, at the present time, when this explanation of the war appears to have been tacitly abandoned, cannot but appear a rather gratuitous task.

xh PREFACE.

In a certain degree, indeed, the same remark applies to the main argument of the work ; for, in spite of elaborate attempts at mystification, the real cause of the war and the real issue at stake are every day forcing themselves into prominence with a» distinctness which cannot be much longer evaded. Whatever we may think of the tendencies of democratic institutions, or of the influence of territorial magnitude on the American character, no theory framed upon these or upon any other incidents of the contending parties, however ingeniously constructed, will suffice to conceal the fact, that it is slavery which is at the bottom of this quarrel, and that on its determination it depends whether the Power which derives its strength from slavery shall be set up with enlarged resources and increased prestige, or be now once for all effectually broken. This is the one view of the case which every fresh occurrence in the progress of events tends to strengthen ; and it is this which it is the object of the present work to enforce.

But, although the development of the movement may have deprived the following speculations of some of that novelty which they might have possessed when they were first delivered, still it is hoped that they will not be without their use — that, while they will assist honest inquirers to form a sound judgment upon a question which is still the subject of much designed and much unconscious misrepresentation, they may possess a more permanent interest, as illustrating by a striking example the value of a fruitful but little understood instrument of historical inquiry — that which investigates the influence of material interests on the destinies of mankind.

Chapter I. Introductory — The Case Stated

Causes of the "War. — The popular view. — Its superficiality. — Slavery the central problem of American history. — The commercial theory. — The claim of independence: how to be estimated. — Real cause of secession. — True origin of the war obscured by its proximate occasion. — War the only arbitrament. — Views of the North : The Unionist sentiment; The Anti- Slavery sentiment. — Rapid growth of the Anti-Slavery sentiment. — Present aspect of the question 17

CHAPTER IL

THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF SLAVERY.

Different fortunes of slavery in the North and South. — Various explanations of the phenomenon: Theory of diversity of character in the original founders; Theory of climate and race; The explanation of climate inadequate; Alleged indolence of the negro groundless. — True solution of the problem — Economic. — Merits and defects of slave labour. — Merits and defects of free labour. — Comparative efficiency of slave and free labour. — Agricultural capabilities of North and Souih.— Slave and free products. — Further conditions essential to the success of slave labour: Fertility of the soil ; Extent of territory. — Exhausting effects of slave culture. — General conclusion 33

Chapter III. Internal Organization Of Slave Societies

Economic success of slavery, in what sense conceded. — Structure of a slave society moulded by its economic conditions. — Agriculture — the sole career for slavery — Exigencies of slave agriculture. — Results: Magnitude of plantations ; Indebtedness of planters ; Unequal distribution of wealth. — "Waste lands in slave countries. — Social consequences. — The * mean whites.1 — Industrial development of Slave States prematurely arrested. — Net- results of slave industry. — Constitution of slave societies essentially oligarchical. — Baneful influence of the slave oligarchy falsely charged on democracy. — Each principle to be tested by its proper fruits. — Character of the Slave Power 46

Chapter IV. Tendencies Of Slave Societies

In what direction are slave societies moving? — Importance of the question. — Presumption in favour of modern slavery derived from the experience of ancient. — Three circumstances connected with modern slavery destroy the xiv CONTENTS.

force of the analogy : I. Difference of race and colour ; Its effects. II. Growth of modern commerce ; Its effects : In enhancing the value of crude labour, and thus augmenting the resources of slavery ; In superseding the necessity of education, and thus perpetuating servitude ; Modern slavery extends its despotism to the mind. III. The slave trade : Its twofold functions in the modern system : In relation to the consuming countries ; In relation to the breeding countries. Division of labour between the old and new states ; The slave trade securely founded in the principles of population ; The analogy of cattle breeding .... 64

