Chapter 16

We take it for granted at the outset, that the mind of the country is made up as to making no terms with slavery in any way, large or limited, open or covert. Not a single good quality traceable to this system has been brought to light in the white race at the South by the searching test of war. In the black it may have engendered that touching piety of which we have had so many proofs, and it has certainly given them the unity of interest and the sympathy of intelligence which make them everywhere our friends, and which have saved them from compromising their advantage, and still further complicating the difficulties of civil war by insurrection. But what have been its effects upon the ruling class, which is, after all, the supreme test of institutions? It has made them boastful, selfish, cruel, and false, to a degree unparalleled in history. So far from having given them any special fitness for rule, it has made them incapable of any but violent methods of government, and unable to deal with the simplest problems of political economy. An utter ignorance of their own countrymen at the North led them to begin the war, and an equal misconception of Europe encouraged them to continue it. That they have shown courage is true, but that is no exclusive property of theirs, and the military advantage they seemed to possess is due less to any superiority of their own than to the extent of their territory and the roadless wildernesses which are at once the reproach and the fortification of their wasteful system of agriculture. Their advantages in war have been in proportion to their disadvantages in peace, and it is peace which most convincingly tries both the vigor of a nation and the wisdom of its polity. It is with this class that we shall have to deal in arranging the conditions of settlement; and we must do it with a broad view of the interests of the whole country and of the great mass of the Southern people, whose ignorance and the prejudices consequent from it made it so easy to use them as the instruments of their own ruin. No immediate advantage must blind us to the real objects of the war,--the securing our external power and our internal tranquillity, and the making them inherent and indestructible by founding them upon the common welfare.

The first condition of permanent peace is to render those who were the great slaveholders when the war began, and who will be the great landholders after it is over, powerless for mischief. What punishment should be inflicted on the chief criminals is a matter of little moment. The South has received a lesson of suffering which satisfies all the legitimate ends of punishment, and as for vengeance, it is contrary to our national temper and the spirit of our government. Our great object should be, not to weaken, but to strengthen the South,--to make it richer, and not poorer. We must not repeat the stupid and fatal blunder of slaveholding publicists, that the wealth and power of one portion of the country are a drain upon the resources of the rest, instead of being their natural feeders and invigorators. Any general confiscation of Rebel property, therefore, seems to us unthrifty housekeeping, for it is really a levying on our own estate, and a lessening of our own resources. The people of the Southern States will be called upon to bear their part of the grievous burden of taxation which the war will leave upon our shoulders, and that is the fairest as well as the most prudent way of making them contribute to our national solvency. All irregular modes of levying contributions, however just,--and exactly just they can seldom be,--leave discontent behind them, while a uniform system, where every man knows what he is to pay and why he is to pay it, tends to restore stability by the very evenness of its operation, by its making national interests familiar to all, and by removing any sense of injustice. Any sweeping confiscation, such as has sometimes been proposed in Congress with more heat than judgment, would render the South less available for revenue, would retard the return of industry to its legitimate channels, by lessening its means, and would not destroy the influence of the misgoverning aristocracy. On the contrary, it would give them that prestige of misfortune whose power over the sentiments of mankind is the moral of the story of Stuarts and Bourbons and Bonapartes. Retribution they should have, but let them have it in the only way worthy of a great people to inflict. Let it come in a sense of their own folly and sin, brought about by the magnanimity of their conquerors, by the return of a more substantial prosperity born of the new order of things, so as to convince, instead of alienating. We should remember that it is our country which we have regained, and not merely a rebellious faction which we have subdued.

