THE LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW. JULY, 1866. ART. I.-1. The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln, New York: 2. The Martyr's Monument. New York: The American News Company. 1865. Ar the outset of the long and bloody struggle which has brought mourning into so many American homes, and left so many smouldering ruins upon the American soil, almost all observers on this side of the Atlantic believed that the hour had come for the irrevocable division of the Great Republic into two or more confederations. And this opinion was not in all cases the result of a feeling of hostility to the Americans or their institutions. It was quite possible to be proud of the energy and prosperity of these oldest scions of our race, and to reckon upon their playing a most important, if not a preponderant part in future history, and yet to be persuaded that the fact of their separation into distinct nations was taking place under our eyes. Nay, it was even possible without any unfriendly disposition to suppose it would be better for themselves and for the world that three or four New Englands should divide between them the North American continent, co-operating for good, and acting as a wholesome restraint upon each other, when turbulent or ambitious, rather than one great democracy, reigning from sea to sea, and containing within itself no elements of antagonism tending to create habits of self-control. However, as the views and the hopes of the leaders of the slave-holding confederacy became gradually revealed, and the influences which were at work in the American mind became understood, and the various terminations of the civil wars which seemed possible or probable at different periods opened upon us, the opinions of intelligent and impartial friends of humanity gradually changed, and many who had begun by looking upon the success of the Confederate States as certain and not wholly undesirable, ended by feeling that by their defeat the world had escaped a tremendous, a-humanly speaking-irreparable calamity. It appeared to us at this distance that if the Confederates succeeded in securing their independence, they would not the less have doomed their idolized institution to die out of itself. How could slavery subsist, we asked, in a country with a frontier of more than two thousand miles opening upon free states which would henceforth be disposed to receive fugitives with open arms? We now know-and we were near learning to our cost-that the calculations of the slave-owners were more profound than they seemed. The seceders knew their own objects better than any observers in this country did, and were better judges of the means necessary to their accomplishment. In the first place it is evident that the border slave states, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, which exhibited a strong leaning towards secession at the beginning of the movement, would have been quite decided by its success, and would have cast in their lot with their Southern brethren. But would they have been alone in doing so? Englishmen took for granted that they would; but the instincts of the American people, who understood the geographical unity of their country, and the dependence of its several populations upon each other, told them the border states would not, in that case, have been the only ones to gravitate towards the South. The great valley of the Mississippi, the northern seaboard of the Gulf of Mexico, and the whole extent of country between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic were destined by nature to be inhabited by one people, and nothing but a high-minded resolution to keep aloof at any price from the abominations of slavery would have induced New York, Pennsylvania and the agricultural states of the West to accept the material loss and disadvantages of an artificial political separation; but the cynical indifference to the wrongs of the negro ex Probable Action of the New Confederacy. 271 hibited by the majority of the Northern population during the first half of the war has made it apparent that they were morally incapable of taking up and maintaining such a position. They fought for the union upon its old basis, but, if unsuccessful, they would have consented to its reconstruction upon the basis of slavery rather than put up with separation. New England would have been cast off as a heterogeneous society, unmanageable and unnecessary to the prosperity of the rest. The new States on the Pacific might have been allowed to assert their independence if they pleased; but the main strength of the old Republic-the resources of half a continent-would devolve to the new slave power. Launched upon a career of independence, with all the prestige of victory over its most formidable antagonist, the new Confederacy would inevitably have pursued the objects of its leading class with the passion, the perseverance, the sagacity, and the utter unscrupulousness which its leaders had already exhibited on a smaller theatre. It would have borne with no protestation, however timid, no resistance, however passive, throughout its immense territory. "An abolitionist," says a Southern paper, "is a man who does not love slavery for its own sake as a divine institution; who does not worship it as a corner-stone of civil liberty; who does not adore it as the only possible social condition on which a permanent Republican government can be created; and who does not, in his inmost soul, desire to see it extended and perpetuated over the whole earth." In this spirit the demon of slavery would enforce its despotism over the very mind; like the old Assyrian monarch, boasting that he had laid his hand over the nations like so many nestlings, and that none moved a wing, or opened a beak, or peeped. From the Hudson to the Rio Grande no friend or accomplice of fugitive slaves would be harboured