102 DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE: ITS BASIS. Southern men: it lies simply in the intense selfishness and utter absence of scruple with which they have persistently pushed their object. They have acted steadily together-a course for which no political virtue was necessary where there was but a single interest to promote, and that interest their own. They have contrived, by an unscrupulous use of an immense patronage, to detach from the array of their opponents a section sufficiently large to turn the scale of divisions in their favour:-in other words, they have been successful practitioners in the art of political jobbery. Lastly, they have worked on the apprehensions and the patriotism of the country at large by the constantly repeated threat which they have now proved themselves capable of putting in force--of dissolving the Union.* The actual inferiority in population of the Southern to the Northern States, even under the peculiar advantage conferred by the three-fifths clause, rendered it necessary that the slaveholders should procure an ally among the northern people; and this indispensable ally they found in the Democratic party. It has been frequently remarked upon with surprise that, in seeking a political connexion, the South-whose social and political system is intensely aristocratic-should have attached itself to that party in the Union in which the democratic principle has been carried to the greatest extreme. But the explanation is to be found in the circumstances of the case. The peculiarity of the industrial and social economy of the Southern States led them from the first to lean to the doctrine of state rights, as opposed to the pretensions of the central government; and the doctrine of state rights is a democratic doctrine. On this fundamental point, therefore, the principles of the Southern oligarchy and those of the Northern democracy were the same. But the alliance was not destitute of the cement of interest and feeling. The Democratic party had its principal seats in the great towns along the Northern seaboard; and between the capitalists of these towns and the planters of the South the commercial connexion had always been close. Capital is much Figurez-vous sur un vaisseau un homme debout près de la sainte-barbe, avec un mèche allumée; il est seul, mais on lui obéit, car, à la première désobéissance, il se fera sauter avec tout l'équipage. Voilà précisément ce qui se passait en Amérique depuis qu'elle allait à la dérive. La manœuvre était commandée par l'homme qui tenait la mèche. 'A la première désobéissance, nous nous quittons.' Tel a été de tout temps le langage des Etats du Sud. On les savait capables de tenir parole aussi n'y avait-il plus qu'un argument en Amérique, la scission. Révoquez le compromis, sinon la scission; modifiez la législation des Etats libres, sinon la scission; courez avec nous les aventures, et entreprenez des conquêtes pour l'esclavage, sinon la scission; enfin, et par dessus tout, ne vous permettez jamais d'élire un président qui ne soit pas nôtre candidat, sinon la scission.'”—Un Grand Peuple qui se relève, p. 37. THE TERMS OF THE BARGAIN. 103 needed under a slave system, and is at the same time scarce. In the Northern cities it was abundant. To the capitalists of the Northern cities, therefore, the planters in need of funds for carrying on their industry had recourse; and a large amount of democratic capital came thus to be invested on the security of slave property. A community of interest was in this way established. But there was also a community of sentiment; for the Northern cities had formerly been the great emporia of the African slave trade, and had never wholly abandoned the nefarious traffic; and the tone of mind engendered by constant familiarity with slavery in its worst form naturally predisposed them to an alliance with slaveholders. Widely sundered, therefore, as were the Southern oligarchy and the Democratic party of the North in general political principle, there was enough in common between them to form the basis of a selfish bargain. A bargain, accordingly, was struck, of which the consideration on the one side was the command of the Federal government for the extension of slavery, and, on the other, a share in the patronage of the Union. On these terms a coalition between these two parties, so opposed in their general tendencies, has, almost from the foundation of the republic, been steadily maintained; and in this way the South-vastly inferior though it has been to its competitor in wealth, population, and intelligence-in all the conditions to which political power attaches in well-ordered states-has, nevertheless, contrived to exercise a leading influence upon the policy of the Union. These considerations will suffice to explain how the South has been enabled, even when in a minority, to engage with success the representatives of the North. In the Lower House of Congress it has been always of necessity in this position; representation being here in proportion to population, in which, even including slaves, the South is inferior to its rival. But in the Upper House-the House which under the Constitution enjoys the most important prerogatives and the highest influence -the South has found itself at less disadvantage. In the Senate, as has been already stated, representation takes place according to states; each state returning two members without regard either to the number of its inhabitants or to the extent of its territory. To maintain itself, therefore, on an equal footing with the North in this assembly, the South has only need to keep the number of slave states on an equality with that of the free; and this did not seem to be beyond its power. For, the tendency of slavery being to disperse population, a given number of people under a slave régime would naturally cover a larger space of country, and consequently would afford the materials for the 104 THE POLITICAL MOTIVE MAINLY OPERATIVE. creation of a greater number of states, than the same number under a régime of freedom. What, therefore, the South required to secure its predominance in the Senate, was a territory large enough for the creation of new slave states as fast as the exigencies of its politics might demand them. To keep open the territory of the Union for this purpose has, in consequence, always been a capital object in the politics of the South; and in this way a political has been added to the economic motive for extended territory. Two forces have thus been constantly urging on the Slave Power to territorial aggrandizement-the need for fresh soils, and the need for slave states. Of these the former that which proceeds from its industrial requirementsis at once the most fundamental and the most imperative; but it has not been that which, in the actual history of the United States, has been most frequently called into play. In point of fact, the political motive has in a great measure superseded the economic. The desire to obtain