Chapter 2

The great aggressive Abolition movement that led eventually to the Civil War, had its birth in 1831. Fanatics like John Brown, and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, fanned into flame the sparks that had so long-smouldered, till the helpless negro was dragged from his havens of peace and comfort. If he felt bitterness towards the whites, what was to prevent his rising in insurrection and slaying them all? There were plantations where 600 or 700 slaves were governed by two or three white owners. They occupied little villages and had no care upon earth. They had their pastimes and religious worships. "The courtly old planter, highbred and gentle, the plantation "uncle" who copied the master's manners; and the broad-bosomed black mammy, with vari-colored turban, spotless apron, and beaming face, the friend and helper of every living thing in cabin or mansion, formed a trio we love to remember." The black woman cared more for her white nursling than her own child. This seems unnatural, but it was true; and many of us recall the times that the mistress of the house had to interfere to prevent the kitchen mother from cruelly whipping her naughty offspring. Some relic of ancient African barbarism still lingered in their untutored minds. We loved our colored playmates, and their sable mothers and fathers. Many a winning story of "way down upon de ole plantation" has been truthfully told. Will S. Hays has immortalized it in song.

A Southern writer has thus portrayed the Xmas time: "For weeks beforehand everything was full of stir and preparation. Holly and mistletoe and cedar were being put about the rooms of the big house to welcome home the boys and girls from school. Secret councils were held as to the Xmas gifts to be given to everyone, white and black. The woodpile was loaded with oak and hickory logs to make bright and warm the Christmas nights. The negro seamstresses were busy making: new suits for all the servants." The King was in the parlor counting out his money--to pay out for gifts of the season--and the queen was in the kitchen dealing bread and honey--to paraphrase Mother Goose. Into the stately plantation home, with its lofty white columns, its big rooms, and its great fireplaces, poured the sons and daughters, grandchildren, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces. Assembled around the groaning board, the patriarch asked the divine blessing and the twin spirits of christianity were rife in the land. There was only a fitful sleep for the small boys and girls, who were up at peep of day, stealing: from room to room crying "Christmas Gift!" Out on the back porches waited the negroes in grinning rows to follow the example. All week the cabin fires burned brightly and constant was the rejoicing over their treasures, not forgetting the grand eatables and the big bowl of egg-nogg.

Negroes are a religious as well as a superstitious race. At midnight Saturday it was their custom to ring the great plantation bell, and spend the next several hours in exhorting, praying and singing their curious, doleful hymns. The whites gave them instruction and training along these lines. Heart and conscious were alike cultivated--not alone the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Statistics show that there were 466,000 slaves belonging to churches in the South: Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and other sects. So the owners of these christianized people thought that they were doing missionary work in saving them from the cannibalism of heathen Africa. Both men and women were taught trades and useful occupations. There were tanners, shoemakers, blacksmiths, farmers, gardeners, horticulturists and carpenters among the men. The women could sew, cook, card, spin, weave, knit, wash, iron, in fact what they produced in this way would put to shame the acquirements and accomplishments of free labor. Many of the older negroes refused to be freed, when the mighty proclamation came. They would not withdraw from the protection of "Old Marster." Look at the product of these two generations of freedom. What is he? Well we know the painful answer.

But while the buying of slaves for domestic, or field service, was legitimate, the man who pursued the traffic as a business, and purchased merely to sell again, was despised. He was termed a "nigger-buyer," and was a pariah in the lowest sense of ostracism. It was claimed that there was a distinction with a very great difference. Three or four servants for ordinary household duties were deemed sufficient. On a farm more hands were needed, and the plantations further south required several hundred. The refractory slave of Kentucky and the border states, was sold "down the river" in commercial parlance, where the discipline of the rice, sugar, and cotton plantations kept in check his evil inclinations. There might have been cases of cruel punishment, but the rule was kindness--if for no other reason, the master would not injure that which stood for money, for property. The expense of keeping slaves was enormous. Where is the laborer of to-day who is furnished his house, clothing, doctors, medicine, and not a little pocket money on occasions?

