Part 53

This was a frank confession from a Northern scholar and thinker, that Northern politicians sought office with an eye to property and subsistence, while ambitious Southerners sought for place and power from love of political supremacy. Now, the motive of the latter class was not good, but these lovers of high position did have a restraining influence upon the lovers of money. The scandals that have brought shame upon the American name occurred when the Old South was out of power. Who has not heard of the Credit Mobilier swindle, in which high government officers, Senators and Representatives, were implicated? Then there were frauds known as Emma Mine stock, Seneca Stone contract, Whiskey Ring swindles, Pacific Mail subsidies, sales of Sutlers' Posts, steals of Government lands, "back salary" grabs, Star Route robberies, etc., etc. When Southern statesmen had a controlling influence these knaveries were unknown, because they were impossible. No official from the Old South, whether in Cabinet, Congress, Foreign Mission or public position of any kind, was ever charged with roguery. No great statesman of that period ever corruptly made money out of his office. Calhoun, Clay, and Webster were comparatively poor. Some of our greatest Presidents were almost paupers, notably Jefferson, Monroe, and Harrison.

Dr. Channing gave the distinction between the North and the South with great candor and fairness. But we might still inquire: Why did the North seek property, and why did the South seek political supremacy, as the chief good? The reason of the differences between the two sections seems to me perfectly plain. It was not a race difference between the two peoples, for they were of the same blood and the same speech. The ambition of each section as to the avenues in which it should seek its own self-aggrandizement was determined by its surroundings. The Northern States of the old thirteen had magnificent bays and harbors, but a bleak, inhospitable climate, in which African slaves could not thrive, and a soil not adapted to producing the things which the world specially needed. The people of that region then freed or sold into the South the negroes whom they had brought from Africa and whom they found to be unprofitable slaves in their latitude. Naturally, these Northerners turned away from unremunerative agriculture to the wealth-giving sea and became the boldest and hardiest navigators the world had ever seen; but with all their courage, pluck, and energy they were averse to war and personal conflicts as interfering with the peaceful gains of trade. They were too busy to be turbulent. They put thousands of ships upon the ocean as fishing-smacks, whalers, and merchantmen. Their shipping interest called for great centers of trade and for foundries and machine-shops. They built great cities and huge dock-yards; they opened vast mines and established rich factories. They became a money-getting people from the situation in which their surroundings had placed them. Anglo-Saxon energy and indomitable will had made them masters of whatever was at first unfavorable in their situation.

The South had but few ports, and these were in unhealthy places; it had a climate well suited to the African, and a soil well adapted to produce those things which the world most needed. Hence the people of the Old South maintained slavery and devoted themselves almost exclusively to agriculture. They built no great cities, for they had no trade; they developed no mines and erected no factories, for their laborers were better at field work than at anything else. The Southern men of property went to the country and became feudal lords of black retainers, the best fed, the best clothed, the gayest, happiest, healthiest, strongest serfs the world had ever seen. The towns and villages at the South were shackly, mostly with unpaved and unlighted streets. The rural mansions were spacious and comfortable, seldom grand or elegant. An agricultural people are seldom rich and the profuse hospitality of the Southern planter kept him generally straitened in his means. The Old South labored under a more serious disadvantage; there were few literary and scientific men among them. History shows that the great men of the world have been born chiefly in the country, and that they gained distinction, not there, but in cities and towns. The fire may be hid in a flint for countless ages, and the spark only be given out when the flint is struck by the steel. So the intellectual giants reared in the free, fresh air of the country have only given out their grand thoughts under the influence of other minds in populous places.

