The uprising of a great people; the United States in 1861.

Front matter

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Preface

In publishing this study at the present time, I expose myself to the blame of prudent men. I shall be told that I ought to have waited. ,

To have waited for what 1 Until there shall be no more great questions in Europe to dispute our attention with the American question? Or until the American question has shaped itself, and we are able to know clearly what interests it will serve, in what consequences it will end 1

I am not sorry, I confess, to applaud duty before it is recommended by success. When success shall have come, men eager to celebrate it will not be wanting, and I shall leave to them the care of demonstrating then that the North has been in the right, that it has saved the United States.

To construct the philosophy of events after they have passed is very interesting, without doubt, but the work to be accomplished to-day is far more serious. The point m question is to sustain our friends when they are in need of us ; when their battle, far from being won, is scarcely begun ; the point in question is to give our sup-

X PREFACE.

port — the very considerable support of European opinion — at the time when it can be of service ; the point in question is to assume our small share of responsibility in one of the gravest conflicts of this age.

Let us enlist ; for the Slave States, on their part, are losing no time. They have profited well, I must admit, by the advantages assured to them by the complicity of the ministers of Mr. Buchanan. In the face of the inevitable indecision of a new government, around which care had been taken to accumulate in advance every impossibility of acting, the decided bearing of the extreme South, its airs of audacity and defiance have had a certain eclat and a certain success. Already its partisans raise their heads; they dare speak in its favor among us; they insult free trade, by transforming it into an argument destined to serve the interests of slavery. And shall we remain mute? Shall we listen to the counsels of that false wisdom that always comes too late, so much does it fear to declare itself too early 1 Shall we not feel impelled to show in all its true light the sacred cause of liberty 1 Ah ! I declare that the blood boils in my veins ; I have hastened and would gladly have hastened still more. Circumstances independent of my will alone have retarded a publication prepared more than a month ago.

Orange, March 19, 1861.

Contents

Chap. Page

Introduction, 9

I. — ^American Slavery, 13

Introduction

The title of this work will produce the effect of a paradox. The general opinion is that the United States continued to pursue an upward course until the election of Mr. Lincoln, and that since then they have been declining. It is not difficult, and it is very necessary, to show that this opinion is absolutely false. Before the recent victory of the adversaries of slavery, the American Confederation, in spite of its external progress and its apparent prosperity, was suffering from a fearful malady which had . well-nigh proved mortal ; now, an operation has taken place, the sufferings have increased, the gravity of the situation is revealed for the first time, perhaps, to inattentive eyes. Does this mean that the situation was not grave when it did not appear so ? Does this mean that we must deplore a violent crisis which alone can bring the cure ?

10 INTKODUCTION.

I do not deplore it — I admire it. I recognize in tliis energetic reaction against the disease, the moral vigor of a j)eople habituated to the laborious struggles of liberty. The rising of a people is one of the rarest and most marvellous prodigies presented by the annals of humanity. Ordinarily, nations that begin to decline, decline constantly more and more ; a rare power of life is needed to retrieve their position, and stop in its course a decay once begun.

We have a strange way of seconding the generous enterprise into which the United States have entered with so much courage ! We prophesy to them nothing but misfortunes ; we almost tell them that they have ceased to exist ; we give them to understand, that in electing Mr. Lincoln they have renounced their greatness ; that they have precipitated themselves head foremost into an abyss ; that they have ruined their prosperity, sacrificed their future, rendered henceforth impossible the magnificent character which was reserved to them. Mr. Buchanan, we seem to say, is the last President of the Union.

