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THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

like sectional prejudice, ready always to contribute in all things to maintain its honor and preserve its integrity at home and abroad; yet when this Union is no more, she will never consent to remain an appendage and a slave of a Puritan province. She will assert her own independence. The North will then see and feel that secession, although it may begin at the South, will not end at the South. There is no sympathy now between the city and the State of New York, not the least, nor has there been for years. The city of New York is now a subjugated dependency of a fanatical and puritanical State government, that never thinks of the city except to send its tax-gatherers among us, or to impose upon us hateful officials, aliens to our interests and sympathies, to eat up the substance of the people by their legalized extortions. Between such communities there can be no sympathy, no feeling of fraternity, no loyalty in the city to the State; and nothing has prevented the city of New York from asserting the right to govern herself except that provision of the Federal Constitution which prohibits a State from being divided without its own consent. If we had not been thus restrained by the Constitution-and every word of it is sacred to us—we would long ago, in accordance with the desire of three-fourths of our people, have sought in independence the only escape from the oppression which has been put upon us. But the reverence of the people for constitutional obligations yet remained and they submitted year after year. When that restraint shall no longer exist, when the obligations of those constitutional provisions which forbid the division of a State without its own consent shall be suspended, then I tell you that imperial city shall throw off the odious government to which she now yields a reluctant allegiance; she will repel the hateful cabal at Albany, which has so long used its power

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over her; and with her own flag, sustained by the courage and devotion of her own gallant sons, she will, as a free city, open wide her gates to the civilization and commerce of the world."1

This equivocal speech did not tend to dishearten the secessionists. It intimated that secession was a thorough remedy for civil difficulties. It eliminated the old idea of "the general welfare" and intimated that the rich, the strong, the favorably situated parts of the Union might set up independent governments and "open wide their gates to the civilization and commerce of the world." It did not examine whether such a course would advance civilization. Nor was its meaning lost on the secessionists. Commerce is always timid, and a nation of merchants would not long remain "free, sovereign and independent." The attitude of New York city was carefully scanned by the Southern leaders while they were engaged in organizing a slaveholding Confederacy. Alabama owed "probably as much as eleven millions in the city of New York alone." "The amount of indebtedness due from the South to the North amounts to several hundred millions of dollars," said one of the members of the Alabama convention, and he advocated holding the share of Alabama in abeyance. "Then," replied another member, "the merchant of New York city becomes, by the legal construction of this amendment, the enemy of Alabama, notwithstanding he has recognized our constitutional rights, braved the whole abolition pack of his State, and wasted time and money, and lost political caste at home in defense of our property."2

Sickles, whose later career sufficiently demonstrated his love for the Union, did not grasp the intention of the seces

1 Id., pp. 40, 41.

2 Smith's Debates, p. 176.

650

PARTY BLINDNESS.

sionists of the South, however clear to him the cause of secessionists in New York city. His speech was not lacking, at the time, in aid and comfort to Hawkins of Florida, whom he did not wish to excuse from the committee, nor to Reuben Davis, who rejoiced that he himself belonged to it. It was one of the local speeches, left over from the stump, and delivered in Congress, of which the Globe and the Record, and even the old Annals contain numerous examples. Vallandigham, McClernand and Sickles were Northern Democrats familiar with the cry of "Wolf, wolf," from the South. Secession might be at hand: but these three agreed in one thing, that the Republicans were responsible for it. This means that secession was still considered by many in Congress merely as a politial ruse— the alarm cry of the new party to close its ranks. The Democrats so ruthlessly overlooked by the Speaker in framing his committee had not yet parted company with the Democrats who under no consideration would serve on it. The committee, thought they, is a party device, not a serious agency for keeping the Union together. Democrats of all shades of belief agreed in blaming the Republicans for what the resolution, raising the Committee of Thirty-three called "the perilous condition of the country." This aspect of affairs must be kept in mind while we are tracing step by step the growth of the thirteenth amendment of 1861.

So

Many of the Northern members of Congress, like their constituents, did not understand the South. For many years, and vehemently, for the last four, Senators and Representatives from the South had been talking secession. Northern Democrats and most of the Whigs believed it an idle threat. The new party thought it a form of madness and fanaticism, like radical abolitionism. But the Southern men never swerved from their purpose,

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never retreated, never shrunk from the consequences of their theories and their actions. Many speeches and declarations might be cited as illustrations of the state of the Southern mind. "This question of morality does not necessarily arise here," said a member of the Alabama convention, in the debate of re-opening the African slave trade. "As a matter of opinion, I do not believe that the African slave-trade would be immoral in itself, now-or that it ever has been immoral. I hold, that the African, taken from his native wilds and placed in the ranks that march onward from savage to civilized life, is greatly benefited. He is humanized and Christianized. He rises from the condition of a brute into the position of a Christian man. The present condition of the Alabama negro illustrates this. Place a native African side by side with an Alabama negro-how vast is the difference in stature as well as in intellect. The one has the graceful and sinewy limbs of a Hercules, the other is a mere mongrel. In nine cases out of ten, in positive contentment, the Alabama slave is happier than his master. His cottage is built for him, his food provided, his meals prepared; his hearth is spread with substantial comforts, and his long nights are for those blissful dreams that are undisturbed by his knowledge of coming necessities. He has no cankering cares, no buffeting with fortune, no aspiration for expanding acres, no cares for rain or sunshine. He has neither cloth nor meat to buy; he is free from debt, he is above all civil law-and he looks forward to Christmas, not as the maturity time for his bills, but for his holidays. There can be nothing immoral in placing a savage in such a condition as this."

"The world should know," said another member, "that the Southern people are agreed upon the moral question1 Smith's Debates, 201.

652

STEPHENS' "CORNER-STONE" ADDRESS.

that we regard this institution among us a positive gooda blessing both to the white and the black races-that our consciences are clear, and that we, an undivided people, are prepared to maintain the truth. The declaration of it in solemn form, is demanded to meet successfully the errors on the subject, that prevail to an alarming extent in the Christian world. We have just dissolved the Union because a distinction was recognized between slave property and other kinds of property hostile to the former."1

Nor was this opinion held only by the less prominent men of the South. It was the gospel of the Confederacy. "Not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better," said Alexander H. Stephens, in contrasting the Constitution of the Confederacy and that of the United States, "allow me to allude to one other-though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution, African slavery as it exists among us, the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization." This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institu1 Smith's Debates, 253.