CHAPTER II.

THE FEDERAL PRINCIPLE ULTIMATELY FATAL TO THE UNION.-OTHER CAUSES OF DISUNION.

-THE SECTIONAL ANIMOSITY."-THE GEOGRAPHICAL LINE IN THE UNION.-HOW THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH PRODUCED TWO DISTINCT COMMUNITIES INSTEAD OF RIVAL PARTIES WITHIN ONE BODY POLITIC.-THE THEORY OF A POLITICAL NORTH AND A POLITICAL SOUTH.-ITS EARLY RECOGNITION IN THE CONVENTION OF 1787. -DECLARATION OF MADISON.-MR. PINCKNEY'S REMARK.-HOW THE SAME THEORY WAS INVOLVED IN THE CONSTITUTION.-THE TREATY-CLAUSE BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH. THE UNION NOT THE BOND OF DIVERSE STATES, BUT THE ROUGH COMPANIONSHIP OF TWO PEOPLES. GEN. SULLIVAN'S COMPLAINT ΤΟ WASHINGTON.-THE SLAVERY QUESTION, AN INCIDENT OF THE SECTIONAL ANIMOSITY.-NOT AN INDEPENDENT CONTROVERSY, OR A MORAL DISPUTE.—POLITICAL HISTORY OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN THE SOUTH.-HOW IT BECAME THE SUBJECT OF DISPUTE.-THE HARTFORD CONVENTION. THE MISSOURI LINE, THE PRELIMINARY TRACE OF DISUNION.-DECLARATION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.-WHY THE NORTH DEFAMED THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION OF THE SOUTH.-GREAT BENEFITS OF THIS INSTITUTION AND ITS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WORLD.- SLAVERY NOT THE PROPER TERM FOR THE INSTITUTION OF LABOUR IN THE SOUTH. THE SLAVERY QUESTION SIGNIFICANT ONLY OF A CONTEST FOR POLITICAL POWER.-DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN POPULATIONS.-THE

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ANTE-REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD.-TRACES OF THE MODERN YANKEE."-HOW SLAVERY ESTABLISHED A PECULIAR CIVILIZATION IN THE SOUTH.-ITS BAD AND GOOD EFFECTS SUMMED UP.-COARSENESS OF NORTHERN CIVILIZATION.NO LANDED GENTRY IN THE NORTH.-SCANTY APPEARANCE OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTRY.-THE SENTIMENTS AND MANNERS OF ITS PEOPLE.-"AMERICAN EXAGGERATION "" A PECULIARITY OF THE NORTHERN MIND.—SOBRIETY OF THE SOUTH.-HOW THESE QUALITIES WERE DISPLAYED IN THE NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN ESTIMATIONS OF THE UNION.-' STATE RIGHTS THE FOUNDATION OF THE MORAL DIGNITY OF THE UNION.-CALHOUN'S PICTURE OF THE UNION.-A NOBLE VISION NEVER REALIZED.

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ALTHOUGH the American Union, as involving. the Federal principle, contained in itself an element ultimately fatal to its form of government, it is not to be denied that by careful and attentive statesmanship a rupture might have been long postponed. We have already briefly seen that, at a most remarkable period in American history, it was proposed by the great political scholar of his times-John C. Calhoun-to modify the Federal principle of the Union and to introduce an ingenious check

upon its tendencies to controversy-a measure that night long have extended the term of the Union, and certainly would have realized a very beautiful idea of political association.

But we must notice here another cause of disunion that supervened upon that of Federal incoherence, and rapidly divided the country. It was that Sectional Animosity, far more imposing than any mere discord of States, inasmuch as it put in opposition, as it were, two distinct nations on a geographical line, that by a single stroke divided the country, and thus summarily effected what smaller differences would have taken long to accomplish.