Chapter V. Inteenal Development Of Slave Societies

Outline of the economy of slave societies. — They include no element of progress.— The mean whites : Growth of regular industry among them a moral impossibility ; Consequences of the absence of regular industry ; Extreme sparseness of population ; Incompatibility of this with civilized progress. — The slaves and their masters. — Prospects of emancipation in the natural course of internal development : Inherent difficulty of the problem; Modern precedents inapplicable; Economic causes not to be relied on; Political and social motives the real strength of American slavery ; Further support to slavery in the ethics and theology of the South. — Growth of the pro-slavery sentiment. — Its absorbing strength. — Its universality. — Hopelessness of the slave's position. — Social cost of the system. — Terrorism . . 77

Chapter VI. Exteenal Policy Of Slave Societies

Its aggressive character. — Twofold source of the aggressive spirit : The industrial ; The moral. — Tendency of slave society to foster ambition. — Narrow scope for its indulgence. — The extension of slavery — its only resource. — Concentration of aim promoted by antagonism. — Position of the South in the Union, naturally inferior to that of the North. — Compensating forces : The three fifths vote ; Superior capacity in the South for combined action. — Democratic alliance : its basis. — Terms of the bargain. — Twofold motive of southern aggression. — The political motive mainly operative.— True source of this motive. — Relation of the political motive to the federal position of the South 93

Chapter VII. The Oabeee Of The Slave Poweb

Position of slavery at the Revolution. — Rise of the cotton trade. — Early progress of the planters. — Acquisition of the Louisiana Territory. — Missouri claimed as a slave state. — Motives to territorial aggrandisement. — Importance of Missouri. — Opposition of the North. — The Missouri Compromise. The Seminole War. — Designs upon Texas. — The tactics of aggression. — Views of the annexationists. — Texas annexed. — Mexican war : division of the spoil. — State of parties in 1850. — Designs upon Kansas. — Obstacle presented by the Missouri Compromise. — The Kansas and Nebraska bill: squatter sovereignty. — Kansas thrown open for settlement. — Preparations of the Slave Power. — Invasion of the territory.-— The Leavenworth Constitution.— Atrocities of the Border Ruffians. — Reaction : defeat of the Slave Power. — Alarm in the North. — Formation of the Republican party.

CONTENTS. XV

[ First trial of strength of the new party. — Hopeful prospects. — Sonthern policy of w Thorough" : I. Revival of the African slave trade ; Agitation for reopening the African slave trade ; Importation of slaves actually commenced. II. Perversion of the Constitution ; Claim of protection to slave property throughout the Union; A judicial decision necessary; Reconstruction of the Supreme Court ; Dred Scott Case ; Effect of the decision ; Further requirement — a reliable government. — Breach with the Democratic party — Secession. — Apology for Southern aggression. — Aggression of the Slave Power, in what sense defensive. — The apology admits the charge- Attempt of John Brown. — Its place in current history . . • . 106

Chapter VIII. The Designs Of The Slave Power

Essential character of Slave society unchanged by independence. — Inherent vices of the Slave Power intensified by its new position. — Possible conditions of independence: I. Limitation of slavery to its present area; Results of this plan. II. Territories opened alike to free and slave colonization ; Probable effects. III. Equal partition of the Territories ; Argument by which this scheme is defended ; Paradox involved in this view ; Geographical conditions ignored ; Northern jealousy not a sufficient safeguard ; European intervention still less to be relied on. — Modification of slavery involved in the success of the South. — Probability of a revival of the African Slave Trade. — Irresistible inducements. — The only counter-motive. — Presumption from the past. — Public spirit among the Southern party.— Sacrifice of particular to general interests. — Sectional resistance powerless before the exigencies of public policy. — Results . . 132