Thus, the men of the Old South, being cut off from wealth, from mining, manufacture, commerce, art, science, and literature, found but two fields open in which they could distinguish themselves--war and politics--and into these they entered boldly and successfully and became leading statesmen and renowned warriors. So the surroundings of the Old South determined the destiny of its sons, just as the surroundings of the North determined that of its sons. Exceptional cases occurred at the South where fame was won outside of politics. Thus, Audubon, of Louisiana, was the first as he is the most distinguished, of American ornithologists. Washington Allston, of South Carolina, ranks among the foremost of American painters. M. F. Maury, of Virginia, has done more for navigation than any one of this century, and he received more medals, diplomas, and honors as a man of science from European nations than any other American. John Gill, of New Bern, N. C., is the true inventor of the revolver which has revolutionized the tactics of the world. Dr. Clemens, of Salisbury, N. C., is the true inventor of the telegraph, which has made almost instantaneous the intercourse between the most distant nations of the earth. McCormick, of Virginia, was the first to put the reaper into the field, which has done so much to develop the vast grain fields of the West. Stevens, of South Carolina, was the first to use iron as a protection against artillery, and thus the whole system of naval warfare has been changed. Dr. Reed, of Tuscaloosa, Ala., is the inventor of rifled cannon, which have made useless fortifications of stone and brick. Richard Jordan Gatling, of Hertford county, N. C., is the inventor of the terrible gun that bears his name. The Georgians claim that their countryman, Rev. F. R. Goulding, is the inventor of the sewing machine. General Gabriel J. Rains, by the construction of a peculiar friction primer, made the use of torpedoes successful in the Southern waters during the civil war, and demonstrated that weak maritime nations could be protected against the most powerful. The Le Contes, of Georgia, are to-day among our foremost men of science. Dr. J. Marion Sims, of South Carolina, had more reputation abroad than any other American physician. In literature, we have had such men as Marshall, Kennedy, Gayarre, Wirt, Gilmore Simms, Hawks, Legaré, Hayne, Ryan, Timrod, the Elliotts, of South Carolina, Ticknor, Lanier, Thornwell, Archibald Alexander and his sons, Addison and James W., A. T. Bledsoe, Mrs. Welby, Mrs. Terhune. Brooke, of Virginia, solved the problem of deep-sea sounding, which had so long baffled men of science. But the other day, General John Newton, of Virginia, was at the head of the Engineering Department of the United States. Stephen V. Benet, of Florida, is now head of the United States Ordnance Department, and Dr. Robert Murray, of Maryland, is Surgeon-General.

Most of the Southern inventions were lost to those whose genius devised them, because the Old South had no foundries and machine-shops in which they could be made, and no great centers of trade by which they could be put upon the market. With rare magnanimity, Southern Congressmen had voted for protective tariffs, fishing bounties and coast-trade regulations, which did so much to build up the big cities and great commerce of the North and to fill its coffers to overflowing. Even Mr. Calhoun had voted to protect "infant industries," believing that the infants would in the course of time learn to crawl and walk, and do without pap. But that time has not yet come. Thomas Prentice Kettell, a Northern man, estimates that in these three ways the Old South contributed from 1789 to 1861 $2,770,000,000 of her wealth to Northern profits. Our statesmen knew, surely, that their own section would never get one dollar in return from this enormous expenditure. But they were patriotic enough to be willing to make the nation rich and prosperous, even at the expense, for a season, of their own beloved South. My Countrymen! that Old South was a generous Old South. The world scoffs at such generosity and says, "it don't pay." The Old South believed with the wise man that "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and loving favor than gold and silver." But the world does not think with Solomon and the Old South, and chooses great riches rather than the good name, and gives its loving favor to the holders of the gold and silver. But while the Old South had some success in literature, art, and science, the character of its people ought to be judged mainly by what they accomplished in two departments to which their efforts were mostly restricted--politics and war. Did the Old South give to the country wise statesmen and brave warriors? This will be the subject of the present investigation.

Mr. Bancroft says: "American Independence, like the great rivers of the country, had many sources, but the head-spring which colored all the stream was the Navigation Act." The whole of New England was in a blaze of fury because of it. The effect of it upon their commerce and shipping interest was most disastrous, and they believed that ruin impended over them. The Old South was equally excited, though it had no carrying trade and was in nowise affected by the act. But an agricultural people, living much by themselves, develop large individuality, and are always liberty-loving. Hence, though in many respects the gainers by intercourse with England, the sons of the Old South stoutly resisted all encroachments upon their freedom by the Mother Country--a term of endearment they still loved to use. The Old South denounced the Navigation Act, which did not hurt its interests at all, just as severely as it did the Stamp and Revenue Acts. All were blows at the inalienable rights of freemen, and all were alike opposed. Christopher Gadsden, of South Carolina, in a speech delivered in Charleston in 1766, advocated the independence of the colonies, and he was the first American to proclaim that thought. The first American Congress met in Philadelphia on the 7th of October, 1774. Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, was elected President of that body. On the 20th of May, 1775, the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg county, N. C., absolved all allegiance to the crown of Great Britain, and set up a government of its own. On the 12th of April, 1776, the Provincial Congress of North Carolina took the lead of all the States in passing resolutions of independence. On the 7th of June that year, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, moved: "These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States." It was upon this motion in the Continental Congress that the separation from Great Britain took place. It was a Virginian who wrote the Declaration of Independence. It was a Virginian who led the rebel armies to victory and to freedom. It was a Southerner, Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, whose draft of the Constitution was mainly adopted.

Thus, independence was declared upon the motion of one Southerner; its principles were set forth in the declaration written by another Southerner. A third led the armies of the rebel colonies to victory, while a fourth framed the Constitution, which, though denounced at one time by the South-haters as "a covenant with death and a league with hell," has lived for a hundred years, and is likely to live for many hundreds more.

