CHAPTER XXI.

NORTH AND SOUTH.—ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF GOVERNMENT.

Although the progenitors of our so-called slaves were mainly imported at Northern ports, and all of the Northern and Middle States have had, at times, considerable negro populations, the process of transition southward has been so rapid that the Northern communities, or the people of the Northern States, have been but little impressed by them or influenced in their ideas and mental habits by the presence of this widely different and subordinate element of our general population. But when they became a fixed population, when Virginia, especially, had acquired what, by comparison, may be called a large negro element, then the actual presence of these negroes called into existence new ideas, and gave development to new modes of thought or mental habitudes. All our ideas and mental habits are, in a sense, accidental, the result of circumstances, just as language, which is the outward expression of our ideas, becomes changed by time and circumstances. The English of the tenth century were widely different, of course, in their ideas and mental habits from the English of the fourteenth century, under the rule of the Normans; and this difference was widely varied from anything that mere time or ordinary circumstances could have produced.

And the different mental habits of the people of America generally, when contrasted with those of Europe, show sufficiently that all our ideas are accidental, the result of local circumstances, though, of course, all are in subordination to those fixed and fundamental laws of mind that are specific with the race. The presence, therefore, of the negro—of a widely different and subordinate element of the population of Virginia, and other States, when it became stationary and had to be provided for by the local legislatures, its specific wants as well as those of the citizenship looked after, and its social adaptations rendered harmonious with the welfare of the former—naturally developed new ideas of government and new modes of thought in the dominant and governing race. Except, possibly, some of the Spanish colonies south of us, there was no portion of the New World where so many of those who could claim connection with European aristocracy originally settled as in the province of Virginia.

In the earlier days of Massachusetts a great number of the most respectable of the middle classes of English society, and some few instances of the old hereditary nobility, found new homes in the colony, but in the latter case they had abandoned the old Norman traditions, and to enjoy their religion and “freedom of conscience,” identified themselves with Puritanism. In the Dutch province of New York, there was, perhaps, a somewhat larger infusion of the aristocratic element, but as Holland itself was essentially republican, and the Dutch really the originators of modern liberty in Europe, and, moreover, had a very limited landed aristocracy compared with England, France, etc., but few persons identified by tradition and association with the hereditary aristocracy of the Old World found their way into the Dutch settlements of the New.

But Virginia was originally settled—to a very large extent—by the offspring of the old Norman chivalry, by the cavaliers—the descendants of the proudest, most warlike, most chivalrous, heroic, and enterprising, and, at the same time, most tyrannical and oppressive aristocracy the world has ever seen. Those who belong to the race—the same species—of course will, under the same circumstances, manifest the same qualities, and therefore, if at any time the child of the princely Plantagenet or lordly Warwick had been exchanged in its cradle with the “base” progeny of some Saxon churl, who fed and kenneled with their hounds, the latter would have grown up with all the pride and chivalry, and princely bravery common to the former. Nevertheless, a class, an aristocracy, a privileged order, forms sentiments, ideas, etc., and transmits its traditions, rules, etc., to its descendants, that may, for centuries perhaps, preserve their integrity. Even in our social every-day life, and changing society, we often see families transmitting their family usages, habitudes, modes of thought as well as action, for several generations, and with only slight departures from the family model left by some original or venerated ancestor. Aristocracies, however, usually destroy themselves by the very means they resort to to preserve their ascendency over the great body of the people. In order to preserve the respect, the awe, the continued belief of the vulgar mass in their seeming superiority, they must avoid the populace and intermarry with their order, and the more completely this is done, the more they become a close corporation as it were, and violate the laws of consanguinity, the more rapidly they are deteriorated and fall below the general average of the people. The Northmen, the robust and enterprising fishermen of the Baltic, the fillibusters and pirates of the Northern Seas, invaded France and conquered Normandy, and Rolla and his roving horde of followers threatened to overrun Paris, and indeed the whole kingdom. They finally settled down in Normandy, from which, at a later date, they emerged into Italy, conquered Naples, the island of Sicily, and for a long time threatened an invasion of the Oriental World, which could hardly have resisted such an indomitable race of men. A Duke—a bastard Duke of Normandy, at that time laid claim to the crown of England, and with forty thousand followers landed in that country, and in a single battle so completely demolished the “Anglo-Saxons” and Anglo-Saxonism, so much boasted of in these days, that the former have remained slaves ever since, and the latter was so utterly annihilated that it disappeared for ever on that fatal day at Hastings. Then, for the first time, the Normans assumed the distinct form of an aristocracy or privileged order.