Whether it would not be good policy for the general government to assume all the wild lands in the rebellious States, and to devote the proceeds of their sale to actual settlers to the payment of the national debt, is worth consideration. Texas alone, on whose public lands our assumption of her indebtedness gives us an equitable claim, would suffice to secure our liabilities and to lighten our taxation, and in all cases of land granted to freedmen no title should vest till a fair price had been paid,--a principle no less essential to their true interests than our own. That these people, who are to be the peasantry of the future Southern States, should be made landholders, is the main condition of a healthy regeneration of that part of the country, and the one warranty of our rightful repossession of it. The wealth that makes a nation really strong, and not merely rich, is the opportunity for industry, intelligence, and well-being of its laboring population. This is the real country of poor men, as the great majority must always be. No glories of war or art, no luxurious refinement of the few, can give them a sense of nationality where this is wanting. If we free the slave without giving him a right in the soil, and the inducement to industry which this offers, we reproduce only a more specious form of all the old abuses. We leave all political power in the hands of the wealthy landholders, where it was before. We leave the poorer whites unemancipated, for we leave labor still at the mercy of capital, and with its old stigma of degradation. Blind to the lessons of all experience, we deliberately make the South what Ireland was when Arthur Young travelled there, the country richest in the world by nature, reduced to irredeemable poverty and hopeless weakness by an upper class who would not, and a lower class who could not, improve. We have no right to purchase dominion, no right to purchase even abolition, at such a price as that. No _uti possidetis_ conveys any legitimate title, except on the condition of wise administration and mutual benefit.

But will it be enough to make the freedmen landholders merely? Must we not make them voters also, that they may have that power of self-protection which no interference of government can so safely, cheaply, and surely exercise in their behalf? We answer this question in the affirmative, for reasons both of expediency and justice. At best, the difficulty, if not settled now, will come up again for settlement hereafter, when it may not be so easy of solution. As a matter of expediency, it is always wisest to shape a system of policy with a view to permanence, much more than to immediate convenience. When things are put upon a right footing at first,--and the only right footing is one which will meet the inevitable demands of the future as well as the more noisy ones of the present,--all subsidiary relations will of necessity arrange themselves by mutual adaptation, without constantly calling for the clumsy interference of authority. We must leave behind us no expectation and no fear of change, to unsettle men's minds and dishearten their industry. Both the late master and the late slave should begin on the new order of things with a sense of its permanence on the one hand and its rightfulness on the other. They will soon learn that neither intelligence can do without labor, nor labor without intelligence, and that wealth will result only from a clearly understood and reciprocally beneficial dependence of each upon the other. Unless we make the black a citizen, we take away from the white the strongest inducement to educate and enlighten him. As a mere proletary, his ignorance is a temptation to the stronger race; as a voter, it is a danger to them which it becomes their interest to remove. It is easy to manage the mob of New York for the time with grape-shot, but it is the power for evil which their suffrage gives them that will at last interest all classes, by reform and education, to make it a power for good.

Under the head of expediency comes also this other consideration,--that, unless made citizens, the emancipated blacks, reckoned as they must be in the basis of representation, and yet without power to modify the character of the representatives chosen, will throw so much more power into the hands of men certain to turn it to their disadvantage, and only too probably to our own. This mass, if we leave it inert, may, in any near balance of parties, be enough to crush us; while, if we endow it with life and volition, if we put it in the way of rising in intelligence and profiting by self-exertion, it will be the best garrison for maintaining the supremacy of our ideas, till they have had time to justify themselves by experience. Have we endured and prosecuted this war for the sake of bringing back our old enemies to legislate for us, stronger than ever, with all the resentment and none of the instruction of defeat?

But as a measure of justice also, which is always the highest expediency, we are in favor of giving the ballot to the freedmen. Our answer to the question, What are we to do with the negro? is short and simple. Give him a fair chance. We must get rid of the delusion that right is in any way dependent on the skin, and not on an inward virtue. Our war has been carried on for the principles of democracy, and a cardinal point of those principles is, that the only way in which to fit men for freedom is to make them free, the only way to teach them how to use political power is to give it them. Both South and North have at last conceded the manhood of the negro, and the question now is how we shall make that manhood available and profitable to him and to us. Democracy does not mean, to any intelligent person, an attempt at the impossibility of making one man as good as another. But it certainly does mean the making of one man's manhood as good as another's and the giving to every human being the right of unlimited free trade in all his faculties and acquirements. We believe the white race, by their intellectual and traditional superiority, will retain sufficient ascendency to prevent any serious mischief from the new order of things. We admit that the whole subject bristles with difficulties, and we would by no means discuss or decide it on sentimental grounds. But our choice would seem to be between unqualified citizenship, to depend on the ability to read and write, if you will, and setting the blacks apart in some territory by themselves. There are, we think, insuperable objections to this last plan. It would put them beyond the reach of all good influence from the higher civilization of the whites, without which they might relapse into barbarism like the Maroons of Surinam, and it would deprive the whole Southern country of the very labor it needs. As to any prejudices which should prevent the two races from living together, it would soon yield to interest and necessity. The mere antipathy of color is not so strong there as here, and the blacks would form so very large a majority of the laboring class as not to excite the jealousy of rivalry. We can remember when the prejudice against the Celt was as strong in many of the Free States as that against the African could ever be at the South. It is not very long since this prejudice nearly gave a new direction to the politics of the country. Yet, like all prejudices, it had not coherence enough to keep any considerable party long together.