You of this newly-discovered region need not be ashamed of your ancestors and blush that they lived in the Old Bourbon South. That Bourbon régime lasted for eighty years, the grandest and noblest of American history. Eleven of seventeen Presidents were of Southern birth. Fifty-seven of the eighty were spent under the administration of Southern-born Presidents. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson, each served eight years, in all forty years--just one-half the life of the nation. Of the six Northern Presidents, John Quincy Adams was elected by the House of Representatives and not by the people and contrary to the wishes of the people. Nor was Mr. Fillmore elected to the Presidency, but on the death of General Taylor succeeded to the office and served out the unexpired term. So during the existence of the Old South, John Adams, Van Buren, Pierce, and Buchanan were the only Northern Presidents elected by the people. A remarkable thing is, that all the Southern Presidents were re-elected by the people except Mr. Polk, and he did not seek a renomination. This fact speaks volumes for the capacity of Southern men for the administration of affairs. Another curious fact is that every Northern President had associated with him as Vice-President a man from the Old South. Thus, the first Adams had Jefferson, the second Adams had Calhoun, Van Buren had R. M. Johnson, Pierce had W. R. King, and Buchanan had Breckinridge. On the other hand Jackson served one term as President with a Southern man, Calhoun, as Vice-President; Harrison and his associate were both born in Virginia; Lincoln and Johnson were both born in the South.

This period of eighty years has been called by the North: "The Era of the Domination of the Slave-power." Without raising an objection to the discourteous phraseology, I would simply say that it is an admission that the South had marvelous success in its desire for political supremacy--one of the two objects of its ambition. Before passing to our second question: "Did the Old South produce brave and successful warriors?" I will allude to a few characteristic incidents, which do not bear materially upon either of the two questions under consideration.

"In the year 1765, on the passage of the Stamp Act, Colonel John Ashe, Speaker of the House of Commons of North Carolina, informed Governor Tryon that the law would be resisted to every extent. On the arrival of the British sloop-of-war _Diligence_ in the Cape Fear river he and Colonel Waddell, at the head of a body of the citizens of New Hanover and Brunswick counties marched down together, and frightened the captain of the sloop so that he did not attempt to land the stamped paper. Then they seized the boat of the sloop, and carried it with flags flying to Wilmington, and the whole town was illuminated that night. On the next day they marched to the Governor's house and demanded that Tryon should desist from all attempts to execute the Stamp Act, and forced him to deliver up Houston, the stampmaster for North Carolina. Having seized upon him, they carried him to the market-house, and there made him take an oath never to attempt to execute the duties of his office as stampmaster.

"It was nearly ten years after that the Boston tea-party assembled, when a number of citizens, disguised as Indians, went on board a ship and threw overboard the tea imported in her. This was done in the night by men in disguise, and was directed against a defenseless ship. But the North Carolina movement, ten years earlier in point of time, occurred in open day, and was made against the Governor himself, ensconced in his palace, and by men who scorned disguise."--_Senator T. L. Clingman._

Every schoolboy knows of the Boston tea-party of 1773; how many of my intelligent audience know of the Wilmington party of 1765? Yea, verily, the Old South has sorely needed historians of its own.

Virginia gave seven Presidents and many illustrious statesmen and warriors to the nation. She gave Patrick Henry, the war-trumpet of the Revolution, Washington, its sword, and Jefferson, its mouth-piece. When independence and white-winged peace came to the colonies, she gave to the Union that vast Northwest Territory, out of which have been carved the great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. [New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut also ceded their claim to this territory.]

Oh, but generosity does not pay. Possibly the "mother of States and statesmen" thought so when the soldiers of these five great States swarmed over her soil, and grand old Virginia became District No. 1.

I'll now take up the second question: "Did the Old South furnish brave soldiers?" The commander-in-chief in the rebellion against Great Britain was the Southern-born Washington, of whom Byron lamented that the earth had no more seed to produce another like unto him, and of whom Wellington said "He was the grandest, the sublimest, and yet withal the plainest and simplest character in the world's history." That the Old South did its duty in this war, I will try to show, notwithstanding imperfect records and deceptive pension rolls. The Old South went nobly to the assistance of their Northern brethren, who were first attacked, and nearly all the battle-fields of the North were drenched with Southern blood. In the retreat from Long Island, Smallwood's Maryland regiment distinguished itself above all the continental troops, losing two hundred and fifty-nine in killed and wounded. The Virginians made up a large portion of the army of Washington at Trenton and Princeton, where the wails of despair of the American people were changed into shouts of victory. Two future Presidents of the United States of Southern birth were in those battles, one of whom was wounded. The only general officer there slain was in command of Virginia troops. Southern blood flowed freely at Brandywine and Germantown, and in the latter battle a North Carolina general was slain, whose troops suffered greatly. It was General George Rogers Clark, of Virginia, who, with a Virginia brigade, chastised the Indians that committed the massacre in the valley of Wyoming. He made a Stonewall Jackson march to the rear, penetrated to the upper Mississippi, captured the Governor of Detroit, and took large booty in his raid. At Monmouth and Saratoga, Southern blood was commingled with the Northern in the battles of freedom. In the battle of Saratoga, Morgan's Virginia Riflemen greatly distinguished themselves and slew General Fraser, the inspiring spirit of the British army. The guerilla troops, under Sumter, Marion, Moultrie, Pickens, Clarke, and others, drove the British, step by step, back to Charleston, where they were cooped up till the end came.