Though they had long since cast off the rude habits and uncouth manners of adventurers and conquerors, and when they invaded England were, perhaps, as intelligent and refined as any similar number of European people, and a great deal more so than those they conquered in England, they had never assumed the form, enacted laws, or established rules and regulations as an aristocracy or governing class. From this time forth, however, the Norman aristocracy ruled England with an iron hand, and though the wars of the Roses, and the still more fatal conflict with the Puritans or middle class, exterminated or drove out the remains of the Norman blood, and there is little, if any, in England at this time, the country is still governed by the traditions, the habits, in short, the system established by the old Norman aristocracy. Most of the great families became extinct, while the younger sons and others of broken fortunes emigrated to Virginia, and with the establishment of the commonwealth, very many of the Norman ancestry abandoned England. So many and so strong were the remnants of the old Norman families in Virginia, that they refused to recognize the commonwealth, and actually set at defiance the formidable power and iron will of Cromwell.

But these remains of the old Norman aristocracy—that aristocracy which for several centuries governed England—that have left their impress, their habits, their laws of primogeniture, their feudalistic customs, so deeply engraven on the English mind, that the aristocracy of the day, though entirely modern, and with scarcely any family connection with it, are able to govern the masses, through these habitudes, as absolutely as the Normans once did by the sword and the strong hand of arbitrary power, these descendants of the old Norman race in Virginia have changed completely about, and though their ancestors were the main supporters of kingly despotism, they are the originators and champions of democracy in America.

In all the changes and mutations of human society, there is scarcely any parallel to this change of ideas in Virginia, or to this extraordinary transformation which has changed the descendants of the old Norman aristocracy into the firmest and most reliable defenders of democracy. Of course, the early colonists of Virginia were of all classes and conditions of English society; not a few of them, perhaps, were kidnapped young peasants, without friends or relatives to protect them or to punish the base wretches who carried them over the sea and sold them here, as elsewhere, in the American colonies. But it is undoubtedly true that a larger, vastly larger body of “gentlemen” emigrated to Virginia than to any other colony, and as these were all cadets, or younger branches of the great houses in England, nearly all of which were Norman in descent, and nearly all of which in the direct line afterward perished in the wars of the commonwealth, it would seem equally certain that if there be any Norman blood anywhere, it must now be found, or mainly found, in Virginia.

The cause of this transformation, this radical and extraordinary change of opinion, which has made the descendants of the proudest and most despotic aristocracy ever known the authors and main supporters of democracy, must be a potent one, and as far removed from the ordinary causes which, in the progress of time, modify men’s opinions and habits, as the results themselves are extraordinary and without parallel. As has been remarked, all our ideas and mental habits are the result of circumstances, the external influences that surround us, the changed conditions of our existence, which give origin to new thoughts and new modes of mental action. And when we take these things into view and contemplate the changed conditions, the new and altogether different circumstances that surrounded these Virginia descendants of the cavaliers and gentlemen of England, then the causes are obvious—the new ideas that sprung up in men’s minds, legitimate and consistent with the extraordinary and indeed unparalleled circumstances under which they lived. They were in juxtaposition with negroes, with an inferior race, with widely different and subordinate social elements, and new thoughts, new ideas, as well as altogether different habits, naturally and necessarily followed. They saw these negroes were different beings from themselves, not in color alone, or in other physical characteristics, but in their mental qualities, their affections, their wants, in short, in their _nature_ and the necessities of their social life, their welfare and happiness, and indeed the welfare of this subordinate element, demanded corresponding action, with, of course, corresponding ideas and modes of thought. They saw that this negro was not artificially or accidentally, but naturally different from themselves, that God himself had made him different and given him different faculties and different wants, and therefore designed him for different purposes, and that it was an imperative and unavoidable duty as well as necessity to adapt their social habits and legal and political institutions to this state or condition of fixed and unalterable _fact_. But this was not all, nor the limit to the new ideas that thus originated in the changed conditions under which they were living. Their traditions, the mental habits of their old cavalier ancestry, the ideas they carried from the mother country, taught them to regard the person of a king as something quite sacred, and to whom an absolute and unquestioning obedience was always due, while the class of gentlemen, the nobility, or aristocracy, that more immediately surrounded royalty was deemed to be altogether superior and different from the vulgar multitudes that made up the people. The celebrated formula of Archbishop Laud, that “passive obedience and non-resistance” was the absolute and universal duty of the people to the will of the king, expressed with brevity and accuracy the prevalent sentiment of the cavaliers, and they demanded from their special retainers the same unquestioning submission which they themselves accorded to royalty. The ignorance of the great mass of the people on one hand, and the actual power and tyranny of the nobles on the other, sunk so deep into the common mind of England and other European people during the middle ages, that though many generations have passed since, the sentiment of superiority in one class and of inferiority in the other, remains yet, and in England at this day is nearly as potent as ever.