The objections to the plan are, of course, the same which lie against any theory of universal suffrage. These are many and strong, if considered abstractly; but we assume that theory to be admitted now as the rule of our political practice, and its evils as a working system have not been found so great, taking the country at large, as nearly to outweigh, its advantages. Moreover, as we have said before, it compels the redress of its own abuses, and the remedy is one which is a benefit to the whole community, for it is simply to raise the general standard of intelligence. It is superior, certainly, to the English system, in which the body of the nation is alienated from its highest intellect and culture. We think the objections are quite as strong to any elective plan of government, for a select majority is as liable to be governed by its interests and passions as any popular one. Witness the elections at Oxford. Is the average wisdom or unselfishness of mankind so high that there should be no narrow minds and no selfish hearts in any body of electors, however carefully selected? The only infallible sovereign on earth is chosen by the majority of a body in which passion and intrigue and the influence (sometimes none of the purest) of conflicting courts are certainly not inoperative. Man is perhaps not the wisest of animals, but he has at least as keen a sense of his own advantage in a hovel as in a palace, and what is for the interest of the masses of the people is not very far from being for that of the country. It is said, to be sure, that we are inadequately represented in Congress; but a representative is apt to be a tolerably exact exponent of the merits of his constituency, and we must look for relief to the general improvement of our people in morals, manners, and culture. We doubt if the freedmen would send worse members to Congress than some in whose election merchants and bankers and even doctors of divinity have been accomplices.

With the end of the war the real trial of our statesmanship, our patriotism, and our patience will begin. The passions excited by it will, no doubt, subside in due time, but meanwhile it behooves the party in possession of the government to conciliate patriotic men of all shades of opinion by a liberal, manly and unpartisan policy. Republicans must learn to acknowledge that all criticisms of their measures have not been dictated by passion or disloyalty, that many moderate and honest men, many enlightened ones, have really found reason for apprehension in certain arbitrary stretches of authority, nay, may even have been opposed to the war itself, without being in love with slavery, and without deserving to be called Copperheads. Many have doubted the wisdom of our financial policy, without being unpatriotic. It is precisely this class, dispassionate and moderate in their opinions, whose help we shall need in healing the wounds of war and giving equanimity to our counsels. We hope to see a course of action entered upon which shall draw them to its support. In peace, governments cannot, as in war, find strength in the enthusiasm and even the passions of the people, but must seek it in the approval of their judgment and convictions. During war, all the measures of the dominant party have a certain tincture of patriotism; declamation serves very well the purposes of eloquence, and fervor of persuasion passes muster as reason; but in peaceful times everything must come back to a specific standard, and stand or fall on its own merits. Our faith is not unmixed with apprehension when we think of the immediate future, yet it is an abiding faith nevertheless; and with the experience of the last four years to sustain us, we are willing to believe almost anything good of the American people, and to say with the saint, _Credimus quia impossibile est_. We see no good reason why, if we use our victory with the moderation becoming men who profess themselves capable of self-government, conceding all that can be conceded without danger to the great principle which has been at stake, the North and the South should not live more harmoniously together in the future than in the past, now that the one rock of offence has been blasted out of the way. We do not believe that the war has tended to lessen their respect for each other, or that it has left scars which will take to aching again with every change of the political weather. We must bind the recovered communities to us with hooks of interest, by convincing them that we desire their prosperity as an integral part of our own. For a long while yet there will be a latent disaffection, even when the outward show may be fair, as in spring the ground often stiffens when the thermometer is above the freezing point. But we believe, in spite of this, that all this untowardness will yield to the gradual wooing of circumstances, and that it is to May, and not December, that we are to look forward. Even in our finances, which are confessedly our weakest point, we doubt if the experience of any other nation will enable us to form a true conception of our future. We shall have, beyond question, the ordinary collapse of speculation that follows a sudden expansion of paper currency. We shall have that shivering and expectant period when the sails flap and the ship trembles ere it takes the wind on the new tack. But it is no idle boast to say that there never was a country with such resources as ours. In Europe the question about a man always is, What _is_ he? Here it is as invariably, What does he _do_? And in that little difference lies the security of our national debt for whoever has eyes. In America there is no idle class supported at the expense of the nation, there is no splendid poor-house of rank or office, but every man is at work adding his share to the wealth, and to that extent insuring the solvency, of the country. Our farm, indeed, is mortgaged, but it is a mortgage which the yearly profits will pay off.