It is my deliberate opinion that no battles of the Revolution will compare in brilliancy with the defense of Moultrie, the defeat of Ferguson at King's Mountain, and the defeat of Tarleton at Cowpens, all fought by Southern troops on Southern soil. In the last fight the victory was won when almost lost by the cavalry charge of William Washington, and the free use of the bayonet by that peerless soldier, your own John Eager Howard. The old "tar-heel" State, on the 16th of May, 1771, in the Battle of Alamance, poured out the first blood of the Revolution in resistance to British tyranny. The battle of Guilford Court House, fought on her soil solely by Southern troops, gave Cornwallis his first check in his career of victory, and led eventually to his capture. The first victory of the Revolution was won at Moore's Creek Bridge, in North Carolina, by Caswell and Lillington, in which one thousand Scotch loyalists were captured. Who knows of that battle? Oh, modest tar-heel State, in the slang of the newly-discovered country, "modesty does not pay!" Nevertheless, true courage and true modesty walk hand in hand. One word as to the misleading rolls of the Revolution. I was born in the Scotch-Irish settlement of Carolina, which furnished troops to Sumter, Pickens, Davie, Davidson, Shelby, and others. These men were never regularly enrolled; they gathered together for battle, and went back to their plows when the fight was over. There were no Tories in that regiment; it was thoroughly Whig. But I never heard of more than one pensioner in all that country. These men scorned the bounty of the Government for simply doing their duty. No official records ever bore the names of those gallant partisans, whose daring deeds are known only to the Omniscient. There were no horn-blowers and quill-drivers among them.

If we come to the war of 1812, all will concede that Jackson, of North Carolina, and Harrison, of Virginia, gained the most laurels, as shown by the elevation of both of them to the Presidency. All, too, readily concede that the brilliant land fights of that war were in defense of New Orleans, Mobile, Craney Island, and Baltimore, all fought by Southern troops on Southern soil.

Although the war was waged in the interest of the maritime rights of the North, it soon became unpopular in New England, because it seriously damaged trade and commerce. The Hartford Convention shows how deep was the defection in that region. The doctrine of secession was taught there half a century before the South took it up.[2] Hence, in this war, the Old South furnished more than her proportion of troops. Southern troops flocked North, and in the battles in Canada a large number of general officers were from the Old South; Harrison, Scott, Wilkinson, Izard, Winder, Hampton, Gaines, Towson, Brooke, Drayton, and others. Kentucky sent more men for the invasion of Canada than did any other State.

[2] In Barnes' _History of the United States_ the author tells us (page 167) of the ravaging of the Southern coast in the war of 1812 by the noted Admiral Cockburn. He says: "Along the Virginia and Carolina coast, he (Cockburn) burned bridges, farm-houses, and villages; robbed the inhabitants of their crops, stock, and slaves; plundered churches of their communion services and murdered the sick in their beds." And then the author explains why the Southern coast was devastated and the New England coast was not disturbed. This explanation is in a foot-note, which reads as follows: "New England was spared because of a belief that the Northern States were unfriendly to the war and would yet return to their allegiance to Great Britain."

This is the statement of a Northern writer, and not the fabrication of an enemy. How did the belief start among the British people that New England wished to return to its allegiance to the "mother country?"

All honor to the United States sailors of the North who had no sympathy with the Hartford Convention, and nobly did their duty--Perry, Bainbridge, Stewart, Lawrence, Porter, Preble, and others. The "Don't give up the ship" of the dying Lawrence is a precious legacy to the whole American people.

But the unmaritime South claims among the naval heroes of that period Decatur, of Maryland; Macdonough, of Delaware; Jacob Jones, of same State; the two Shubricks of South Carolina; Jesse D. Elliott, of Maryland; Blakely, of North Carolina, and others. A very large proportion of the naval heroes of the war of 1812 came from Maryland.