Chapter 72

Aggressiveness of Slavery--The Cotton States and Border States--The Fugitive Slave Law--Nullified in the North--Negroes Imported from Africa--The Struggle in Kansas--John Brown--Abraham Lincoln Pleads for Human Rights--Treason in Buchanan's Cabinet--Citizens Stop Guns at Pittsburg--Conditions at the Beginning of the Struggle--Southern Advantages--The Soldiers of Both Armies Compared--Conscription in the Confederacy--Southern Resources Limited--The North at a Disadvantage at First, but Its Resources Inexhaustible--Conscription in the North-- Popular Support of the War--Unfriendliness of Great Britain and France--Why They Did Not Interfere.

Slavery could not stand still. The Cotton States, so-called, which suffered least from the escape of slaves were the most aggressive in demanding a Fugitive Slave Law, while the Border States, where escapes were frequent, were not nearly as aggressive as their Southern neighbors. Attachment to slavery in the Cotton States had become a passion, springing from self-interest, but stronger than self-interest; while in the Border States the slaveholders were affected by propinquity to free communities, and the calculations of self-interest were softened by their surroundings; which shows, like many another chapter in history, that in the mighty impulses which guide the destinies of nations, the heart is above the head. The advocates of slavery felt insecure because they knew that even if legally right they were divinely and humanly wrong. They were not satisfied to have the Free States acquiescent and even submissive; they were determined, in their fever of unrest, to drive freedom to the wall, and to make the people of the North slave-catchers, if they would not consent to be slave-owners.

The South had the Constitution on its side, and the Fugitive Slave Law could be met only by obedience or nullification. The Northern people simply decided to nullify the law. They did not meet in State conventions--like South Carolina in 1832--and declare the law void and of no effect. They were too sensible for that; but they would not obey the law. It was nullified in various ways. In Rhode Island, for instance, it was made a crime for an officer of the State to arrest a fugitive slave; in Ohio the ordinary statute against kidnappers was used to punish Federal officers and others attempting to carry slaves back into bondage, and in New York and other States mob law interfered to rescue and liberate the victims. The Fugitive Slave Law roused the spirit of freedom, and Northern defiance of the law inflamed the slaveholders. The Kansas-Nebraska bill, menacing the free States with a slave barrier West as well as South, and stretching to the Pacific as well as the Gulf, made civil war almost inevitable. Compromise became cowardice, and everyone who was not for freedom was against it. The Supreme Court of the United States supported the contentions of the slaveholders, but in vain for their cause. That higher tribunal--the conscience of a free and intelligent people--arraigned slavery as a crime against God and man, the Constitution and the Supreme Court to the contrary notwithstanding. When Chief Justice Taney held that Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri, but a thing, and could be carried by his master from one State to another, like a dog or a watch, and still be a slave, the Chief Justice only immortalized his own infamy; he did not immortalize slavery. Still greater was the shock when in defiance of the Constitution and the laws the foreign slave trade was resumed, and negroes imported from Africa to the South. It is only just to state that, according to recently published narratives of these slave importations, with details that could not have been related at the time with safety for the parties concerned, the Federal authorities in the South seem to have made a sincere effort to bring the slave-traders to justice, and the planters apparently did not welcome the traffic.

The pioneers of the great struggle to come met on the plains of Kansas and several years of fierce border strife ended in victory for freedom. John Brown, whom the world calls a fanatic, perished on the scaffold at Harper's Ferry in a vain attempt to liberate the slaves, and while editors vacillated and quibbled, and fawning time servers applauded, Thoreau, from his hermitage in the New England woods, paid eloquent tribute to the man who dared to die for the truth. Away in the West a figure was looming up, a gaunt, homely figure, born in and nurtured in hardship, but endowed as no other man of his age was endowed, with the ability to guide his country through the awful ordeal to come. He perceived the right, and he boldly declared it. "If it is decreed that I should go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to the truth--let me die in the advocacy of what is just and right," said Abraham Lincoln to the friends who disapproved his celebrated declaration that the government could not endure half slave, half free. "In the right to eat the bread without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he (the negro) is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man"--was another sterling utterance which struck home to the North.