This, thank God, is the reverse of the truth. But lately, indeed, the United States were advancing to their ruin ; but lately there was reason to

INTKODUCTION. 11

mourn in thinking of them ; the steps might have been counted which it remained for them to take to complete the union of their destiny with that of an accursed and perishable institution — an institution which corrupts and destroys every thing with which it comes in contact. To-day, new prospects are opening to them ; they will have to combat, to labor, to suffer ; the crime of a century is not repaired in a day ; the right path when long forsaken is not found again without effort ; guilty traditions and old complicities are not broken through without sacrifices. It is none the less true, notwithstanding, that the hour of effort and of sacrifice, grievous as it may be, is the very hour of deliverance. The election of Mr. Lincoln will be one of the great dates of American history ; it closes the past, but it opens the future. With it is about to commence, if the same spirit be maintained, and if excessive concessions do not succeed in undoing all that has been done, a new era, at once purer and greater than that which has just ended.

Let others accuse me of optimism ; I willingly agree to it. I believe that optimism is often right here below. We need hope ; we need sometimes to receive good news ; we need to see sometimes the bright side of things. The bright side is often

12 INTRODUCTION.

the true side ; if Love is blindfolded, I see a triple bandage on tbe eyes of Hate. Kindliness has its privileges ; and I do not think myself in a worse position than another to judge the United States because they inspire me with an earnest sympathy ; because, after having mourned their faults and trembled at their perils, I have joyfully saluted the noble and manly policy of which the election of Mr. Lincoln is the symptom. Is it not true, that at the first news we all seemed to breathe a whifi' of pure and free air from the other side of the ocean ? It is a pleasure, in times like ours, to feel that certain principles still live ; that they will be obeyed, cost what it may ; that questions of conscience can yet sometimes weigh down questions of profit. The abolition of slavery will be, I have always thought, the principal conquest of the nineteenth century. Tliis will be its recommendation in the eyes of posterity, and the chief compensation for many of its weaknesses. As for us old soldiers of emancipation, who have not ceased to combat for it for twenty years and more, at the tribunal and elsewhere, we shall be excused without doubt for seeing in the triumph of our American friends something else than a subject of lamentation.

CHAPTEK I.

AMERICAN SLAVERY.

If they had not triumphed, do you know who would have gained the victory ? Slavery is only a word — a vile word, doubtless, but to which we in time become habituated. To what do we not become habituated ? We have stores of indulgence and indifference for the social iniquities which have found their way into the current of cotemporary civilization, and which can invoke prescription. So we have come to speak of American slavery with perfect sang froid. We are not, therefore, to stop at the word, but to go straight to the thing ; and the thing is this :

Every day, in all the Southern States, families are sold at retail : the father to one, the mother to another, the son to a third, the young daughter to a fourth ; and the fatherj the mother, the children, are scattered to the four winds of heaven ; these

14: AMERICAN SLAVERY.

hearts are broken^ these poor beings are given a prej to infamy and sorrow, these marriages are ruptured, and adulterous unions are formed twentyleagues, a hundred leagues away, in the bosom and with the assent of a Christian comnmnity. Every day, too, the domestic slave-trade carries on its work ; merchants in human flesh ascend the Mississippi, to seek in the producing! States wherewith to fill up the vacuum caused unceasingly by slavery in the consuming States ; their ascent made, they scour the farms of Yirginia or of Kentucky, buying here a boy, there a girl ; and other hearts are torn, other families are dispersed, other nameless crimes are accomplished coolly, simply, legally : it is the necessary revenue of the one, it is the indispensable supply of the others. Must not the South live, and how dares any one travesty a fact so simple ? by what right was penned that eloquent calumny called " Uncle Tom's Cabin " ?