upon the soil for a day. All free coloured persons would be reduced to slavery at one stroke by a wholesale enactment. The measures already contemplated for establishing a kind of serfdom among the poor whites of the cotton states would be carried out by a skilfully graduated system of vagrancy and apprenticeship acts. The slave trade, with all its horrors, would be re-opened. Finally, Mexico, Central America, the Spanish West Indies, all the tropical regions of the New World, devoured one by one, like the leaves of an artichoke, as Cæsar Borgia wanted to do with the Italian States, would, sooner or later, be absorbed by the mighty slaveholding empire. These are not the exaggerated assumptions of bilious and suspicious pessimists. Previous to the Civil War six States had taken preliminary measures for reducing all free negroes to bondage, and two more refused to allow men of colour to settle upon their soil without accepting the condition of slavery for themselves and their posterity. "Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the labouring man, whether white or black," said a Southern paper, so far back as 1856. "Free society is impracticable," said another, "it is everywhere starving, demoralised, and insurrectionary." ... "Free society!—we sicken at the name-what is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, etc.!" The Leavenworth Constitution, imposed by an armed rabble from Missouri on the free settlers of Kansas in 1854, allows us to see what would have been the internal police regulations of the Confederacy under the shadow of the palm tree and the stars and stripes united. In this document the penalty of death is denounced no less than forty-eight times against the offence of facilitating the escape of slaves, and other crimes against the security of slave property. Even the theoretical advocacy of anti-slavery opinions is treated as felony, and punished with imprisonment and hard labour. Apt illustration this of the principle boldly and unblushingly avowed by the Hon. L. W. Spratt, of South Carolina, that a society where domestic slavery prevails may be considered as "in an ordinary state of martial law, as perfect as that which in times of popular outbreak is the last and surest provision for security and order." All Europe and America has taken note of the memorable declaration of Mr. A. H. Stephens, vice-president of the Southern Confederacy, that the foundations of the new fabric rested on the principle "that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery-subordination to the superior race -is his natural and normal condition. This our govern ment is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. . . This stone which was rejected by the first builders, is become the chief stone of the corner in our new edifice." On the hypothesis of the reconstruction of the United States on such a basis the political necessity for multiplying Slave States in order to counterbalance Free States, would no longer exist; but the necessity of multiplying the slave force in order to occupy and cultivate the soil, and to exclude, as Southern phraseology puts it, "the pauper white element that demoralises the labouring population" this economic want would be felt True Southern Sentiment. 273 more imperiously than ever. Hence the ardour with which the more far-sighted and energetic partizans of the institution began to agitate for the legalised revival of the slave trade, and actually did recommence it on no inconsiderable scale before the breaking out of the Civil War." "Take off the ruthless restrictions which cut off the supply of slaves from foreign lands," exclaimed a Georgian legislator, Mr. Goulden, take off the restrictions against the African slave trade, and we shall then want no protection. . . . The institution of slavery will take care of itself." 66 The question was first seriously mooted in 1853. Governor Adams formally recommended it to the attention of the South Carolina Legislature in 1857. An "African Labour Supply Association" was actually formed in the State of Mississippi in 1859. The Legislature of Arkansas refused to discourage the agitation by a majority of twenty-two. That of Louisiana went further; a bill embodying the views of the advocates of the re-opening of the trade passed the Lower House, and was very near passing in the Senate. "This trade may be called piracy," said the Augusta Dispatch, triumphantly; "but the day will come when the South will make it the right arm of her legitimate commerce." For the extent to which cargoes of native Africans were openly introduced on the Southern coast in defiance of Federal legislation to the contrary, during the years 1859 and 1860, we must refer to Professor Cairnes' "Slave Power," pp. 244, 245, 386–390 (second edition). A provision in the constitution of the Confederate States prohibited the revival of the slave trade, and the Saturday Review asserted it was absurd and dishonest to pretend in the face of such evidence that the South merely wished to conciliate European opinion for the present with a purpose of afterwards modifying and disregarding the prohibitory clause. Now, this provision of the Montgomery Constitution was passed in secret session, so that it was felt not to be expedient to let the outer world hear the reasons, for its adoption. Again, the only punishment proposed by the Confederate Congress for the misdemeanour of slave trading was confiscation of the vessel taken in the act, and of the negroes, who were to be sold in the nearest port, for the benefit of the State; and even this inadequate and derisory penalty was vetoed by President Davis, who communicated his reasons for doing so in another secret session. Thus the prohibition of this infamous traffic remained a mere abstract proposition without any provision for its practical enforcement; and, when all the circumstances |