While Lincoln was pleading the cause of human rights, and asserting that the Declaration of Independence was meant for black as well as white, members of President Buchanan's cabinet, holding in their grasp the reins of National Government, were plotting the nation's overthrow. Even down to the very moment that John B. Floyd left the War Office, and when South Carolina was already in rebellion, this plotting was continued. As late as the beginning of January, 1861, an attempt was made under an order from Floyd to remove one hundred and fifty cannon from the Allegheny Arsenal, at Pittsburg, to the South, to be used against the Union. "Our people are a unit that not a gun shall be shipped South," said the _Dispatch_ of that city, and without violence, without the shedding of a drop of blood or the drawing of a weapon against national authority, the citizens obtained the reversal of the order, and the guns, some of which were already under convoy to the wharf, were returned to the arsenal. The "Rebellion Records," published by the government, should not begin with 1861. They should go back to the time when the plot originated to strip the national arsenals for the benefit of the nation's enemies, to disarm the Union that it might fall a prey to secession. This was the treason which should never be forgotten. The men who fought bravely and openly in the field for the Confederate cause can be respected for their sincerity and honored for their valor; but not so with the men who before the war violated their trust as guardians and armor bearers of the Union to betray the nation to its conspiring foes.

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The conditions at the beginning of the war were much more favorable to the South than a mere comparison of population would indicate. The loyal States had a population of 23,000,000; the seceded States 8,000,000, of whom about one-half were slaves. These slaves counted, however, for about as much effective strength as if they had been whites, for the soil had to be cultivated, the armies fed, fortifications built and other necessary services performed, and the negroes, while all who were bright enough to understand the situation wished for the success of the Union, worked for their masters faithfully, as a rule, until the approach of the national armies gave an opportunity to escape. Besides, the negroes in attendance on the Confederate troops performed many duties to which on the Northern side soldiers were assigned, and in this way the blacks were useful in even a strictly military sense. In short, the negroes did everything for the Confederacy but fight for it, and this, too, although they loved the blue uniform, and gave loyal assistance to the Union troops whenever occasion offered. The Southern forces, it should also be remembered, were on their own ground. They knew every thicket and road and stream; they had the sympathy of the white, as well as the service of the black inhabitants. They were led by a brilliant group of commanders whom Jefferson Davis, when Secretary of War, had brought together probably with this object in view, and they were thoroughly armed and equipped at the expense of the very government against which they were contending. It is needless to say that no better soldiers ever bore rifle or sabre than the men of the Southern Confederacy. They were, like most of their northern antagonists, Americans of the same blood as those who carried the redoubts at Yorktown and stormed the hill of Chapultepec, and their courage in the Civil War fully maintained the prestige gained in battle against alien foes. In intelligence, or at least in education, however, the rank and file of the Confederate armies were inferior to the native Americans in the Union armies. The Confederate troops captured at Vicksburg were no doubt equal to the average, and of the 27,000 men then made prisoners and paroled two-thirds made their marks, not being able to write their names. This is not so surprising when it is remembered that there was no common school system in the South before the war, and that the "twenty-negro law," exempting the owner of twenty negroes from conscription, excused from military service the class which had an opportunity to be educated, and which also had most at stake in the contest.

Before the close of the war, however, all exemptions in the Confederacy were virtually swept away, and the government enlisted every one able to bear a musket, from the boy hardly in his teens to the old man tottering to the grave. Those not able to go to the front did duty in the rear, and the whole male population, excepting cripples and children, was in the ranks, or the civil service. If any escaped the net of conscription they were likely to be caught in the round-up made every now and then after the fashion of the old English press-gang, when all who happened to be in sight were gathered in, and sent to the army, unless they clearly proved a title to freedom. In one of these round-ups, says Jones, in his "Diary of a Rebel War Clerk"--the Postmaster-General of the Confederacy, John H. Reagan, was carried along with the rest, and detained for some time before released. Thus the prophecy of Houston was strikingly fulfilled. Of course, the refugees and deserters, of whom there were a very large number in the swamps and woods of the South, are excepted from the statement that the whole population was in arms for the Confederate cause.

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In the beginning of the war the North was at a disadvantage. Mr. Lincoln found the little army of the United States scattered and disorganized, the navy sent to distant quarters of the globe, the treasury bankrupt and the public service demoralized. Floyd and his fellow-conspirators had done their work thoroughly. It did not take long for the people of the North to rally to the defence of the government, and for an army to be formed capable not only of defending the loyal States, but of striking a blow at the Confederacy. With the National credit restored, an abundance of currency provided for national needs, and the public departments cleared of Southern sympathizers, the North entered upon a conflict which could have but one ending should the North remain steadfast.

The weakness of the South, from a military standpoint, was in the fact that men lost could not be replaced. The North could replenish its depleted armies; the South could not. With men therefore of the same race and equal in soldierly qualities arrayed against each other, one side within measurable distance of exhaustion and the other with inexhaustible human resources to draw upon, the war became an easy sum in arithmetic, provided the stronger party should not cry "enough" before the weaker had reached the exhaustion point. The battles on comparatively equal terms were fought, therefore, in the early part of the war, the decisive battles in 1863, and the closing struggle between the gasping Confederacy and the Union stronger than ever, in the last fifteen months of the conflict.