A calumny ! I ask how any one would set to work to calumniate the customs which I have just described. Say, then, that the laws of the South are a calumny, that the ofiicial acts of the South are a calumny ; for I affirm that the simple reading of these acts and these laws, a glance at the advertisements of a Southern journal, saddens the heart

AMEKICAN SLAVERY. 15

more, and wounds the conscience deeper, than the most poignant pages of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. I admit willingly that there are many masters who are very kind and very good. I admit that there are some slaves who are relatively happy. I cast aside nnhesitatingly the stories of exceptional cruelty ; it is enough for me to see that these happy ^ slaves expose themselves to a thousand deaths to escape a situation declared '' 2^^^^^^'^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ our workmen." It is enough for me to hear the heart-rending cries of those women and young girls who, adjudged to the highest and last bidder, become, by the law and in a Christian country, the property, yes, the property (excuse the word, it is the true one) of the debauchees, their purchasers. And remark here that the virtues of the master are a weak guarantee : he may die, he may become bankrupt, and nothing then can hinder his slaves from being sold into the hands of the buyer who scours the country and makes his choice.

We should calumniate the South if we amused ourselves by making a collection of atrocious deeds, in the same manner that we should calumniate France by seeking in the Police Gazette for the description of her social state. There is, notwithstanding, this difference between the iniquities of

16 AMERICAN SLAVERY.

slavery and our own : tlie first are almost always unpunished, while the second are repressed by the courts. An institution which permits evil, creates it in a great measure : in saying that men are things, it necessarily engenders more crimes, more acts of violence, more cowardly deeds, than the imagination of romancers will ever invent. When a class has neither the right to complain, nor to defend itself, nor to testify in law ; when it cannot make its voice heard in any manner, we may be excused for not taking in earnest the idyls chanted on its felicity. We must be ignorant at once of the heart of man and of history to preserve the slightest doubt on this point. I add that those who, like me, have had in their hands the documents of our colonial slavery, have become terribly suspicious, and are likely to look with a skeptical eye on these Arcadian descriptions, the worth of which they can appreciate.

Once more, I do not contest the humanity of many masters, but I remember that there were humane masters too in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Bourbon ; yet this did not prevent the discovery, on a rigid scrutiny, sometimes of excesses, as fearful as inevitable, of the discretionary power ; at others, of a systematic depravation, and this to such a

AMERICAN SLAVERY. 17

point that in one of our colonies tlie custom of regular unions had become absolutely unknown to the slaves.

I cannot help believing that man is the same everywhere. Never, in any time or in any latitude, has it been given him to possess his fellow, without fearful misfortunes having resulted to both. Have we not heard celebrated the delightful mildness of Spanish slavery in Cuba ? Travellers entertained by the Creoles usually return enchanted with it. Yet, notwithstanding, it is found that on quitting the cities and penetrating into the plantations, the most barbarous system of labor is discovered that exists in the entire world. Cuba devours her black population so rapidly that she is unceasingly obliged to purchase negroes from abroad ; and these, being oiice on the island, have not before them an average life exceeding ten years ! In the United States, the planters of the extreme South are also obliged to renew their supply of negroes ; but, as they have recourse to the domestic instead of the African trade, and as the domestic trade furnishes slaves at an excessively high price, it follows that motives of interest oppose the adoption of the destructive system of Cuba. Other higher motives also oppose it, I am certain ; and I am far from

18 AilEKICAN SLAVEKY.

comparing the system of Louisiana or the Carolinas to that which j)revails in the Spanish island. "We exaggerate nothing, however ; and whatever may be the points of difference, w^e may hold it as certain that those of resemblance are still more numerous : the tree is the same, it cannot but bear the same fruits.

It must be affirmed, besides, that slavery is peculiarly odious on that soil where the equality of mankind has been inscribed with so much eclat at the head of a celebrated constitution. Liberty imposes obligations ; there is at the bottom of the human conscience something which will always cause slavery to be more scandalous at Washington than at Havana. What happens in the United States will be denounced more violently, more loudly, than what haj)pens in Brazil ; and this is right.

This said, I pause : I have not the slightest wish to introduce here a perfectly superfluous discussion on the principle and the consequences of slavery. I know all with which Americans reproach us Europeans. It was we. Frenchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards, Hollanders, who imposed on them this institution which we take delight in combating — this inheritance which we anathematize ! Before at-

AMERICAJSr SLAVERY. 19

tacking slavery, we would do well to turn our attention to our own crimes — to the oppression of the weak in our manufactories, for instance ! But these retaliatory arguments have the fault of proving nothing at all. We will leave them ; we have said enough on the nature of American slavery ; let us proceed to the special study of our work.