But the descendants of the cavaliers in Virginia were placed face to face with _facts_ that utterly exploded those factitious sentiments that had their origin in a certain condition of society, and not in nature or in the natural relations of men. They were in juxtaposition with negroes, with different and subordinate beings, human, it is true, like themselves, but different human beings, just as pigeons, while birds equally with robins, are different _birds_, or as hounds, though _dogs_, were different dogs from spaniels or bull-dogs. This was a great, starting, fixed _fact_, that no amount or extent of sentiment, theory, or mental habit could explain away or modify, or avoid in any respect. They saw this fact daily staring them in the face; they were compelled to recognize it, to legislate for it, or for these people, to adapt their social customs to it, in short, to conform to it, and therefore were forced to cast aside their preconceived notions, the traditions and mental habits of their ancestors, all their ideas of loyalty to a creature like themselves and of their own class-superiority which they had brought from the Old World. What was their fancied superiority over their own humbler brethren, when contrasted with this _natural_ inferiority of the negro? What was the accident of education, of wealth, of refinement of manners, or any other factitious, temporary, or accidental thing worth, which separated them from their less fortunate neighbors, when compared with the handiwork of nature, with the fixed and impassable barriers that separated them both from negroes? What, in short, were the petty distinctions of human pride, vanity, and accident, in comparison with the ordinances of the Eternal?

Such were the facts that confronted them, such the external circumstances that developed new ideas and new modes of thought in the colonists of Virginia, such the potent _causes_ that changed the descendants of English cavaliers into the earliest, most consistent, and most reliable champions of democracy in America. The same causes, to a certain extent, influenced the inhabitants of other colonies, and it will be found that in precise proportion to the amount and the fixedness of this negro element in any locality, there were clear, corresponding views of liberty and equality among white men. Indeed, this is as true now as ever before, and almost invariably there are sound and rational views of liberty and of democratic institutions in precise proportion to the presence, or imperfect and unsound notions in proportion to the absence, of this negro element. Those States like Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, and Alabama, that have relatively the largest negro population, are the most decidedly and consistently democratic, while Massachusetts, Vermont, etc., with the fewest negroes among them, are the most unsound in these respects, and however intelligent in regard to other things, are certainly behind most of the great American communities in political knowledge.

South Carolina, and perhaps some others, may seem exceptions to this very general truth, but if so in reality, it is owing to peculiar causes, such as the education of many of its people abroad, in Europe, and at the North, etc., but even as regards that State, so exceptional in many respects, land is more equally divided than in any other State, and where such a fact obtains, the general tendency to equality in citizenship must be strikingly manifested.

