162

PECULIAR POSITION OF THE BORDER STATES.

society of as much of the present population of the Slave States as can be reabsorbed without detriment to the interests of freedom. On the assumption which I have made of the ability of the Northern people to subdue the South, these two conditions resolve themselves into one. The only obstacle to a complete reconstruction of the Union lies, on this assumption, in the dif ficulty of combining in the same political system forms of society so different as those presented by the Northern and Southern States. We may then, for the purpose of our discussion, confine our attention to the latter of the two conditions which have been laid down.

It will be remembered that, in considering, in a former chapter, the consequences of confining the Southern Confederacy within the area already settled under slavery, it was pointed out that slavery, thus restricted, would be at once arrested in its development, and that the check given to the system would be first felt in the older or breeding states. In these states the profits from slavery being derived chiefly from the sale, not from the employment, of slaves, so soon as the creation of new markets for the human stock was precluded, the reasons for maintaining the institution would cease. The slaveholders, obliged henceforward to look to the soil as the sole source of their profits, would be forced upon improved methods of cultivation; and before the necessity for improved methods slavery would perforce disappear. Now, this being the position of slavery in the breeding states, it is evident that, so soon as the progress of the Northern armies shall have made it clear that the Slave Power must fail in its original design-still more when the South is menaced with positive curtailment of its dominions-the slaveholders of these states will understand that, so far as their interests are concerned, the institution is doomed. But this conviction will be brought home to them by still more cogent reasons than those which reflection on their economic condition would furnish. The breeding states are also the border states, and they are therefore the states on which the evils of invasion must in the first instance fall. Already near the whole of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, is in possession of the Northern armies. Observe, then, the light in which in the present aspect of affairs, the question of secession must present itself to a border slaveholder. He sees that for him the extinction of slavery is rendered certain in an early future. His slaves are flying to the Federal armies. His country is suffering all the evils of invasion. The tie which bound him to the Slave Power is hopelessly severed. In this position of affairs is it not probable that, were the opportunity

MR. LINCOLN'S PROPOSAL; ITS OPPORTUNENESS. 163

of re-establishing social order upon a new basis presented to him, he would seize it, and, the old system of society having irrevocably passed away, that he would in good faith cast in his lot with a new order of things.

Such an opportunity has been created for the border states by the adoption by Congress of Mr. Lincoln's recent message, recommending a co-operation on the part of the Federal Government with such states as are willing to accept a policy of emancipation. The scheme, indeed, has been pronounced in this country to be chimerical-framed less with a view to the actual exigencies of the case than to catch the applause of Europe. I venture to say that never was criticism less appropriate, or censure more unjust. Practicality and unaffected earnestness of purpose are written in every line of the message. In the full knowledge evinced of the actual circumstances of the border states, combined with the adroitness with which advantage is taken of their peculiar position as affected by passing events, there is displayed a rare political sagacity, which is not more creditable to its author than is the genuine sincerity which shines through his simple and weighty words. Had the scheme indeed been propounded at the outset of the contest (as so many well-meaning empirics among us were forward to advise)-while the Slave Power was yet unbroken, and the prospects of a future more prosperous than it had yet known seemed to be opening before it, there would have been some point in the strictures which have been indulged in, some ground for invidious comment; but, proposed at the present time, it is, as I venture to think, a suggestion than which few more wise or more important have ever been submitted to a legislative body.

Returning to our argument, it has been seen that, in the event of the tide of war being decisively turned against the South, the position, alike industrial and geographical, of the border states would greatly favour a reconstruction of society in them upon principles of freedom. Now, this result would be powerfully helped forward by another circumstance in respect to which they differ from the more southern states of the Confederacy-the presence in their population of a large element of free cultivators. This interest, already in some of the border states* almost balancing that of slavery, would, it is evident, in

* For example in Missouri. The position of slavery in that state in 1856 is thus described by Mr. Weston:-"In large portions of Missouri slavery has never existed to any important extent. The counties adjoining Iowa, ten in number, contained in 1856 57,255 whites and only 871 slaves. Of the one hundred and seven counties ninety-five, occupying four-fifths of the area of the state, contained in 1856 669,921 whites, and only 57,471 slaves, or nearly twelve to one. In twenty-five of these

164

FACILITIES FOR INCORPORATION.

the altered condition of affairs, rise rapidly into importance. Occupying that place in the social arrangements towards which the whole community was obviously tending, constantly increasing in numbers as the progress of emancipation brought new recruits to its ranks-a nucleus of loyalty around which all the best elements of society might gather-this section of the population would easily take the lead in the politics of their several states, would give tone to the whole community, and determine its march.

It would thus seem that, the might of the Slave Power once effectually broken, the incorporation of the border states into a social system based on industrial freedom would not present any insuperable difficulties. It would be only necessary to give support to tendencies which the actual state of things would call at once into operation. Now, what might be done in the border states, where a slave society actually exists, might, it is evident, be accomplished with much greater facility in those districts of the South which, though enrolled as slave states, have in reality yet to be colonized—for example, in Texas and Arkansas. In Texas population is represented by considerably less than one person to the square mile; in Arkansas, by four; and of this sprinkling of people three-fourths in both states are composed of free persons. To the recovery of these states to the dominion of freedom there would at least be no social or political obstacles which might not be easily overcome. Arkansas and Texas recovered, Louisiana alone of the states on the west of the Mississippi would remain to the Slave Power; and is it not possible that Louisiana also might be recovered to freedom? Doubtless its pro-slavery tendencies are intensely strong; its slave population almost equals the free; but the state is a small one, and the prize would be worth an extraordinary effort. Louisiana conquered, Arkansas and Texas recovered to freedom, the whole course of the Mississippi would be opened to the Western States; and the Slave Power-shut up within its narrowed domain, bounded on one side by the Gulf of Mexico and the ocean, on the other by the line of the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, might with some confidence be left to that process of natural decay which slave institutions, arrested in their expansion, inevitably entail.