20 WHEKE THE UNITED STATES WEKE DBIFTLNa

CHAPTEE II.

WHERE THE UNITED STATES WERE DRIFTING- BEFORE THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN.

I HAYE spoken of the great perils which the United States encountered before the election of Mr. Lincoln. The time has come to enter into some details in justification of this proposition, which must have appeared strange at first sight, but the terms of which I have weighed well : if the slavery party had again achieved a victory, the United States would have gone to ruin. These are the facts :

Formerly, there was but one opinion among Americans on the subject of slavery. The Southerners may have considered it as a necessary evil ; in any case, they considered it as an evil. Carolina herself nobly resisted its introduction upon her soil ; other colonies did the same. "Washington inscribed the wish in his will that so baleful an insti-

BEFO:feE THE ELECTION OF ME. LINCOLN. 21

tution might be promptly suppressed. To pen up slavery, to prevent its extension, to reduce it to the role of a local and temporary fact, which it was determined to restrain still more — such was the sentiment which prevailed in the South, as in the North. And, in fact, slavery was ere long abolished in the majority of the States composing the Union. To-day, slavery has become a beneficent, evangelical institution, the corner-stone of republics, the foundation of all liberties ; it has become a source of blessings for the blacks as for the whites. We not only are not to think of reducing the number of slave States, but it becomes important to increase them unceasingly : to interdict to slavery the entrance into a new territory is almost iniquitous. Such are the theories proclaimed by the governors, by the legislators of the cotton States ; they propose them openly, without scruple and without circumlocution, under the name of political — what do I say ? of moral and Christian axioms. For these theories they take fire, they become excited ; they feel that enthusiasm which was inspired in other times by the love of liberty. See entire populations, who, under the eye of God, and invoking his support, devote themselves, body, soul, and goods, to the holy cause of slavery, its conquests, its

23 WHEEE THE UNITED STATES WEEE DErFTINO

indefinite extension, its inter-State and African trade.

And the conquests of slavery do not figure only in platforms ; they are j)"iirsued and accomplished efifectively on the soil of America. In the face of the nineteenth century, free Texas has been transformed into a slave State. To create other slave countries is the aim proposed ; and slave countries multiply, and the South does not tolerate the slightest obstacle to conquests of this kind, and it goes forward, and nothing stops it— I am wrong, the election of Mr. Lincoln has stopped it, and this is why its fury breaks out to-day.

One would be furious for less cause I Every thing had gone so well till then ! The South spoke as a master, and the North humbly bowled its head before its imperious commands. Its exactions increased from day to day, and it v/as not difficult to Bee to what abysses it was leading the entire American Union. Shall we give our readers an idea of this crescendo of pretensions ?

We will content ourselves with going back to the last Mexican w^ar and to the Wilmot proviso. This was, as is known, a measure, or proviso, stipulating that slavery could not be introduced into conquered provinces. Such was the starting point.

BEFOEE THE ELECTION OF ME. LINCOLN. 23

It was sought then to prevent the territorial extension of slavery. Tliis seems to me reasonable enough ; and I am not astonished that the Lincoln platform tends simply to return to this primitive policy. Some time after this, the Missouri question presents itself: Shall the number of slave States be increased ? Is this leprosy to be permitted to extend? Will the ISTorthern countries be invaded in their turn ? The struggle is earnest and long. Finally tho South carries the cause ; the introduction of slavery into the new State is accorded it, but on condition that this introduction shall be henceforth prohibited beyond the 36th degree of latitude. This is called the Missouri Compromise.