The great revolutionary movement of 1776 gave full expression to the new modes of thought, the grand ideas, the glorious truths thus developed in the mind of Virginia, and relatively in the other colonies, where this _cause_, this negro element had anything like a stationary existence. It was no accident or chance that made Mr. Jefferson the author of the great idea, or rather the exponent of the idea embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the grand and immortal truth, that all white men are created equal, and therefore entitled to equal rights, or, as he expressed it, to “life, liberty, and happiness.” True, some other Virginian might have done this, and possibly some mind in the Middle Provinces, New Jersey, or New York, might have formed a tolerably clear conception of this great fixed and unchangeable truth that underlies the whole superstructure of our political society; but no man in the Northern Provinces could have risen to this mental elevation at that period in our history; indeed comparatively few are even now capable of it. Massachusetts and the neighboring colonies grasped the idea of independence with great clearness, and urged it with an earnestness, bravery, and indomitable perseverance certainly unsurpassed, if equalled elsewhere, but it was independence of a foreign dominion, and not independence of foreign ideas or of a hostile system. They were without negroes, without any natural substratum in the social elements, without any test or standard to determine men’s natural relations to each other, and clinging to the mental habits of their British ancestors, they were therefore incapable of forming those grand and truthful conceptions of equality which Mr. Jefferson, and Virginians generally, under the influences that have been stated, so clearly apprehended. The accidental and artificial distinctions of society—family influence, wealth, education, etc., were as in England, though, of course, not to the same extent—the standards, the tests, the landmarks of the political as well as the social order, and the phrase often used by New England writers of our own day, that “representation was inseparable from taxation,” fully expressed the mental habits and imperfect political conceptions of the Northern mind. In England, except the titled aristocracy, the House of Lords or Peerage, which pretends to rest on blood or birth (?), wealth alone gives rights. The _man_ is nowhere, no part or portion, or element even of the political system. In every county where he happens to have property, he has a vote, but if without property, he has no voice whatever, and, as observed, is not even an element of representation, as are the negroes of the South. Taxation and representation, therefore, are inseparable, so far as forms are concerned, in the British system, though, as a fact, it is the working classes, who are not represented at all, that must pay all the taxes in the end. The mental habits of the North, in 1776, were fashioned on this model; they saw only those accidental things that separate classes in England, as, wealth, education, etc., and though they had an earnest desire for liberty, this liberty was a vague, undefined, shadowy sentiment, rather than any precise idea resting on fact as in Virginia. The immediate want and common impulse of independence, however, impelled all parties to act harmoniously for its accomplishment, and though the grand truths presented by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence were far above the then intellectual standard of the North, it did not conflict with the mental habits of the Northern people sufficiently to interfere with the common object. But when that object was accomplished—when the foreign dominion was overthrown and the common independence secured, and a new political system was to be created, then a conflict of ideas was developed that was found to be so grave, that many good and patriotic men for some time feared it could not be compromised. The leading men of the North—the representative men—the men who desired independence from foreign domination, but with, at best, vague notions of liberty, or of a new political system—Hamilton, Adams, Morris, etc.—now came into serious conflict with the democratic ideas of Virginia. They desired a monarchy without a king, or a republic without the rule of the masses. The general notion was, the British model without its defects, or the British system without its corruptions, and so entirely were some wedded to this, that they declared it, with all its corruptions, the best government in the world.