In the North, notwithstanding the immense armies put in the field, there never was a time except in brief periods of riot and disorder, when the usual bustle of humanity was absent from the cities and towns. Commerce and industry went on with accustomed activity. While Southern cities looked like garrisoned graveyards the North had never worn a busier or more prosperous appearance. With such a large population there should have been no reason for conscription, but when conscription was deemed requisite, there ought to have been no exemption on the ground of wealth. Every able-bodied drafted man ought to have been obliged to serve, without the privilege of a substitute, and no money payment should have secured release from service. The obligation to defend the country rests upon all, but if there is any distinction, the rich man has more interest in protecting the government which shields him and his possessions from danger than the poor man. European nations make no exemption on account of wealth or position, and the American Republic certainly should not have given such an example.

The people of the North, however, with comparatively few but very troublesome exceptions, gave earnest and enthusiastic support to the National Government. Committees were formed everywhere to aid the armies in the field, to provide for the wounded and the sick and to assist the families of absent soldiers. In the darkest days of the struggle the people never lost faith in the ultimate triumph of the Union. While statesmen and editors professing to be superior to their fellows in knowledge and foresight saw only the gloomy side and predicted the defeat and downfall of the Republic, the popular heart was true and confident and courageous. Upon the people's arms Lincoln could always lean in times of severest trial and anxiety, assured of comfort, support and strength.

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The unfriendliness of Great Britain and France was a most serious and ever-present danger to the United States throughout the whole period of the war, and was prolific of injury to American interests. From the first Great Britain showed a conscious unfriendly purpose. That government privately proposed to France, even before Queen Victoria's proclamation recognizing the insurgents as belligerents, to open direct negotiations with the South, and the British Legation at Washington was used for secret communications with the Confederate President. When the Confederate agents, James M. Mason and John Slidell and their secretaries, were taken from the British mail-steamer Trent by Captain Wilkes, of the American warship San Jacinto, the course of the British Cabinet indicated an unfriendliness so extreme as to approach a desire for war. Peremptory instructions were sent to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington, to demand the release of the men arrested, and to leave Washington if the demand was not complied with in seven days. Vessels of war were fitted out by the British, and troops pressed forward to Canada. The official statement of the American Minister at London that the act had not been authorized by the American Government was kept from the British people, and public opinion was encouraged to drift into a state of hostility toward the United States. The surrender of Mason and Slidell removed all excuse for war, much to the disgust, doubtless, of the ruling class in Great Britain. Leading English statesmen made public speeches favoring the Confederacy. Lord Russell, himself, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, stated in the House of Lords that the subjugation of the South by the North "would prove a calamity to the United States and to the world." The Alabama and other privateers went forth from British ports to prey on American commerce, and the builder of the Alabama was cheered in the House of Commons when he boasted of what he had done. Even Mr. Gladstone--before Vicksburg and Gettysburg--declared that "the restoration of the American Union by force is unattainable."

Napoleon the Third--that crow in the eagle's nest--was cordially with Great Britain in all efforts to injure the American Union. He had long cherished the design to establish a vassal empire in Mexico, and in our Civil War he saw his opportunity. A Southern Confederacy would form a grand barrier between a Franco-Mexican dominion and the United States, and while the French emperor treated the government at Washington with diplomatic courtesy, he never ceased to exert his influence in favor of the South, so far as he could, without an actual rupture. Napoleon was ready and anxious to recognize the Confederacy, and he only waited for the South to win victories that would give him an excuse for action. "His course toward us," says Bigelow, "from the beginning to the end of the plot was deliberately and systematically treacherous, and his ministers allowed themselves to be made his pliant instruments."[1] General Grant declared at City Point, in 1864, that as soon as we had disposed of the Confederates we must begin with the Imperialists, and after Appomattox he expressed the opinion that the French intervention in Mexico was so closely allied to the rebellion as to be a part of it.

[1] France and the Confederate Navy.

Neither England nor France interfered directly in behalf of the South. Louis Napoleon waited for England to act, and the British Cabinet felt that the British masses would not justify a war in defence of slavery. The American Government, while it met with firm and dignified protest Great Britain's disregard of international obligations, was careful to abstain from giving any excuse for British hostility. "One war at a time," said Abraham Lincoln, in deciding to surrender Mason and Slidell. But Americans kept careful account of every item of outrage on the part of England, and in due time the bill was presented--and paid. And in due time also Napoleon was told to go out of Mexico--and he went.