Ere long the South complains of this limit set to the development of its " peculiar institution." Other combats, another victory. A bill proposed by Mr. Douglas annuls the Missouri Compromise, and, based on tlie principle of local sovereignties, withdraws from Congress the right to interfere in the question of slavery.

Tlie Wilmot proviso could not subsist in the presence of these absolute pretensions. The liberty of slavery (pardon me this mournful and involuntary conjunction) finds an application on the spot. At this jimcture, Texas, a province detached from

24 WHERE THE UNITED STATES WEEE DRIFTIKa

Mexico, is admitted in the quality of a slave State.

What happens then ? The partisans of slavery, hampered by nothing any longer, either by limits at the North, or limits at the South, or provisos, or compromises, encounter, to their great horror, an obstacle of quite a different nature. The local sovereignty which they have invoked turns against them ; in the Territory of Kansas, the majority votes the exclusion of slavery. At once the Southerners change theory ; against local sovereignty they invoke the central power ; they demand, they exact that the decisions of the majority in Kansas shall be trodden under foot ; they put forward the natural right of slavery. "Why shall they be prevented from settling in a Territory with the slaves, their property ? When this Territory shall be by and by transformed into a State, there will doubtless be a right to determine the question ; but to abolish slavery is quite a different thing from excluding it.

If the South did not win the cause this time, it was not the fault of the government of the United States, but of the inhabitants of Kansas. As for Mr. Buchanan, he showed himself what he has constantly been, the most humble servant of the slavery

BEFOEE THE ELECTION OF MS. LIACOLN. 25

party. Tliey came together into collision with squatter sovereignity : they found for the first time in their path that solid resistance of the West which was manifested in the last election, and which, I firmly hope, is about to save America. But in the mean time, they had taken a new step forward — a formidable step, and one which introduced them into the very bosom of the free States : they had obtained a decision from the Supreme Court — the Dred Scott decree. In the preamble of this too celebrated decision, the highest judicial power of the Confederation did not fear to proclaim two principles : first, that there is no difference between a slave and any other kind of property ; secondly, that all American citizens may settle everywhere with their property.

What a menace for the free-soilers ! How easy to see to what lengths the South would shortly go ! Since slavery constituted property like any other, it was necessary to prohibit the majority from proscribing it in States as well as in Territories. Who knew whether we should not some day see slaves and even slave-markets (the right of property carries with it that of sale) in the streets even of Philadelphia or Boston !

Let no one cry out against this : those who de-

26 WHERE THE UNITED STATES WEEE DRIFTING

manded and those who framed the Dred Scott decision knew probably what they wished to do. With the right of property understood in this wise, no State has the power either to vote the real abolition of slavery, or to forbid the introduction of slaves, or to refuse their extradition. And, effectively, horrible laws, ordering fugitive slaves to be given up, were accorded to the violent demands of the South. Liberty by contact with the soil, that great maxim of our Europe, was interdicted America ; the very States that most detested slavery were condemned to assist, indignant and shuddering, in the federal invasion of a sheriff entering their homes to lay hands on a poor negro, who had believed in their hospitality, and who was about to be delivered up to the whip of the planter.

It was asking much of the patience of the North ; yet, notwithstanding, this patience was not yet at an end. The Administration was given up a prey to the will of the Southerners. On their prohibition, the mails ceased to carry books, journals, letters, which excited their suspicion. They had seized upon the policy of the Union, and they ruled it according to their liking, l^o one has forgotten those enterprises, favored underhand, then disavowed after failure, those filibustering expeditions in Central

BEFORE THE ELECTION OF ME. LINCOLN. 27

America and in the island of Cuba. Tliey were the policy of the South, executed by Mr. Buchanan with his accustomed docility. The point in question was to make conquests, and conquests ' for slavery. By any means, and at any price, the South was to procure new States. Cuba would furnish some, several would be carved out of Mexico and Central America ; for otherwise the slavery majorities would be compromised in Congress, and slavery would be forced to renounce forever the election of the Presidents of free America. To avoid such a misfortune, there is nothing that they would not have been ready to undertake.