The leaders very generally assumed, as they often expressed it, that society was _naturally_ divided into the few and the many—the educated minority, and the laboring majority—and as such was the actual social condition of the population as well as the mental habits of the leaders, it is not at all surprising that they sought to found a government on such a basis. The agricultural population of the Northern and Middle States were then very ignorant indeed, when compared with the present. Feudalism had not been long overthrown in England or Europe, and the serf transformed into the peasant, and though the American farmer of 1776 was a great advance over the latter, he still largely partook of that general apathy, stolidity, and ignorance which in all times, until now, in our own favored land, have distinguished the tillers of the soil. The large population at the North otherwise employed, the mechanics, artisans, shop-keepers, laborers, etc., were generally, as in the mother country, without representation in the provincial legislatures, and as the interests of the educated classes, the capitalists, merchants, lawyers, divines, etc., were supposed to be, and were in fact, in conflict with those of the former, they always desired strong governments to hold them in order. Indeed, the idea of mob ascendency, of anarchy, the wild rule of the rabble, was the constant terror of the Northern leaders, and in all the arguments of Hamilton, the Adamses, etc., this was put prominently forward. Their rhetorical formula was always the same—“the rule of the uneducated mass will degenerate into license and anarchy, from which the country can only be saved by the strong hand of some military chief, who, first a dictator, will finally don the purple, and the _rôle_ so often played in the Old World will be repeated in the New.” This notion and this reasoning was legitimate—the consistent result of the social condition as well as the offspring of the inherited traditions of the Northern mind. The capitalists, all those who inherited wealth, the “well-born” and educated class, in short, the few who had the power in their hands, naturally sought, to preserve it and to build up a strong government; which, while it specially benefited themselves, should always be able to “preserve order”—that is, while founded on existing social distinctions, was sufficiently strong to repress the efforts of the multitude to change the social condition. They had no negroes, no natural substratum in the social elements or natural distinctions of society. They had nothing before their eyes but the results of chance, of the accidents of life—nothing but wealth and education—nothing, in short, but the _débris_ of the old societies—those class distinctions which in the Old World constitute the basis of the political and social order, and their mental habits, their opinions, their notions of government and its uses, were, of course, in accord with these things, and their minds were incapable of rising above the existing condition, of over-leaping the barriers and escaping from the external circumstances that surrounded them. There were, doubtless, individual exceptions—some men who were deeply imbued with the grand idea promulgated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. There were many in the Middle States who had an imperfect but advancing conception of this glorious truth, and there was still a larger number, perhaps, who were groping in darkness with a vague but earnest desire to embrace it. But the dominant thought, the prevalent opinion, the general mental habit, was reflected by the representative men, the great Northern leaders, Hamilton, Adams, Otis, and their companions, who desired to found a government on the British model, which, though it should be a great improvement over the former, was to be based on the same foundation—for, to _their_ minds, their mental habits, there was no other, or, at all events, no other _safe_ basis for government. They were honest and patriotic men—men of gifted minds and large attainments—men sorely tried and tested by the hardships and sufferings of a seven years’ war, through which they walked with their lives in their hands, and the scaffold always frowning on them in the distance, and the purity of intentions, the unselfish and patriotic desires of such men, should never be questioned. They could not rise above the circumstances that surrounded them; they could not comprehend the grand idea of Mr. Jefferson; they saw before them only class distinctions, the rich and the poor, the educated few and the toiling many, and they desired to build the government on the _status quo_, and therefore demanded a strong government, that should always be able to restrain the multitude and keep them in subjection to their “rulers.”

On the contrary, as has been stated, Virginia had cast off the mental habits of the Old World, the offspring had long since outgrown the traditions of their ancestors; the descendants of English cavaliers had changed entirely about in their opinions, and the children of those who held to the doctrine of “passive obedience” and “non-resistance” declared that “resistance to tyrants was obedience to God.” The cause or the causes of this wonderful transformation of opinion, this radical change in mental habitudes, which has made the descendants of the supporters of royalty the originators and special champions of democracy in America, have been already considered.

The presence of the negro, the existence in their midst of a different race, was and is, and always must be, a test that shows us the insignificance and indeed nothingness of those artificial distinctions which elsewhere govern the world, and constitute the basis of the political as well as the social order.

The importance of education, of cultivation, the refinement of mind and manners, the possession of wealth, of family influence and social distinction, may all be duly appreciated, as all have their value or social consideration, but where there is a _natural_ substratum of society, where a different and subordinate race are in juxtaposition, where negroes exist in any considerable number and in natural relation to the whites, then it naturally follows that the great natural distinctions fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty become the dividing lines and the fixed landmarks of the social order.