Chapter IX. General Conclusions

Duty of Europe, neutrality.— Impolicy of intervention. — Obligation to render moral support. — Two modes of settlement equally to be deprecated. Practical issues at the present time : I. Reconstruction of the Union ; Subjugation of the South, how far justifiable; Subjugation of the South,' how far practicable; Reconstruction of the Union, how far expedient; Necessity of a recourse to despotic expedients; Plan for dispensing with despotism by reforming Southern society ; The condition of time ignored; Disturbing effects of immigration. II. Secession under conditions: Two cardinal ends to be kept in view ; Peculiar position of the Border States ; Mr. Lincoln's proposal, its opportuneness ; Free cultivators in the Border States; Facilities for incorporation; The line of the Mississippi; The negro question, three conditions to be satisfied. — I. Immediate and wholesale emancipation ; main difficulty of the problem ; The West Indian experiment ; its lesson ; Natural difficulties enhanced in the South ; Impossibility of protecting the negro ; The ' mean whites1 ; their corrupting influence. II. Progressive emancipation : Advantage of dealing with the evil in detail ; Facilities offered by society in the Border States; Operation of natural causes in the more southern states ; Prospects of the ultimate extinction of slavery. ....... \ ' » 147

THE SLAYE POWER,

ITS

CHARACTER, CAREER, AND DESIGNS.

Chapter I. Introductory

THE CASE STATED.

Those who have followed the discussions in this country oo the American contest are aware that the view taken of that event by the most influential organs of the English press has,, during the period which has elapsed since its commencement, undergone considerable modification. The first announcement by South Carolina of its[;.^^^rtition rto secede -frotti the Union was received in this country with simple incredulity. There were no reasons, it was said, for secession. What the constitution and laws of the United States had been on the eve of Mr. . , Lincoln's election, that they were on its morrow. It was r absurd to suppose that one half of a nation should separate from the other because a first magistrate had been elected in the ordinary constitutional course. The agitation for secession was therefore pronounced to be a political feint intended to cover a real movement in some other direction. Bat when the contest had passed beyond its .first stages, when the example set by South Carolina was followed by the principal States of the extreme South with a rapidity and decision shewing evident concert, when the treacherous seizure of Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbour gave further significance to the votes of the conventions, when lastly the attack on Fort Sumpter awoke the v North, as one man, to arms, belief in the reality of the movement could no longer be Withheld, and speculation was directed to the causes of the catastrophe. The theory at first propounded was nearly to this effect. Commercial and fiscal differences were said to be at the bottom of the movement.

18 CAUSES OF THE WAR.

The North fancied she had an interest in protection ; the South had an obvious interest in free trade. On this and other questions of less moment North and South came into collision, and the antagonism thus engendered had been strengthened and exacerbated by a selfish struggle for place and power — a struggle which the constitution and political usages of the Americans rendered more rancorous and violent than elsewhere. But in the interests of the two sections, considered calmly and apart from selfish ends, there was nothing, it was said, which did not admit of easy adjustment, nothing which negotiation was not far more competent to deal with than the sword. As for slavery, it was little more than a pretext on both sides, employed by the leaders of the South to arouse the fears and hopes of the slaveholders, and by the North in the hope of attracting the sympathies of Europe and hallowing a cause which was essentially destitute of noble aims. The civil war was thus described as having sprung from narrow and selfish views of sectional interests (in which, however, the claims of the South were coincident with justice and sound policy), and sustained by passions which itself had kindled ; and the combatants were advised to compose their differences, and either return to their political partnership, or agree to separate and learn to live in harmony, as independent allies.

With the progress of events these views have undergone some change, principally in excluding more completely than at first from the supposed causes of the movement the question of slavery, and in bringing more prominently into view the right of nations to decide on their own form of political existence as identified with the cause of the South. " The watchword of the South," said the Times* "is Independence, of the North Union, and in these two war-cries the real issue is contained."

That there is much plausibility in this view of the American crisis for those who have no more knowledge of American history than is possessed by the bulk of educated men in this country needs not be denied. Superficial appearances, perhaps we should say the facts most immediately prominent, give it some support. The occasion on which secession was proclaimed was the election of a Republican President, who, far from being the uncompromising champion of abolition, had declared himself ready to maintain the existing regime of slavery with the whole power of the Federal government. On the retirement of the Southern representatives and senators

* September IS, 1861.