Those who look upon the war as a wicked crusade of the North against the divinely sanctioned institutions of the South, and those who hope even yet to reknit the monstrous league between slavery and a party calling itself Democratic, will of course be willing to take back the seceding States without conditions. Neither of these classes is any longer formidable, either by its numbers or the character of its leaders. But there is yet a third class, who seem to have confused their minds with some fancied distinction between civil and foreign war. Holding the States to be indestructible, they seem to think that, by the mere cessation of hostilities, they are to resume their places as if nothing had happened, or rather as if this had been a mere political contest which we had carried. But it is with the people of the States, and not with any abstract sovereignty, that we have been at war, and it is of them that we are to exact conditions, and not of some convenient quasi-entity, which is not there when the battle is raging, and is there when the terms of capitulation are to be settled. No, it is slavery which made this war, and slavery which must pay the damages. While we should not by any unseemly exultation remind the Southern people that they have been conquered, we should also not be weak enough to forget that we have won the right of the victor. And what is that right, if it be not to exact indemnity for the past and security for the future? And what more nobly and satisfactorily fulfils both those conditions, than utterly to extinguish the cause of quarrel? What we fear is the foolish and weak good-nature inherent in popular government, but against which monarchies and aristocracies are insured by self-interest, which the prospect of peace is sure to arouse, and which may make our settlement a stage-reconciliation, where everybody rushes into the arms of everybody else with a fervor which has nothing to do with the living relations of the actors. We believe that the public mind should be made up as to what are the essential conditions of real and lasting peace, before it is subjected to the sentimental delusions of the inevitable era of good feeling, in which the stronger brother is so apt to play the part of Esau. If we are to try the experiment of democracy fairly, it must be tried in its fullest extent, and not half-way. The theory which grants political power to the ignorant white foreigner need not be squeamish about granting it to the ignorant black native, for the gist of the matter is in the dark mind, and not the more or less dusky skin. Of course we shall be met by the usual fallacy,--Would you confer equality on the blacks? But the answer is a very simple one. Equality cannot be conferred on any man, be he white or black. If he be capable of it, his title is from God, and not from us. The opinion of the North is made up on the subject of emancipation, and Mr. Lincoln has announced it as the one essential preliminary to the readmission of the insurgent States. To our mind, citizenship is the necessary consequence, as it is the only effectual warranty, of freedom; and accordingly we are in favor of distinctly settling beforehand some conditional right of admission to it. We have purposely avoided any discussion on gradualism as an element in emancipation, because we consider its evil results to have been demonstrated in the British West Indies. True conservative policy is not an anodyne hiding away our evil from us in a brief forgetfulness. It looks to the long future of a nation, and dares the heroic remedy where it is scientifically sure of the nature of the disease. The only desperate case for a people is where its moral sense is paralyzed, and the first symptom is a readiness to accept an easy expedient at the sacrifice of a difficult justice. The relation which is to be final and permanent cannot be too soon decided on and put in working order, whether for the true interest of master or slave; and the only safe relation is one that shall be fearlessly true to the principles in virtue of which we asserted our own claim to autonomy, and our right to compel obedience to the government so established. Anything short of that has the weakness of an expedient which will erelong compel us to reconstruct our reconstruction, and the worse weakness of hypocrisy, which will sooner or later again lay us open to the retribution of that eternal sincerity which brings all things at last to the test of its own unswerving standard.

SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT?

1865