This radical change in the mental habits of all brought face to face with the negro; this instinctive consciousness of their own natural equality that accompanied their perception of the negro’s inferiority; in short, this development of the democratic idea to which Mr. Jefferson gave such grand expression in the Declaration of Independence, was and is accompanied by corresponding uniformity or harmony of interests. Agriculture, labor, production, was and is the one great dominating interest of Virginia and of all other communities made up of these diverse social elements. It is impossible to divide the interests of “master” and “slave”—of the white man and negro—when placed in natural relation to each other. It is the utmost interest of the master to treat his “slave” kindly, to care for him in sickness, to feed him well, and not to overwork or abuse him, and it is the utmost interest of the latter to be faithful to the former. It is a sort of partnership, a species of socialism, when the brain of one being and the hands of fifty other beings labor for the common good, for the general welfare; and though possible exceptions are found where a brutal master beats and abuses his people, or a worthless “slave” runs off and hides in the swamp, both alike injure themselves, the master gets less work from his “slave,” and the “slave” brings upon himself a corresponding evil. The so-called “non-slaveholder,” if an agriculturist, has the same interest; he is also a producer, and can not separate his interests from the “slaveholder,” which, perhaps, he was himself yesterday, and may be again to-morrow. If he be a mechanic, a lawyer, physician, or merchant, then, though not identified as a producer with the “slaveholder” or “non-slaveholder,” and in a sense may be said to have different interests, these interests do not and can not conflict with the former, unless, as in the Northern States, government is called on to “protect labor.” But as government is confined to its legitimate sphere in Virginia and most other Southern States, and protects all, without favors to any, there is then no conflict of interests, even when some are engaged in widely different pursuits from the one great common interest of production. There is, therefore, universal harmony in Southern society; the interests of master and “slave” are entirely indivisible, while those of the “non-slaveholder,” if engaged in production, are similar, and as to all others, when they do not involve the government, though the pursuits or interests be widely different, there can be no social conflict.

The ideas of Jefferson, Madison, and their cotemporaries were naturally formed by these circumstances, and after the revolutionary contest was over and a common government was to be created, they naturally proposed a system in harmony with the condition they represented. The North, as has been said, with no social substratum or natural distinctions, desired a government based on artificial distinctions, those separating classes, the same substantially as in England, though, of course, dispensing with a titled class, a king, and laws of primogeniture. It is true all the States had a few negroes, and they were all in their normal condition of so-called slavery, but their numbers were so inconsiderable that they did not influence society or modify the mental habits of the Northern people. All over, and especially in the New England States, the same ideas were reflected by the representative men; they wanted a government based on the _status quo_, on wealth, that should keep power in the hands of the few who then exercised it, and with sufficient force to hold the multitude in subjection. They proposed an executive for life, who should also appoint the governors of the States, that senators should serve ten years, and various other projects of similar character—all ending in or embodying the same common idea, that is, a government for the few at the expense of the many.

The Southern men, on the contrary, proposed a government embodying _their_ idea—the idea of democracy, and that should reflect the advanced opinion and living spirit of their own society, rather than a thing based on the model of Britishism, and involving substantially the principles of the old European order. While they duly appreciated education, cultivation, and other accidental social distinctions, those whose ideas were advanced by juxtaposition with negroes, or with this natural line of demarcation, would not listen to the creation of a central government that tended in any respect to place power in the hands of a class, or that enabled the few, however indirectly it might be, to govern the many. The contest, both in the convention and before the people, assumed the form of a contest for a strong or a weak government—a government that should be supreme, like the British Parliament, or a government of delegated powers, which, while carefully defined, should be extremely limited in its functions or scope of action. But back of all this were the fundamental ideas—the British and the American—the spirit of the old societies and the spirit of the new order—of British oligarchy and of American democracy.

Massachusetts and Virginia were respectively the head-quarters and embodiments of this conflict, this struggling of ideas, these tendencies to return to the past or to advance into the future, and it is as remarkable, perhaps, to find the former arrayed on the side of power and privilege, as that the descendants of the cavaliers should now be the champions of democracy, and the advocates of the broadest liberty. But, as has been observed, our ideas are the results of accident, our opinions originate in the circumstances that surround us, and therefore while the mental habits of the North were only slightly modified from those of the mother country, those of the South, under wholly different conditions—conditions, in fact, utterly unknown to the English mind—were radically different.

