THE SOUTHERN STATES IN THEIR RELATION TO THE CONSTITUTION AND THE RESULTING UNION. CHAPTER I. THIS book is not controversial; nor do I pretend to original research or to the discovery of unknown facts. Its aim is to reconstruct ideas and opinions adverse to the South, insofar as they are founded on ignorance and prejudice. Freeman said, "When certain prejudices have become parts of our mental furniture, when our primary data and our methods of reasoning imply a set of local, narrow assumptions, the task of getting outside them is almost the task of getting outside of our own skins." Books on Political Science, and Constitutional Law, on the Government, written to sustain a theory, a foregone conclusion, a section, a party or pecuniary interest, often ignore or misconstrue the plainest historical facts. It has been found necessary to bring into light authentic records of official acts, forgotten or obscured or hid away, and to put upon them the original, the natural, and the rational interpretation. Characteristics of institutions, and of constitutional law, may be ascertained from a study of the origin and history of the forces in operation anterior to the Constitution, which forces really were the source of its existence. It has therefore seemed necessary to go behind 1789, in order to understand what led to the adoption of the Constitution, and what kind of government the States established. That conquerors should make laws for the conquered seems a political, as it is the ordinary, consequence of the conquest. It is not so obvious, nor so logical, that they should make history. It is fortunate that authentic records survive to guide the impartial historian, or the inquirer into political philosophy. From an early period, the Colonies of the southern portion of the British possessions were, in the broad phrase, specialized as Southern. In course of time, the South became a geographical term to designate the slave-holding section, and a political term to designate a theory of government, or a peculiar interpretation of the Constitution. "South and North," as descriptive classifications, became fixed in our political vocabulary, and parties were distinguished by local discriminations or epithets. In the Constitutional Convention, Madison said the antagonism between North and South would prove the most deep-seated and enduring of all. "It seems now to be pretty well understood that the real difference of interests lay, not between the large and small, but between the Northern and Southern States." "The institution of slavery and its consequences formed the line of discrimination." Bancroft says: "An ineradicable dread of the coming power of the Southwest lurked in New England, especially in Massachusetts." " In 1796, the Hartford Courant, an organ of the Federalists, spoke of the "general opposition of sentiment which distinguishes the two great districts of territory." An "opposition of interest " was "strongly exemplified within the walls of the Constitutional Congress during the Revolutionary War." In the North Carolina Convention, 1788, Col. Bloodworth said, "When I was in Congress the Northern and Southern interests divided at the Susquehanna." The Ordinance of 1787 drew out many hostile, or suspicious expressions. Distinct political economies in the trading and planting colonies, distinct social and labor systems, differences in habits, thoughts, and interests, awakened, very early, apprehensions and jealousies, and tended to give permanency to geographical issues. History, poetry, romance, art, public opinion, have been most unjust to the South. By perverse reiteration, its annals, its acts, its inner feelings, its purposes, have been grossly misrepresented. It is too late to repair the wrong, to atone for the neglect and the injuries of the 12 Mad. Pap., 1104. 26 Hist. 263. |