xvi PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S PROCLAMATION. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter the following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war for the government of the army of the United States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such: ARTICLE - All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may have escaped from any person to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due, and any officer who shall be found guilty by court-martial of violating this article shall be dismissed from the service. SECTION 2. And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect from and after its passage. Also to the 9th and 10th sections of an Act entitled "An Act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion, to seize and confiscate property of rebels, and for other purposes," approved July 17, 1862, and which sections are in the words and figures following: SECTION 9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the Government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons, and taking refuge within the lines of the army, and all slaves captured from such persons, or deserted by them, and coming under the control of the government of the United States, and all slaves of such persons found on or being within any place occupied by rebel forces, and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captures of war, and shall be for ever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves. SECTION 10. And be it further enacted, That no slave, escaping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any of the States, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime, or some offence against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that the person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not been in arms against the United States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto; and no person engaged in the military or naval service of the United States shall, under any pretence whatever, assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such person to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service. And I do hereby enjoin and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce within their respective spheres of service, the acts and sections above recited; and the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion, shall, upon the restoration of the constitutional relations between the United States and their respective States and people, if the relations shall have been suspended or disturbed, be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this 22d day of September, in the year of our Lord 1862, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh. By the President, WM. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. PREFACE. Ir is proper that I should state the circumstances under which the present volume is offered to the public. The substance of it formed the matter of a course of lectures delivered about a year since in the University of Dublin. In selecting the subject of North American slavery I was influenced in the first instance by considerations of a purely speculative kind—my object being to show that the course of history is largely determined by the action of economic causes. To causes of this description, it seemed to me, the fortunes of slavery in North America-its establishment in one half of the Union and its disappearance from the other-were directly to be ascribed; while to that institution, in turn, the leading differences in the character of the Northern and Southern people, as well as that antagonism of interests between the two sections which has issued in a series of political conflicts extending over half a century, were no less distinctly traceable. The course of events, however, since I first took up the subject, has given to it an interest far other than speculative, and has rendered conclusions, of which the value (if they possessed any) was little more than scientific, directly applicable to problems of immediate and momentous interest. Under these circumstances I have been induced to extend considerably the original plan of my investigations, and to give the whole subject a popular and practical treatment, in the hope of contributing something to the elucidation of a question of vast importance, not only to America, but to the whole civilized world. The rapid movement of events, accompanied by no less rapid fluctuations in public opinion, during the progress of the work, will explain, and, it is hoped, will procure indulgence for, some obvious imperfections. Some topics, it is probable, will be found to be treated with greater fulness, and some arguments to be urged with greater vehemence, than the present position of affairs or the present state of public feeling may appear to require. For example, I have been at some pains to show that the question at issue between North and South is not one of tariffsa thesis prescribed to me by the state of the discussion six months ago, when the affirmative of this view was pertinaciously put forward by writers in the interest of the South, but which, at the present time, when this explanation of the war appears to have been tacitly abandoned, cannot but appear a rather gratuitous task. In a certain degree, indeed, the same remark applies to the main argument of the work; for, in spite of elaborate attempts at mystification, the real cause of the war and the real issue at stake are every day forcing themselves into prominence with a distinctness which cannot be much longer evaded. Whatever we may think of the tendencies of democratic institutions, or of the influence of territorial magnitude on the American character, no theory framed upon these or upon any other incidents of the contending parties, however ingeniously constructed, will suffice to conceal the fact, that it is slavery which is at the bottom of this quarrel, and that on its determination it depends whether the Power which derives its strength from slavery shall be set up with enlarged resources and increased prestige, or be now once for all effectually broken. This is the one view of the case which every fresh occurrence in the progress of events tends to strengthen; and it is this which it is the object of the present work to enforce. But, although the development of the movement may have deprived the following speculations of some of that novelty which they might have possessed when they were first delivered, still it is hoped that they will not be without their use-that, while they will assist honest inquirers to form a sound judgment upon a question which is still the subject of much designed and much unconscious misrepresentation, they may possess a more permanent interest, as illustrating by a striking example the value of a fruitful but little understood instrument of historical inquiry that which investigates the influence of material interests on the destinies of mankind. CONTENTS. Causes of the War.-The popular view.-Its superficiality.-Slavery the central problem of American history.-The commercial theory.-The claim of independence: how to be estimated.-Real cause of secession.- True origin of the war obscured by its proximate occasion.—War the only arbitrament.-Views of the North: The Unionist sentiment; The Anti- Slavery sentiment.-Rapid growth of the Anti-Slavery sentiment.-Present Different fortunes of slavery in the North and South.-Various explanations of the phenomenon: Theory of diversity of character in the original founders; Theory of climate and race; The explanation of climate inade- quate; Alleged indolence of the negro groundless.-True solution of the problem-Economic.-Merits and defects of slave labour.-Merits and defects of free labour.-Comparative efficiency of slave and free labour.— Agricultural capabilities of North and South.-Slave and free products.- Further conditions essential to the success of slave labour: Fertility of the soil; Extent of territory.-Exhausting effects of slave culture.-General INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF SLAVE SOCIETIES. Economic success of slavery, in what sense conceded.-Structure of a slave society moulded by its economic conditions.-Agriculture-the sole career for slavery-Exigencies of slave agriculture.-Results: Magnitude of plantations; Indebtedness of planters; Unequal distribution of wealth.— Waste lands in slave countries. Social consequences.-The mean whites,'-Industrial development of Slave States prematurely arrested.— Net results of slave industry.-Constitution of slave societies essentially oligarchical.-Baneful influence of the slave oligarchy falsely charged on democracy. Each principle to be tested by its proper fruits-Character In what direction are slave societies moving?—Importance of the question.— force of the analogy: I. Difference of race and colour; Its effects. INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT OF SLAVE SOCIETIES. Outline of the economy of slave societies.-They include no element of pro- gress.-The mean whites: Growth of regular industry among them a moral impossibility; Consequences of the absence of regular industry; Extreme sparseness of population; Incompatibility of this with civilized progress. The slaves and their masters.-Prospects of emancipation in the natural course of internal development: Inherent difficulty of the problem; Modern precedents inapplicable; Economic causes not to be relied on; Political and social motives the real strength of American slavery; Further support to slavery in the ethics and theology of the South.-Growth of the pro-slavery sentiment.-Its absorbing strength.- Its universality. Hopelessness of the slave's position.-Social cost of the EXTERNAL POLICY OF SLAVE SOCIETIES. Its aggressive character.--Twofold source of the aggressive spirit: The industrial; The moral.-Tendency of slave society to foster ambition.- Narrow scope for its indulgence. The extension of slavery-its only resource.-Concentration of aim promoted by antagonism.--Position of the South in the Union, naturally inferior to that of the North.-Compen- sating forces: The three fifths vote; Superior capacity in the South for combined action.-Democratic alliance: its basis.-Terms of the bargain.— Twofold motive of southern aggression.-The political motive mainly ope- rative. True source of this motive.-Relation of the political motive to Position of slavery at the Revolution.-Rise of the cotton trade.-Early pro- |