The Northern masses, as has been remarked, were then ignorant and helpless, and the agricultural class, though advanced considerably beyond the same class in England, as the tillers of the soil had then barely escaped from the old feudal slavery or serfdom, were utterly powerless and without defenders in the great civil contest that succeeded the revolution. As against the advocates of strong government—those who represented the governing class—they could make no resistance whatever, except a physical and revolutionary one. The right of suffrage was very limited, and, indeed, as in England at this time, property and not population was the basis of representation, and therefore the vast majority had no voice nor representation whatever. Under such circumstances, it is obvious and beyond question that if a similar state of things had existed at the South, a government would have been formed on the British model—a republic, doubtless, but a bastard one—with powers so extensive and absolute that, as we now witness in Europe, nothing but revolution and physical force could ever enable the masses to overthrow it or to regain their natural liberty.

But the planters of the South, unlike the farmers of the North, were an educated class, and fully competent to compete with the great leaders of the Northern oligarchy. Their ideas were widely advanced beyond those of the Northern farmer, but their _interests_ were identical—those of agriculture, of production, of labor, of democracy, of manhood against privilege, and therefore they naturally fought the battle against strong government and class distinctions. The government actually adopted was, with the exception of a life tenure in its judicial department, substantially that which was originally advised by the leading minds of the South, and which, instead of being supreme and absolute over the States, as desired by the Northern leaders, was, with certain well-defined exceptions, as utterly powerless and indeed disconnected with the States as the government of England, or any other foreign power. And perhaps no higher or more patriotic example can be found in all history than that of the graceful assent and acceptance of the Northern leaders, when they consented to adopt the present system. As has been said, it was no selfish or base spirit that prompted their desire for a strong government. They saw that the great body of the people were ignorant; all history and all experience warranted them, as they believed, in retaining power in the hands of the few who then possessed it—in a word, they could not rise above the circumstances that surrounded them, or act otherwise than in conformity with their mental habits. But when fairly beaten in the convention and the great forum of popular discussion—for when the ideas of Jefferson and other Southern leaders were brought before the Northern masses, thousands of earnest and enthusiastic apostles of these new and glorious truths sprung up in every direction—then Hamilton and his associates generously assented to the adoption of the present system, and became its warmest advocates. They in no respect changed their views of government, but they became convinced that these views were then impracticable, and however unquestioned their ascendency at the North, that the Southern States would never consent to any union on such basis, and as a federal union on almost any terms was essential to the maritime States, they had the magnanimity to accede to the Southern or democratic view embodied in the present government, and to become, as has been said, the warmest advocates for its adoption before the people. But if this patriotic and high-minded course of Hamilton and the great leaders of Northern opinion, which thus, it may be said, secured to the country and to the world the noblest government ever known in human annals, is worthy of the esteem and admiration of posterity, what a stupendous and boundless benefit Jefferson, Madison, George Mason, and their associates, who not alone assented to, but who originated this government, have conferred upon posterity, and indeed the race itself!

For the first time in human history the grand idea of equality, of an equal freedom or of equal rights, was declared to be the sole foundation of government, and made the vital principle of the political order, the starting-point of a new and more glorious civilization than was ever before dreamed of in the annals of mankind. Christ had promulgated the Divine command, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or recognize in all other men the same rights that you claim for yourselves; but however faithful some may have been to this command in a religious sense, all the “Christian” governments that have ever existed, or that exist now, are in utter conflict with it, and therefore the government created in 1776, which embodied this glorious truth and clothed it with the flesh and blood and body and bones of material power, is unquestionably the most important worldly event that has ever happened in human affairs. The revolt against England, its success, the subsequent independence, the creation of a new government, the beginning of an independent national existence, might all occur without any radical change of principles or any revolution of ideas, as indeed it is certain would have been the case if the views of Hamilton and other Northern leaders had been embodied in the new government. But the grand idea of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards embodied in the federal government, was the starting-point of a revolution the greatest, most beneficent, most radical, and most important, that has ever happened in the history of the race—a revolution, moreover, that has gone on ever since, and must continue until all the governments of the Old World are overthrown, and society reorganized on the basis of the great, indestructible, and immortal truth that underlies our own—that fixed, natural, and unchangeable equality which God has stamped forever on the organism of the race. If, therefore, we compare the services of Jefferson, Madison, and their associates with those of other men in other times or other lands, it will be seen that they rise to a dignity and importance immeasurably greater than even the most elevated and most glorious among the benefactors of mankind. How paltry, in comparison, the Barons of Runymede, who overthrew a tyrant king that had oppressed their order! How mean and selfish Brutus and his follow-conspirators, when slaying the man they envied as well as feared! How insignificant even Hampden and the great leaders of revolution in England, who fought to defend themselves from the increasing oppression of a ruling class, when compared with Jefferson and his associates, who proclaimed an idea and organized a basis for the freedom of the race—for the equal rights of all whom God had made equal!