I have hitherto discussed this question with reference to the

counties there was an absolute decrease of the number of slaves from 1850 to 1856. In the whole ninety-five counties the increase of slaves in that period was only 2,264. Slavery is not strong, and has never been so, except in twelve counties in the centre of the state, embracing about one-fifth of its area, and lying principally upon the Missouri river.”—Progress of Slavery, p. 14.

THE NEGRO QUESTION.

165

interests of the Northern people on the one hand, and to those of civilization, as identified with the overthrow of the Slave Power, on the other. But there is another interest involved in the settlement of the American quarrel which may not seem at once to be identical with either of these-the interest of the present race of negro slaves. The mode of terminating the struggle which I have indicated as that which seems to me on the whole most desirable, though, if realized, it would probably bring freedom to a million of slaves, would yet, it is not to be denied, leave some three millions still in bondage; and there are those who will probably think that this after all would be but a sorry result from the great opportunities of the present conjuncture, and from the great sacrifices which it has already cost. Far wiser, it will be said, as well as more generous would it be, now that the hand has been put to the plough, not to look back till the work has been effectually accomplished, and the great wrong once for all rased out. With the aspirations of those who hold this language I trust I can sympathize; but it seems to me that they fail to appreciate the magnitude of the problem which the policy they recommend involves. No solution of that problem would be complete, or would be worthy of the enlightened views of the present time, which did not include, besides the mere manumission of the negro population, their protection against the efforts of their former masters to recover their lost power, and no less, the provision for them of a career in the future. Now, let us suppose the first of these ends to be accomplished—emancipation to be decreed-and overlooking the objection to what would be the necessary condition of an attempt to give effect to the second-the establishment in the South of a despotic rule wielded by the central government-how, let us ask, is it proposed to provide a career for four millions of emancipated slaves? It will be said, the land still remains to be cultivated; and the labour of the negroes will be as necessary for its cultivation after they have been emancipated as before. The career for the emancipated negro would, therefore, be plain: he would, as a free labourer, hire his services to those who now take them by force. In a word, a population of four million slaves might be converted into a population of four million free labourers. This is, in truth, the only mode of solving the question that deserves serious attention; for I do not think that the plans, of which we have lately heard something, of a wholesale removal of negroes from the American continent-even where they are not advanced for the purpose simply of discrediting the cause of emancipation-can be so

166

WHOLESALE EMANCIPATION.

regarded. But, taking the policy of immediate and wholesale emancipation in its best form, and judging it in a spirit of candour, is it a reasonable expectation that, looking at all the conditions of the case, the result which is contemplated would be realized,—that the negro, on the one hand, and the planter, on the other, would lend themselves to the scheme? I am certainly not going to oppose to the proposal the exploded calumny of the incorrigible indolence of the negro. I am quite ready to admit, what nothing but the pernicious influence of slavery on the negro would ever have given a pretext for denying, and what our West Indian experiment has now conclusively established,* that the negro in freedom is amenable to the same influences as the white man-that he can appreciate as keenly independence, comfort, and affluence, and that, like him, he will work and save and speculate to obtain these blessings: nevertheless, while conceding all this, I confess I am unable to see my way to the result that is here expected.

The grand difficulty to be encountered in any scheme of emancipation which proposes to convert suddenly a régime of forced into one of hired labour, is the state of feeling which slavery leaves behind it in the minds of those who have taken part in its working. With the master there is a feeling of exasperation which leads him to thwart the operation of a system which has been forced upon him and which is odious to him, combined with a desire to re-establish under some new form his old tyranny; while the emancipated bondman naturally desires to

* A very important contribution to our knowledge on the working of emancipation in the West Indies has just appeared from the pen of Mr. Edward Bean Underhill, from whose work, "The West Indies, their Social and Religious Condition,” I extract the following testimony of Captain Darling, the present governor of Jamaica, to the capacity of the negro for freedom: "The proportion of those who are settling themselves industriously on their holdings, and rapidly rising in the social scale, while commanding the respect of all classes of the community, and some of whom are, to a limited extent, themselves the employers of hired labour, paid for either in money or in kind, is, I am happy to think, not only steadily increasing, but at the present moment is far more extensive than was anticipated by those who are cognizant of all that took place in this colony in the earlier days of negro freedom. There can be no doubt, in fact, that an independent, respectable, and, I believe, trustworthy middle class is rapidly forming. If the real object of emancipation was to place the freed man in such a position that he might work out his own advancement in the social scale, and prove his capacity for the full and rational enjoyment of personal independence secured by constitutional liberty, Jamaica will afford more instances, even in proportion to its large population, of such gratifying results, than any other land in which African slavery once existed. Jamaica at this moment presents, as I believe, at once the strongest proof of the complete success of the great measure of emancipation as relates to the capacity of the emancipated race for freedom, and the most unfortunate instance of a descent in the scale of agricultural and commercial importance as a colonial community."-The West Indies, their Social and Religious Condition, pp. 458, 459.