The South employed her laborers to produce the great staple of cotton, which was to clothe mankind. They were properly clothed, fed and made comfortable. In addition, they were cared for when sick, and there existed the warmest affection for the majority of them. The world can nowhere show human beings as care-free in bondage as were the negroes of the ante-bellum days. Judge the Southern owner by the rule and not the exception. As well judge a town by its halt, maimed, blind, diseased and lawless citizens, as the slave owners by occasional acts of oppression to be found on the plantations. But it was the "Down east" Yankee overseer who was cruel--not the master. It was the African in New England who was denied religious teaching, and even baptism. There was no sympathy there, to quote from a writer, for the poor creatures transplanted from their native sunny clime, dying by hundreds from disease on the bleak Northern shores. It was merely a question of profit and loss. They were sold to the South as fast as they could be shipped. Even when the great hue and cry for freedom led the Northern Senators to legislate for the cessation of foreign slavery in 1808, these great philanthropists rushed over some 5,000 slaves to sell to the South before the limited date could come around. Many prominent rich men of New England made their money by this traffic, then pulled a long face of condemnation for the Southern planter, whose money had been paid over to swell the Northern coffers.

IT IS WORTHY OF NOTE THAT THE SOUTH NEVER OWNED OR SAILED A SLAVE SHIP.

In 1861 Mr. C.C. Glay, of Alabama, made a bitter speech in the United States Senate. Part of his arraignment was that not a decade had passed that the North had not persecuted the South on account of her slaves.

"You denied us Christian communion because you could not endure slave-holding. You refused us permission to sojourn, or even pass through the North with our property. You refused us any share of the lands acquired mainly by our diplomacy and blood and treasure. You robbed us of our property and refused to restore it."

The speaker went minutely into the outrages perpetrated by the Abolition party. The list of oppressions had reach a crisis. Meanwhile the cotton and the cane went on in Dixie land, to the weird ditties and the quaint folk-lore of the happy-go-lucky race. So the outbreak of the war found the American slave in the height of his prosperity, unmindful of so-called wrongs, and utterly unfit for the boasted freedom that was thrust upon him. The cruel decree was carried out, and millions of helpless beings were turned adrift without rudder or compass, to bemoan the loss of the good old times when they were provided with the comforts of life they were nevermore to know. With the moral question of slavery this paper has nothing to do. Facts, and facts alone, dictate the record. But who has been, and who is now, the friend of the erstwhile slave? The Northerner or the Southerner? Says one: "We have freed you, but we don't want you." Says the other: "We did not free you, but we will take you and make you comfortable. We love your people--you, who have rocked us on your faithful breasts--who have interlarded our very speech with your dialect, and who were our playmates in the joyous days of youth. We have laid your hoary heads in honored graves, and will treasure your memory till the final hour when death shall make all men equal."

Secession

Read April 11, 1909

We seem not to have been a happy family during our first one hundred years as a Union of States. We quarrelled frequently among ourselves, and like the dissatisfied children of the household there was oft-threatened disruption. If you do not treat me fairly I will leave home, said the stubborn Northern child, no less than the warm-hearted Southern offspring. And they stood alike in the attitude of going out the door the moment the provocation became unbearable. The right of secession and the thought of secession was frequently in the mind all along the infant years of the Republic. But the word "Secession" did not become a familiar term until the early sixties. Then the greeting was "Hello! old Secesh!" or "Are you secesh?" One might have thought that this awful thing the South had done was heard of for the first time, and had birth alone in the brains of the fiery aristocrats who tore themselves away from their plebean cousins; whereas history shows, as I have said, that every State believed it had a right to secede from the general government by the wording of our constitution, so when the pressure grew too close the terms, "Southern Rights," and "Secession," became the slogan of battle and sounded the tocsin of war.

Let us begin at the beginning and get at the actual situation. The thirteen original colonies were as follows: Virginia settled by the English, called the cavaliers, in 1607, became a royal colony in 1624. Massachusetts, settled by the Puritans in 1620, became a royal colony in 1629; New York, called Amsterdam, settled by the Dutch in 1623, became a royal colony in 1688; the English were in New York in 1664. New Hampshire, settled by Puritans in 1729, became a royal colony in 1679; Maryland, settled by Catholics from England, in 1632, became a royal colony in 1691; Connecticut, settled by Dutch and English in 1633, became a royal colony in 1662; Rhode Island was settled in 1638, and never became a royal colony. She was excluded from the New England federation because she harbored all kinds of religions. She especially reserved to herself a State government alone, and a right to secede in any case. So this terrible crime of secession had birth in that pious, patriotic north that so bitterly condemned the states of Dixie Land for clamoring for a future right.