We have elsewhere briefly referred to the divisions of population between the Northern and Southern States, marked as they were by strong contrasts between the characters of the people of each. Had these divisions existed only in a contracted space of country, they might have resulted in nothing more than the production of parties or the formation of classes. But extending as they did over the space of a continent, these divisions ceased to be political parties or classes of one community, and really existed in the condition of distinct communities or nations. A recent English writer has properly and acutely observed: "In order to master the difficulties of American politics, it will be very important to realize the fact that we have to consider, not the action of rival parties or opposing interests within the limits of one body politic, but practically that of two distinct communities or peoples, speaking indeed a common language, and united by a federal bond, but opposed in principles and interests, alienated in feeling, and jealous rivals in the pursuit of political power."

No one can read aright the history of America, unless in the light of a North and a South: two political aliens existing in a Union imperfectly defined as a confederation of States. If insensible or forgetful of this theory, he is at once involved in an otherwise inexplicable mass of facts, and will in vain attempt an analysis of controversies, apparently the most various and confused.

The Sectional Animosity, which forms the most striking and persistent feature in the history of the American States, may be dated certainly as far back as 1787. In the Convention which formed the Constitution, Mr. Madison discovered beneath the controversy between the large and small States another clashing of interests. He declared that the States were divided into different interests by other circumstances as well as by their difference of size; the most material of which resulted partly from climate, but principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. "These two causes," he said, "concurred in forming the great division of interests in the United States;" and "if any defensive power were necessary it ought to be mutually given to these two sections." In

CONFLICT BETWEEN NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN INTERESTS.

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the South Carolina Convention which ratified the Constitution, Gen. Pinckney spoke of the difference between the inhabitants of the Northern and Southern States. He explained: "When I say Southern, I mean Maryland and the States southward of her. There, we may truly observe that nature has drawn as strong marks of distinction in the habits and manners of the people, as she has in her climates and productions."

There was thus early recognized in American history a political North and a political South; the division being coincident with the line that separated the slave-holding from the non-slave-holding States. Indeed, the existence of these two parties and the line on which it was founded. was recognized in the very frame-work of the Constitution. That provision of this instrument which admitted slaves into the rule of representation (in the proportion of three-fifths), is significant of a conflict between North and South; and as a compact between the slave-holding and nonslave-holding interests, it may be taken as a compromise between sections, or even, in a broader and more philosophical view, as a treaty between two nations of opposite civilizations. For we shall see that the distinction of North and South, apparently founded on slavery and traced by lines of climate, really went deeper to the very elements of the civilization of each; and that the Union, instead of being the bond of diverse States, is rather to be described, at a certain period of its history, as the forced alliance and rough companionship of two very different peoples.

When Gen. Sullivan complained to Washington that there was a party in New England opposed to his nomination as minister of war, because they considered he had "apostatized from the true New England faith, by sometimes voting with the Southern States," he declared thus early the true designs of the North to get sectional control of the government.

The slavery question is not to be taken as an independent controversy in American politics. It was not a moral dispute. It was the mere incident of a sectional animosity, the causes of which lay far beyond the domain of morals. Slavery furnished a convenient line of battle between the disputants; it was the most prominent ground of distinction between the two sections; it was, therefore, naturally seized upon as a subject of controversy, became the dominant theatre of hostilities, and was at last so conspicuous and violent, that occasion was mistaken for cause, and what was merely an incident came to be regarded as the main subject of controversy.

The institution of slavery, as the most prominent cause of distinction between the civilizations or social autonomies of North and South, was naturally bound up in the Sectional Animosity. As that animosity progressed, the slavery question developed. This explains, indeed, what is most curious in the political history of slavery—namely that the early part of that history is scarcely more than an enumeration of dates and

measures, which were taken as matters of course, and passed without dispute. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 was passed without a division in the Senate, and by a vote of forty-eight to seven in the House. Louisiana and Florida, slave-holding territories, were organized without agitation. Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama were admitted into the Union without any question as to their domestic institutions. The action of Congress, with respect to the north-west territory, was based upon a pre-existing anti-slavery ordinance, and had no significance. There was nothing or but little in the early days of the Union, to betoken the wild and violent controversy on slavery, that was to sweep the country like a storm and strew it with scenes of horrour.