TEE POPULAR VIEW. 19

from Congress, the Republican party became supreme in the legislature; and in what way did they employ this suddenly acquired power '( In passing a law for the abolition of slavery in the Union ? or even in repealing the odious Fugitive Slave Law ? Nothing of the kind ; but in passing the Morrill Tariff — in enacting a measure by which they designed to aggrandize the commercial population of the North at the expense of the South.

Since the breaking out of hostilities, again, some of the most salient acts of the drama have only tended to confirm the view which these occurrences would suggest. When slaves have escaped to the Federal army, instead of being received by the general with open arms as brothers for whose freedom he is fighting, they have been placed upon the footing of property, and declared to be contraband of war. When a Federalist general, transcending his legitimate powers, issues a proclamation declaring that slaves shall be free, it is not a proclamation of freedom to slaves as such, but only to the slaves of " rebels," while no sooner is this half-hearted act of manumission known at head-quarters than it is disavowed and over-ruled.

All this, and more to the same purpose, may be urged, as it has been urged, in favour of the view of the American crisis taken by some leading organs of the English press ; yet I venture to say that never was an historical theory raised on a more fragile foundation ; never was an explanation of a political catastrophe propounded in more daring defiance of all the great and cardinal realities of the case with which it professed to deal.

One is tempted to ask, whether those who thus expound . American politics suppose the present' crisis to be anisolated phenomenon in American history, disconnected from all the past ; or, to look at the question from another point of view, whether they imagine that the coincidence of the political division of parties with the geographical division of slave and free States is an accident- — that, to borrow the expression of Jefferson, " a geographical line coinciding with a marked principle " has no significance. It seems almost trifling with the • reader to remind him that the present outbreak is but the crowning result, the inevitable climax of the whole past history of American politics — the catastrophe foreseen with more or less distinctness by all the leading statesmen of America from Washington to Webster and Clay, which was the constant theme of their forebodings, and to escape or defer which was the great problem of their political lives. And equally superfluous does it seem to mention what was the grand central question in that history — the question to which all others were

20 SLAVERY THE CENTRAL PROBLEM

subordinate, and around which all political divisions ranged themselves.*

* In opposition to the views propounded by the most influential organs in England, and in support of what I may venture to call the obvious (though little recognized) account of the war, I am glad to be able to quote the high authority of two leading French Reviews, the Revue des Deux Mondes, and the Revue Nationale : —

" II faut aimer a discuter contre l'evidence pour se persuader que la question de l'esclavage n'est point la cause principale de la crise actuelle. Dans ce conflit qui depuis trente ans va toujours en s'aggravant et qui vient enfin d'aboutir a la guerre civile, quelle question va toujours en grandissant et finit par dominer toute le reste, sinon cette redoubtable question d'esclavage ? lis n'ont pas lu les discours de Calhoun, de Webster, de Seward, de Douglas, de Clay, de Sumner, ceux qui croient que la question de l'esclavage n'a dans la politique americaine qu'une importance secondare. lis oublient que toute la Virginie s'est levee en armes contre John Brown et ces vingt-cinq compagnons. Voici un fait d'ailleurs : quels sont belligerans? D'un cote les etats sans esclaves, de l'autre les etats a esclaves, et Ton pretendrait que la question de l'esclavage est etrangere a la guerre 1 Entre les etats du nord et ceux du sud il y a des etats frontieres, les border states, qui, sans etre des etats libres, contiennent moins d'esclaves que les etats cotonniers. Chose etrange ! la fidelite de ces etats a l'Union est precisement en raison inverse du nornbre de possesseurs d'esclaves ; la Virginie, qui a des esclaves se rallie au mouvement secessioniste ; la partie occidental de cet etat, oasis sans esclaves, separ^e du reste par une chaine des Alleghanys, reste fidele a l'Union et lui donne des soldats. Le nord du Delaware, qui n'a plus d'esclaves, renferme a peine un secessioniste ; le sud, qui en a un grand nombre, contient beaucoup d'adversaires de l'Union.