Delaware, settled by Swedes in 1638, became a separate colony, owned by William Penn, in 1703. North Carolina, settled by Virginians and Quakers in 1653, became a royal colony in 1729; New Jersey settled by the English in 1665, became a royal colony in 1702. Pennsylvania, settled by Germans, Dutch and Scotch-Irish in 1681, was given by King Charles II of England, to Wm. Penn in 1770. South Carolina, settled by French Huguenots and Germans in 1691, became a royal colony in 1729. Georgia, the last English colony, was settled by the English in 1732 and had her royal charter in 1762.

I have given the colonial dates in regular order of chronology. A more convenient division may be made thus: the New England colonies were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island, all belonging to England except Rhode Island.

The middle colonies were New York, Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, two belonging to England, and two to Wm. Penn. The Southern colonies were Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, all belonging to England. Brought together by common cause were English, French, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Quakers, Episcopalians, Catholics and all desired forms of religious worship. Wise legislation indeed was needed to harmonize these conflicting elements and dispositions merely on general principles. But when grave questions came then trouble began. What was to the commercial interest of one section seemed to militate against the prosperity of the other, and the glorious ending of the war for independence was soon clouded by the acts of Congress concerning the polity of the United States.

The African Slave Trade, begun by the North for purposes of profit, became a bone of contention till the year 1808, when the law was passed against the further importation of foreign slaves. Those already owned and employed must on no account be disturbed. They might increase and multiply adlibitum on their own plantations, but they were the legitimate property of their owners. Even when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Act, he said that he had not the right as President to do it, but that it must be done as a war measure. By depriving the southern soldier of his laborers, the homes must go to waste and the strife most cease.

Politically each of the original colonies was independent had its own assembly and its own governor. From the very first this idea of State sovereignty was inherent, and consequently it was granted. The royal colonies sent all legislative acts to England to be approved or vetoed by the king. It must have required patience to await the going and returning of the documents across the "vasty deep" in that day. These royal colonies so governed by the king, were New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia. In the proprietary colonies, or those granted by royalty to individuals, the owner appointed the governor, but the king exercised the right of veto in Pennsylvania and Delaware, but not in Maryland. The charter colonies were Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. These held charters from the king permitting a complete government by themselves. At this time black slaves were in all the states. Even after the New England States had grown rich by the selling of the negroes to the south, where the climate suited their natures, they kept up the traffic in white slaves who, too poor to pay their passage to the new land flowing with milk and honey, sold themselves, hoping to buy back their freedom in the, perhaps near future.

When the constitution of the United States was framed many compromises were made. The framers had to select words with extreme care lest some State might refuse to join the federation. A notable compromise, and the very first quarrel, was the one just quoted in reference to placing the limitation of the slave trade as far ahead as 1808. The next disagreement was about the war debt. This was called the Assumption. The general government had contracted a debt of $54,000,000 and the States, about $25,000,000. This was in 1790. Alexander Hamilton proposed that the government assume the whole debt. Hence the word "assumption." The south argued that each state should pay its own debt. That if the general government assumed the State debts it would be taking away the sovereign rights that had been guaranteed them, viz: the right to do as they pleased with what was their own, and that national legislation had nothing to do with the question. About this time they were looking about for a site upon which to build the national capital. Sectional spirit ran high. New England declared that _her states would secede_ if the South succeeded in defeating assumption and in getting the capital, too. So a compromise was effected. The Assumption bill passed, and the south got the capital, after the seat of government was established at Philadelphia during ten years. In this year, too, many petitions to abolish slavery were forced upon Congress. After a heated debate the fiat went forth that Congress could not take action till 1808.

Next came the adding of ten amendments to the constitution, all for the purpose of protecting State rights. Thomas Jefferson became the leader of the Republican party, afterwards known as Democrats, and not to be confounded with the Republican party of to-day. There was a most bitter wrangle over the wording of the Constitution, during which even President Washington received abuse. _Threats of breaking up the Union were heard on all sides_.