With the jealousy of Southern domination came the slavery agitation; proving clearly enough its subordination to the main question, and that what was asserted as a matter of conscience, and attempted to be raised to the position of an independent controversy, was but part of or an attachment to an animosity that went far below the surface of local institutions. The Hartford Convention, in 1814, which originated in jealousy of the political power of the South, proposed to strike down the slave representation in Congress, and to have the representation conformed to the number of free persons in the Union. A few years later, the country was more distinctly arrayed into two sectional parties, struggling for supremacy with regard to the slavery question. The legislation on the admission of Missouri in 1820, by which the institution of slavery was bounded by a line of latitude, indicated the true nature of the slavery controversy, and simply revealed what had all along existed: a political North and a political South. It was here that we find the initial point of that war of sections which raged in America for forty years, and at last culminated in an appeal to arms. The Missouri legislation was the preliminary trace of disunion. "A geographical line," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men will not be obliterated; and every new irritation will make it deeper and deeper."

The North naturally found or imagined in slavery the leading cause of the distinctive civilization of the South, its higher sentimentalism, and its superior refinements of scholarship and manners. It revenged itself on the cause, diverted its envy in an attack upon slavery, and defamed the institution as the relic of barbarism and the sum of all villainies. But, whatever may have been the defamation of the institution of slavery, no man can write its history without recognizing contributions and naming prominent results beyond the domain of controversy. It bestowed on the world's commerce in a half-century a single product whose annual value was two hundred millions of dollars. It founded a system of industry by which labour and capital were identified in interest, and capital therefore

NO CONGENIALITY BETWEEN CAVALIERS AND PURITANS.

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protected labour. It exhibited the picture of a land crowned with abundance, where starvation was unknown, where order was preserved by an unpaid police; and where many fertile regions accessible only to the labour of the African were brought into usefulness, and blessed the world with their productions.

We shall not enter upon the discussion of the moral question of slavery. But we may suggest a doubt here whether that odious term "slavery," which has been so long imposed, by the cxaggeration of Northern writers, upon the judgment and sympathies of the world, is properly applied to that system of servitude in the South which was really the mildest in the world; which did not rest on acts of debasement and disenfranchisement, but elevated the African, and was in the interest of human improvement; and which, by the law of the land, protected the negro in life and limb, and in many personal rights, and, by the practice of the system, bestowed upon him a sum of individual indulgences, which made him altogether the most striking type in the world of cheerfulness and contentment. But it is not necessary to prolong this consideration.* For, we repeat, the slavery question was not a moral one in the North, unless, perhaps, with a few thousand persons of disordered conscience. It was significant only of a contest for political power, and afforded nothing more than a convenient ground of dispute between two parties, who represented not two moral theories, but hostile sections and opposite civilizations.

In the ante-revolutionary period, the differences between the populations of the Northern and Southern colonies had already been strongly developed. The early colonists did not bear with them from the mothercountry to the shores of the New World any greater degree of congeniality than existed among them at home. They had come not only from different stocks of population, but from different feuds in religion and politics. There could be no congeniality between the Puritan exiles who established themselves upon the cold and rugged and cheerless soil of New England, and the Cavaliers who sought the brighter climate of the South, and drank in their baronial halls in Virginia confusion to roundheads and regicides.

In the early history of the Northern colonists we find no slight traces

* It may not be improper to note here a very sententious defence of the moral side of slavery occurring in a speech delivered, in 1856, by Senator Toombs of Georgia, in the Tremont Temple at Boston. It is briefly this: "The white is the superior race, and the black the inferior; and subordination, with or without law, will be the status of the African in this mixed society; and, therefore, it is the interest of both, and especially of the black race, and of the whole society, that this status should be fixed, controlled, and protected by law."

The whole ground is covered by these two propositions: that subordination is the necessary condition of the black man; and that the so-called "slavery" in the South was but the preciso adjustment of this subordination by law.