But great, and, when compared with what others may have done, immense as may be the benefits conferred by Jefferson and his associates on mankind, they only did their duty, and honestly represented the ideas and desires of their constituencies. Or, in other words, they merely expressed the opinions and reflected the mental habits that had their origin in the social condition, and followed as a necessary consequence of juxtaposition with negroes. If there had been no negroes in Virginia—no widely different race with its different capacities and different wants to provide for, in short, if there had been no natural distinctions, then those accidental and artificial things—wealth, education, family pride, etc.—which separate classes would have remained as elsewhere, the basis of political as well as social order. The descendants of English cavaliers, with their traditions and mental habits, would, perhaps, be somewhat liberalized, for their condition was widely changed from that of their ancestors, but without negroes, without the presence of natural distinctions, without those lines of demarcation fixed forever by the hand of God for society to repose upon, they would have remained the most aristocratic community in America. Neither Thomas Jefferson, nor any of the great controlling minds of the day, would have been heard of; or, at all events, would not have figured in that grand _rôle_ where history has always placed them—the authors of a new idea and the founders of a new political system.

They _might_ have had, as Sir Thomas Moore and Algernon Sidney, and, indeed, men of all ages have had, feeble glimmerings of the great truth promulgated in 1776. All who belong to the race or species are created equal; and this great, fixed, and eternal fact, embedded in the physical and mental organism of the race, has always been dimly perceived, but without juxtaposition with a different race, without the actual presence of the negro, without the constant daily perception of those natural distinctions that separate races, in contrast with the artificial distinctions of classes of their own race, neither Jefferson nor any one else could have risen to the level of the grand truth embodied in the Declaration of Independence. They _might_ have been distinguished actors in the great drama of independence, but that, as an historical event, would not have differed from a score of similar events where one people or portion of a people have separated and set up an independent government. The overthrow of the Moorish dominion in Spain—of the rule of the Spaniards in Holland—and the recent independence of Belgium, are parallel events, and many others might be named where foreign dominion has been overthrown and new governments set up without resulting in any change or progress of ideas, or without working out any fundamental revolution in human affairs. And if Jefferson, Madison, and their associates had had the same mental habits as Hamilton, Adams, and others of the North, it is obvious that independence would not have been accompanied by a revolution in ideas. As has been said, a more liberal system than that of the mother country would have been established, but a new system, a radical and fundamental change in the political order—a new starting-point in the progress of the race—a government founded on the universal equality of the citizenship as actually established, it is obvious would have been impossible. And as the public men of a country can never rise above the level of the average opinion or the ordinary mental habits of the people, it is equally obvious that Jefferson and his associates would never have done so, and therefore, if there had not been a condition of things that gave origin to new ideas and new habits of thought in the people of Virginia and elsewhere where these widely different social elements were in juxtaposition, then it is equally obvious that the world would never have heard of them in 1776, and whatever time and circumstances might have brought about in the future, no _revolution_ at that time would have been possible.

In conclusion, therefore, that is repeated in direct terms which has been rather inferred than directly stated. The presence of the _negro on this continent, our juxtaposition with a widely different and inferior race, and the existence of natural distinctions or natural lines of demarcation in human society, originating of necessity new ideas and modes of thought, has been the happiest conjunction that has ever occurred in human affairs, and has led directly to the establishment of a new system and a new civilization based on foundations of everlasting truth—the legal and political equality of the race, or of all those whom the Almighty Creator has Himself made equal_.