Then there was a quarrel over the National Bank question. The first one was established at Philadelphia in 1791, and the United States became a stockholder. The purpose was to furnish a safe currency, and one that would be uniform throughout the States.

In 1791 Vermont, a part of New York, was admitted, a free state. In 1792 Kentucky, cut off from Virginia, entered as a slave state, and in 1796 Tennessee, given up by North Carolina, came in as a slave State. Our government was involved in trouble with other countries in regard to territory, but this sketch has chiefly to do with our disputes as a family.

While John Adams was President, the successor of Washington, the Alien and Sedition Laws created a stir in the country. The Federalists gave the President power to send out of the country all foreigners whom he considered dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States. They feared that these foreign citizens, by their free speech and writings might involve us in a war with Great Britain. This was the Alien Law. The Democrats contended that they had a right to bring over all the foreigners they pleased and make them citizens. The Sedition Law condemned to fine or imprisonment any writer of false, scandalous, or malicious statement against the government, Congress, or the President. The Democrats urged that this law took away freedom of speech and liberty of the press. Virginia, by James Madison, and Kentucky, by Thomas Jefferson, passed resolutions which have become famous in political history. Each set of resolutions proclaimed the Union to be only a compact between the States. They declared the Alien and Sedition laws to be unconstitutional, null and void. Virginia actually strengthened her military forces, and made ready for secession as far back as this date, 1799. The laws were not passed.

In 1803 Ohio, the 17th State, was ceded by Virginia, and was admitted--the first state carved from the Northwest Territory, and employed free labor.

The purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon in 1803 caused much discussion and interest. It comprised a vast area equal to the whole United States. Exploring expeditions were sent out to find what the unknown territory was like. Whenever there was a question of an acquisition to the Union the slave question was also in agitation. We next hear of secession when the Embargo Act was passed. In 1807 congress, in order to avoid the war with Great Britain which was fated to come five years later, enacted that no American vessel should leave the country for foreign ports. New England, where commerce was still the chief industry, suffered most. She threatened to secede, and both Massachusetts and Connecticut proclaimed the right to nullify the law. Two years later the act was repealed and again the Union was saved. Truly Uncle Sam had restive children who could not be driven, but who might at times be coaxed into a good humor.

Now came the quarrel between the State Banks and the National Bank. The National Bank charter expired in 1811 and congress refusing to grant another, it had to go out of business. In 1812 Louisiana, a slave state, came in to make the eighteenth addition.

When war with England was declared in order to protect our commerce, again the _New England States wanted to secede_. Bells were tolled, business was suspended, flags were at half-mast, and the war was condemned in town meetings--from the press and the pulpit. They believed it would ruin rather than protect commerce. So they wanted to run away by themselves. When the administration called for militia these states refused to obey.

The Hartford Convention, just after our successful war with Great Britain, proposed some amendments to the Constitution, and justified secession as a remedy for an uncongenial union, but one that "should not be resorted to except when absolutely necessary." They confirmed the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. The Democrats openly charged that the object of the convention was disunion. The Federalist party went to pieces. A new National Bank was established--in 1816--to continue twenty years. In 1817 Indiana, the second State from the Northwest Territory, became a member of the Union, with free labor. She was the 19th State, and asked permission to hold slaves, but Congress prohibited slavery north of the Ohio river. The North had ere this freed or sold her slaves, but the institution was legalized in the Southern States. There were now nineteen States and five territories, viz: Mississippi, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, and Alabama. Emigration poured into the West. Each section of the young republic watched its own prosperity with jealous interest. The Tariff question caused excited sectional feeling. A tax on foreign goods for the sake of revenue only had satisfied everybody; but a protective tariff was unpopular with the South. The North, having manufactories, was glad to protect her infant industries. The South had no manufactories--only agricultural products, and her representatives combatted the measure with zeal (Explain). This tariff bill has always caused opposition, and a glance at the daily doings at Washington shows that it is still a bone of contention.

Mississippi was admitted as a state in 1817 with slaves; Illinois in 1818, free; and Alabama, in 1819, slave, making twenty-two states, eleven free, and eleven slave states--an equal division. In 1819 Florida was bought from Spain.