Thus, step after step, and exaction after exaction, overthrowing, one after the other, all barriers, the Wilmot proviso, the Missouri Compromise, the right of majorities in the Territories, the very sovereignty of the States annulled by the Dred Scott decision, the South had succeeded in drawing the United States into those violent and dishonest political practices which filled the administration of Mr. Buchanan. The barriers of public probity, and the right of men, yielded in turn ; the administration dared write officially that Cuba was necessary to the United States, and that the aifranchisement of slaves in Cuba would be a legitimate cause of war.

28 WHEEE THE UNITED STATES WEKE DEIFTING

The United States were yoked to the car of slavery : to make slave States, to conquer Territories for slavery, to prevent the terrible misfortune of an abolition of slavery, such was the programme. In negotiations, in elections, nothing else was perceived than this. If the liberty of the seas and the independence of the flag were proudly claimed, it was by the order of the South, and there resulted thence, whether desired or not, a progressive resurrection of the African slave-trade ; if candidates in favor of the maintenance of the Union were recommended, it was to assure the conquests of slavery within and without, the invasion of neighboring countries,, the extradition of fugitive slaves, the subjugation of majorities rebellious to the South, the suppression of laws disagreeable to the South, the overthrow of the last obstacles which fettered the progress of the South

And it was tlras far, to this degree of disorder and abasement, that a noble people had been dragged downwards in the course of years, sinking constantly decj)er, abandoning, one by one, its guarantees, losing its titles to the esteem of other nations, approaching the abyss, seeing the hour draw nigh in which to rise would be impossible, bringing down maledictions upon itself, forcing

BEFOKE THE ELECTION OF :MR. LENCOLN. 29

those who love it to reflect on the words of one of its most illustrious leaders : ''I tremble for my country, when I remember that God is just ! "

All this under the tyrannical and pitiless influence of a minority constantly transformed into a majority ! Picture to yourself a man on a vessel standing by the gun-room with a lighted match in his hand ; he is alone, but the rest obey him, for at the first disobedience he will blow up himself with all the crew. This is precisely what has been going on in America since she went adrift. The working of the ship was commanded by the man who held the match. " At the first disobedience, we will quit you." • Such has always been the language of the Southern States. They were known to be capable of keeping their w^ord ; therefore, there ceased to be but one argument in America : secession. " Revoke the compromise, or else secession ; modify the legislation of the free States, or else secession ; risk adventures, and undertake conquests with us for slavery, or else secession ; lastly and above all, never suffer yourselves to elect a president who is not our candidate, or else secession."

Thus spoke the South, and the North submitted. Let us not be miduly surprised at it, there was patriotism in this weakness ; many citizens, inimical

30 WHEKE THE UNITED STATES WEKE DKIFTING

to slavery, forbore to combat its progress, in order to avoid what appeared to them a greater evil. Declivities like these are descended qnicklj, and the deplorable presidency of Mr. Buchanan stands to testify to this. The policy of the United States had become doubtful ; their good renown was dwindling away even with their warmest friends ; their cause was becoming blended more and more with that of servitude ; their liberties were compromised, and the Federal institutions were bending before the " institution " of the South ; no more rights of the majority before the " institution ; " no more sovereignty of the States before the " institution." Tlie ultra policy of Mr. Buchanan had coveted Cuba, essayed violence in Kansas, given up the government of America in fine to a cabinet of such a stamp, that a majority was nearly found in it, ready to disavow Major Anderson, and to order the evacuation of forts of the Confederation, menaced by Carolinian forces.

During this time, an incredible fact had come to light. It was one of the glories of America to have abolished the African slave trade before any other nation, and even to have put it on the same footing with the crime of piracy. The South had openly demanded the re-establishment of a commerce which alone could furinsh it at some day with the number