fresh territory for the creation of slave states, with a view to influence in the Senate, has carried the South in its career of aggression far beyond the range which its mere industrial necessities would have prescribed. Accordingly, for nearly a quarter of a century—ever since the annexation of Texas-the territory at the disposal of the South has been very much greater than its available slave force has been able to cultivate; and its most urgent need has now become, not more virgin soils on which to employ its slaves, but more slaves for the cultivation of its virgin soils. The important bearing of this change on the views of the Slave Power will hereafter be pointed out: for the present, it is sufficient to call attention to the fact. A principle of aggressive activity, in addition to that which is involved in the industrial necessities of slavery, has thus been called into operation by the conditions under which the Slave Power is placed in the Senate. But we should here be careful not to overrate the influence exercised on that Power by its position in the Federal Union. It would, I conceive, be an entire mistake to suppose that this desire for extended territory, which, under actual circumstances, has shown itself in the creation of slave states with a view to influence in the Senate, is in any such sense the fruit of the position of the South in the Federal Union as that we should be justified in concluding that, in the event of the severance of the Union, the South would cease to desire an extension of its territory on political grounds. Such a view would, in my opinion, imply an entire misconception of the real nature of the forces which have been at work. The lust of dominion, which is the ruling passion of TRUE SOURCE OF THIS MOTIVE. 105 the Slave Power, is not accidental but inherent-has its source, not in the constitution of the Senate, but in the fundamental institution of the Slave States; and the lust of dominion, existing in an embodied form in a new continent, cannot but find its issue in territorial aggrandizement. This by no means depends upon speculative inference. It admits of proof, as a matter of fact, that the projects of the South for extending its domain have never been more daring, and have never been pushed with greater energy, than during the last five years*— the very period in which the Southern leaders have been maturing their plans for seceding from the Union. The Federal connexion may have facilitated the ambitious aims of the South while the Federal government was in its hands, but, far from being the source of its ambition, it is because it offers, under the changed conditions, impediments to the expanding views of the more aspiring minds of the South, that the attempt is now made to break loose from Federal ties. Extended dominion is in truth the very purpose for which the South has engaged in the present struggle; and the thought which now sustains it through its fiery.ordeal is (to borrow the words of the ablest advocate of the Southern cause) the prospect of "an empire in the future. . . extending from the home of Washington to the ancient palaces of Montezuma-uniting the proud old colonies of England with Spain's richest and most romantic dominions—combining the productions of the great valley of the Mississippi with the mineral riches, the magical beauty, the volcanic grandeur of Mexico." In plain terms, the stake for which the South now plays is Mexico and the intervening Territories. The position of the Slave Power in the Union has thus determined the mode, not supplied the principle, of its aggressive action. It has brought out into more distinct consciousness, and presented in a more definite shape, the connexion between the ruling passion of the Slave Power and the natural means for its gratification. But the passion and the means for its gratification were there independently of the poli * See Reports of the American Anti-Slavery Society for the years 1859 and 1860. + Spence's American Union, p. 286. Here for a moment the genius of the South is revealed in naked majesty. It is but for a moment. A few pages further on (p. 291) the scene changes, and the South is restored to its proper rôle. We have presented to us the aspect of a people spurning the idea of conquest, bounding its aspirations to the lowest requirement of free men-the demand for autonomy:"Be our ignorance of the merits of this question ever so great, we behold a country of vast extent and large numbers earnestly desiring self-government. It threatens none, demands nothing, attacks no one, but wishes to rule itself, and desires to be "let alone.'" 106 POSITION OF SLAVERY AT THE REVOLUTION. tical system of the United States; and the Slave Power, with a vast unoccupied or half-peopled territory around it, could not have failed under any circumstances, in the Union or out of it, to find in the appropriation of that territory its natural career. CHAPTER VII. THE CAREER OF THE SLAVE POWER. THE aggressive ambition of the Southern States has been traced in the last chapter to two principles-the economic necessities forced upon them by the character of their industrial system, and the growth of passions and habits, generated by the presence of slavery, which require for their satisfaction political predominance. In the present chapter I propose to show how these two principles have operated in the actual history of the United States. At the time of the establishment of the Federal Union the position of slavery in North America was that of an exceptional and declining institution. Many circumstances conspired to produce this result. The war of independence had kindled among the people a spirit of liberty which was strongly antagonistic to compulsory bondage. In the leaders of the revolt this spirit burned with peculiar intensity; and though many of them were natives of the South and slaveholders, they were almost to a man opposed to the system, and anxious for its abolition. From the Northern States, where slavery had originally been planted, it was rapidly disappearing. In the unsettled territory then at the disposal of the central government-notwithstanding that this territory had been ceded to it by a slave statethe institution was by an ordinance of the central government proscribed. Economic causes were also tending to its overthrow. The crops which are adapted to slave cultivation are, as we have seen, few in number. Those which at this time formed the principal staples of the slave states of the Union were rice, indigo, and tobacco. The last was already produced in quantities more than sufficient for the market; and in the two former India was rapidly supplanting the United States. Sugar was not yet grown in the Union. Cotton was still an unimportant crop. But it happened that about this time several causes came into operation, which in their effect completely reversed the direction of events, drove back the tide of freedom, and gave to slavery a new vitality and an enlarged career. It |